As hardships and tensions increase in Lord of
the Flies, the intuitive Simon is killed, and the boys Piggy and Ralph lose
their abilities to think with their increasing fears. However, while Ralph's reaction is
to fight and to argue and fight, Piggy is much more cowardly. With his loss of vision,
Piggy begins to rationalize that Simon is not dead, then that it was an
accident:
"It
was an accident....Coming in the dark--he hadn't no business crawling like that out of
the dark. He was batty. He asked for it....It was an
accident...."Look, Ralph We got to forget this. We can't
do no good thinking about it,
see?
Piggy suggests to Ralph
that they were on the outside and did not really see anything. With his loss of his
glassses, the symbol of reason, Piggy has lost his true vision of reality, and can no
longer cope. He is also weaker as he has an asthma attack, clinging to Ralph and
gasping for breath. Ralph, who wishes desperately that they could go home to escape the
reality of what has happened does, however, come closer to admitting to the emergence of
the beast within themselves since he does have a conscience. But, he engages in a fight
with boys who have hidden in the shelter in order to steal Piggy's glasses, and then
becomes involved in a physical struggle for survival after
this.
Piggy's rationalizing represents his weakness and
reluctance to admit to the breakdown of the vestiges of civilization as the Lord of the
Flies has dominion over the island. Ralph attempts to conquer this dominion in his
conscience, but he is not strong enough to fight back. Having failed to keep the boys
organized and orderly, in the end Ralph weeps for "the darkness of man's heart" until,
as Simon intuitively has known, he is rescued.
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