Lord of the Flies, William Golding. Cycle 23 Reading Response, 16-30

Summary:
In these pages Ralph blows the conch shell they found but can’t get it to work but Piggy remembers that his friend used to blow and tells Ralph a few ways his friend blew to get it to work. He tells um that his friend used to spit when he blew it and that didn’t work so he told him that his friend used to blow from his diaphragm to make the sound. Before he did this no sound would come from the shell but once he did this he made a remarkable sound that shook the forest and made birds fly and animals squeal like in the movies. He blew repeadielty on the ledge that he and Piggy stood on till they could see people and didn’t stop till they thought everyone came. Everyone who showed were children with children, no adults what so ever. Even teenagers weren’t here. All the children gathered and Ralph and Piggy called a meeting. They needed to know what they had to do to survive and they needed to put someone in order. This one cocky guy from this group of choirboys who bossed them around said that he should be the leader but no one liked him and the only votes he got were because of dirty looks he gave to people. The majority of the kids voted for Ralph so he was leader. He first act of people leader was to find out if this was really and island because if it was just the beach of somewhere they could get saved and go home. Ralph made a search party of three people to climb up the mountain and see. He made it him, the cocky choir leader named Jack and this little boy Simon who was the first to show after blowing the conch. They went up the beach and found a point where they thought it would be easy to climb the mountain and did so. They climbed and ran into some difficulties but got around them. When they were at the top they looked about and they found out indeed this was an island. They saw another little island in the distance almost attached to this island. They didn’t see any houses or smoke so they assumed this was an inhabited island so they went back down to tell the group of the news. On their way down they heard hooves and squealing in the forest so they went to check it out. They found that it was a pig and Jack was going to kill it but he couldn’t because that was mean. They returned to the other boys and told them the news and that there was food here and all the boys had to have different duty’s to better everyone.

Vocabulary:
1. Indignation- anger or annoyance provoked by what is perceived as unfair treatment
2. Sniggers- a smothered or half-suppressed laugh
3. Embossed- carve or mold design on (a surface) so it stands out in relief
4. Interposed- place or insert between one thing and another
5. Contemptuously- showing contempt; scornful