Setting Lord of the Flies
THE BOY with fair hair lowered himself down the last few feet of rock and began to pick his way toward the
lagoon. That’s a reef out in the sea. The shore was fledged with palm trees. He hastened back into the forest.
Ralph stood up and trotted along to the right. Here the beach was interrupted abruptly by the square motif of the
landscape; a great platform of pink granite thrust up uncompromisingly through forest and terrace and sand and
lagoon to make a raised jetty four feet high. Ralph had stopped smiling and was pointing into the lagoon.
Something creamy lay among the ferny weeds. “A stone.” “No. A shell.”
The pink granite of the next cliff was further back from the creepers and trees so that they could trot up the path.
Beyond the hollow was the square top of the mountain and soon they were standing on it. Beyond the creeper,
the trail joined a pig-run that was wide enough and trodden enough to be a path. To keep a clean flag of flame
flying on the mountain was the immediate end and no one looked further.
Ralph was standing by a contraption of palm trunks and leaves, a rude shelter that faced the lagoon and seemed
very near to falling down.Then, three miles up, the wind steadied and bore it in a descending curve round the
sky and swept it in a great slant across the reef and the lagoon toward the mountain.
“You go away, Ralph. You keep to your end. This is my end and my tribe. You leave me alone.”