Over the course of William Golding’s Lord ofthe Flies, Ralph comes to realize that he was wrong at first when he thought that his group of boys could keep the fire going no matter what He sees by the end of the book that no matter how determined one is to keep going at a task that he sees as necessary 7 in Ralph’s case, keeping the fire going to make smoke – the truth is that not everything is possible on an island without civilization, without organization, without resources, and without law and order; there is a point where he as a human being has to give up and admit that the task is beyond his limit. When Ralph realizes, at the end of the novel, that it is beyond his limit to maintain the fire, he also realizes that this discovery is tantamount to surrender, and because he knows that there is nothing he can do to make the firework, he comes to the conclusion that he might as well not even try — so he gives up After Ralph sees, at the beginning of the book, that the rules set out when first everybody met are being disobeyed, he decides that it is necessary for an assembly to be called to talk about them, and how important it is that they be followed: “The fire is the most important thing on the island.
How can we ever be rescued except by luck, if we don’t keep a fire going? Is a fire too much for us to make?” He flung out an arm. “Look at us! How many are we? And yet we can’t keep a fire going to make smokers Don’t you understand? Can’t you see we ought to 7 ought to die before we let the fire out?” Ralph still believes that if the boys work together and use all of their resources and determination, they will be able to maintain the fire no matter what In this gathering that Ralph has called to make an attempt to show the other boys of his tribe how important following the rules that were set out is, even if it is easier not to, Ralph especially tries to portray to the other boys on the island how Vital keeping the fire going is, for he believes that it is possible in the beginning of the novel. He tries to get them to realize that their only hope of ever getting off of the island is to make enough smoke to even have the possibility of being seen.
He also tries to make the others feel bad that so many of them can‘t keep a single fire going, even when they work togethert He even states that their lives are less important than keeping the fire going — because he knows that without the fire, the rest of their lives will be spent on the island, a pointless life At this point in the novel, Ralph is still under the impression that, no matter what, it is still possible to keep the fire up and running, and that his friends and tribesman possess the willpower to keep it burning; he shows this when he asks if a fire is too much for them to make, as if they should be able to make it easily He has not yet begun to lose faith in his fellow tribesmen, which he shows when he asks so many rhetorical questions in a row, such as “how many are we?” and “is a fire too much for us to make?” Ralph, however, has not yet begun to realize that instead of asking these as rhetorical, he should be asking them as actual questions; he doesn’t think that he needs answers yet, but he soon will realize that he is not sure of the answers to the questions that he asked.
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He asks if they can’t see if they ought to die before they let the fire out, thinking that once he points it out it will be obvious However, later on in the novel it will be apparent to him that most of them can’t see the importance of the fire, As of yet, he has had no experience with reaching his personal limit or those of the others; he is not aware that they have limits at all, and still thinks that the island is the same as anywhere else, somewhere where the boys are able to retain some aspects of civilized life (although he will soon realize that the effects of being alone with no grownups are that staying organized is almost impossible and that the temptations to have fun are too numerous and strong to follow the rules). Ralph’s speech is a way that Golding foreshadows what will eventually happen: by having Ralph yell at the others and scold them for not keeping the fire up.
Golding is showing to the attentive reader that eventually Ralph will not get results no matter how hard he yells: already, he has to stop being positive and start insulting people just to get them to work, and already, he is sensing that his plan is not working — hence the need to insult them in the first place Also, by using the words “ought to die before we let the fire out,” Golding foreshadows the fact that Ralph will come close to death for his constant desire to keep the fire running and his belief that it is possible despite the fact that there are not enough people to keep it going. Later in the novel, Sam’n’Eric are alone with Piggy and Ralph, the four of them the last remainders of Ralph’s tribe, and everybody is feeling the fatigue of not having enough manpower to keep up with the constant necessities of a fire: “But we can’t get any more wood, Ralph—” “inot in the darki” “—Not at night—” I,. Ralph stood up, feeling curiously defenseless with the darkness pressing in. “Let the fire go then, for tonight.
Ralph finally allows the other boys convince him that it is impossible for them to keep the fire going, and therefore impossible to be rescued – this teaches him the truth about personal limits, Although he only starts out admitting to himself that they will not be able to keep it going at night, eventually the continuing disappearance of the “big’uns” who are defecting to Jack’s tribe will overwhelm him, and he will be forced to admit that the fire is just not going to happen — and indeed, by the end of the novel, the signal fire will have disappeared. The other boys have all already realized the truth about personal limits, and have given up far too easily: whereas Ralph tries to deny his limit, the others embrace theirs and use them as an opportunity to cease work that they know they should be doing.
The others, therefore, are key factors in convincing Ralph of the truth, and without them he might not have realized that he had reached his limit until he was trying to keep the fire going all twenty»four hours by himself In saying “let the fire g0,” Ralph is admitting to himself that first of all, it is beyond his limit to keep smoke rising up into the air, and that second of all, he knows that it is beyond his limit, so he might as well not even try to make enough smoke to be seen; he might as well “let it go,” Golding uses the word “defenseless” in describing the way Ralph feels, and showed that because he was defenseless, the “darkness [was] pressing in,” Ralph feels this way because some things he had thought to be true , that there was no such thing as a personal limit and that on this island, civilization is still present and with civilization reason — turn out to be false He is defenseless because he has no more excuses: he finally has to admit that there is such thing as a limit for everybody, and that he and the remaining members left in his tribe on the abandoned island have reached that limit. Later on, a few pages after.
Ralph says to Piggy that ships could be passing them, and there would not be a fire for them to see, and he asks if Piggy remembers when that happened before , a ship blindly passing in the absence of a fire What Ralph is doing is lamenting the fact that he was unable, in the end, to convince everyone of the vitality of the fire. In finally giving up, even if it is just a tiny bit — the night — that he is giving up, Ralph is forced to end his denial, and he finally lets himself realize one of life’s biggest truth 7 the fact that determination will not always carry one all of the way, and that at a certain point, there is an unsurpassable obstacle that even the most persuasive speech and the most persistent worker cannot OVEI‘COITlE.
