Question

Read the passage from Lord of the Flies by William Golding.

Jack quested ahead. They went more slowly than Ralph had bargained for; yet in a way he was glad to loiter, cradling his spear. Jack came up against some emergency of his craft and soon the procession stopped. Ralph leaned against a tree and at once the daydreams started swarming up. Jack was in charge of the hunt and there would be time to get to the mountain—

Once, following his father from Chatham to Devonport, they had lived in a cottage on the edge of the moors. . . .

When you went to bed there was a bowl of cornflakes with sugar and cream. And the books—they stood on the shelf by the bed, leaning together with always two or three laid flat on top because he had not bothered to put them back properly. They were dog-eared and scratched. There was the bright, shining one about Topsy and Mopsy that he never read because it was about two girls; there was the one about the magician, which you read with a kind of tied-down terror, skipping page twenty-seven with the awful picture of the spider; there was a book about people who had dug things up, Egyptian things; there was The Boy’s Book of Trains, The Boy’s Book of Ships. Vividly they came before him; he could have reached up and touched them, could feel the weight and slow slide with which The Mammoth Book for Boys would come out and slither down . . . Everything was all right; everything was good-humored and friendly.

How are the universal themes "the loss of innocence” and "the relationship between civilization and nature” best developed in this passage?

Golding uses description to explain why Ralph is different from Jack.
Golding uses the boys’ actions to show their difficulties with adjusting to life on the island.
Golding uses conflict to emphasize the different perspectives of Ralph and Jack.
Golding uses internal thoughts to highlight how the boys’ lives have changed on the island.

Answer 1

Golding uses internal thoughts to highlight how the boys’ lives have changed on the island, which best develops the universal themes "the loss of innocence” and "the relationship between civilization and nature” in this passage. Ralph's daydreams of his previous life with his family and the comforts of civilization highlight the loss of innocence and the boys' struggle to adapt to their new, primitive environment. Additionally, the contrast between Ralph's memories and the boys' current situation on the island highlights the theme of the relationship between civilization and nature.