Lord of the Flies Chapter 9 Summary

Evening comes. The unconscious Simon gets a bloody nose.

When he wakes, The Lord of the Flies is still hanging on his stick like a black ball.
Simon wakes and asks (as he did before): What else is there to do? We know what that
means.
With dried blood covering his mouth and chin, Simon staggers out of his hiding place
and begins making his way up the mountain, still intending to face the beast like a man.
Or, like a young boy who just happens to be very brave and wise.
When he gets to the top, he of course sees that the beast is just a dead body on a
parachute, all tangled up in the rocks.
Simon pukes up everything (the dead body is a rather hideous and smelly sight) and then
frees the parachute line from the rocks.
He looks down at the fire on the beach and realizes he must tell the others that the
beast, although horrible, is harmless.
He staggers downward, almost collapsing with each step.
Piggy and Ralph decide to bathe. Everyone else has gone to Jacks party, and they decide
to go as well, but only to make sure nothing happens.
When they get to the party, they see that everyone is having a grand old time. Jack is
sitting on a great log, painted and garlanded like an idol. He graciously offers Piggy
and Ralph some food, which they take, and then bosses everyone about to get him a drink
and tell him hes the fairest one of all and so forth.
After everyone eats, Jack demands to know who is going to join his tribe. His
seriousness and bossiness is a real downer, and the party stops feeling like a party.
In response, Ralph says hes the chief, but his voice trembles as he speaks and no one
really believes him.
A storm is brewing and thunder booms out above them.
Ralph says he will blow the conch and call an assembly, but Jack says no one will hear
it.
Everyone knows Jack is right about this.
Piggy suggests quietly to Ralph that this would probably be a good time for them to get
the hell out of there.
Lightning flashes and they all decide to (what else) reenact the pigs death scene for the
umpteenth time.
Only this time, instead of chanting about the pig, they shout: Kill the beast! Cut his
throat! Spill his blood!
As they dance wildly, something crawls toward them from the forest and stumbles into
the circle of boys.
It is Simon, who cries out something about a dead man on a hill.
The boys, who are in some kind of a fury of wild chanting and blood lust, are not in the
greatest condition to hear Simons explanation. In fact, they dont even recognize Simon
they think he is the beast.
Pouncing on him, they scream, strike, bite, and tear. There were no words, and no
movements but the tearing of teeth and claws.
Rain pours down, suddenly, and the boys straggle away, leaving the pitiful heap that is
Simon lying in the dirt, his blood staining the sand.

As the wind blows, it picks up the other beast (the dead man in the parachute) and
carries him out to sea the boys rush screaming into the darkness. (This is an amazing
paragraph you should take a look at it.)
Eventually the rain ceases, and as the water rises under the moon, Simons dead body
[moves] out toward the open sea. Yes, they have actually killed him even Ralph and
Piggy helped.
Lord of the Flies Chapter 10 Summary
Piggy and Ralph try to keep the fire going and discuss what happened to Simon. (Were
thinking they must have realized it was Simon sometime in between Kill that thing!
and waking up the next morning.)
Ralph shouts that it was murder and Piggy shrieks that it was not, it was just an accident.
They continue on with this kind of talk, trying to convince each other that they didnt
really participate like the others had, that they were on the outside of the circle so it
couldnt be their fault.
Samneric show up and similarly refuse to acknowledge their part in the murder.
The four of them continue to rationalize until theyve decided that they never even
attended the dance, that they had left early before anything bad happened. This is, of
course, denial, in its purest form.
The scene changes to Roger, who is climbing up Castle Rock. Someone calls for him to
halt, and Roger isnt surprised as he thinks of people hiding from the horrors of the
previous night.
Its Robert; he and Roger comment, half-proudly, that Jack is a real chief.
As Roger climbs up the cliff, Robert shows him a log thats been jammed under a huge
rock. When Robert leans on the protruding end of the log, the rock groans. Roger thinks
this is super-nifty.
They then discuss the fact that Jack has tied up Wilfred (a character we havent seen
until now) and is going to beat him but they dont know why.
When they get back to the cave, Jack is sitting, naked from the waist up with his face
painted in white and red. Wilfred, untied but newly beaten, is crying.
Jack announces that they will hunt again tomorrow except hes now referred to in the
text as the chief.
He explains away the whole last-night-murder thing by saying that the beast came
disguised, and may come again. He refuses to think at all about the fact that it was Simon.
They discuss that they will have to steal fire from the others again, in order to roast the
meat.
Back at the shelter on the beach, Piggy yammers on about building a radio.
Sam and Eric wonder if theyll be captured by The Reds, but think that would be
better than you-know-who.
Ralph gets a little nutty. He cant remember why he wants to make a fire, he gives up on
it for the night, and then hes dancing about as he thinks of a bus station and how
wonderful it would be to go home.
He is interrupted by shouts as Sam and Eric start fighting with each other.

Theyve never acted like this before, and Piggy whispers desperately to Ralph that
theyve got to get out of this somehow before they go barmy, or bomb happy, as he
puts it.
Ralph pushes the damp tendrils of hair out of his eyes (theres that hair again) and
suggests sarcastically to Piggy that he write a letter to his auntie to come rescue them.
Piggy replies seriously that he has no envelope and no stamp.
As the strange noises of nighttime set in, they have trouble falling asleep.
They most definitely hear something moving outside it must be the beast, they think.
Ralph and Piggy cling desperately to each other inside the shelter. Ralph, in a not-sonoble moment, prays that the beast will prefer littluns to him.
Tension builds until something crashes into their shelter and pounces on them, beating
them viciously. The shelter collapses.
After the attackers leave, Samneric come in to see if they are all right.
They arent.
Piggy says he thought they came for the conch (the attackers were members of Jacks
tribe), but he then realizes with horror that theyve taken his glasses.