Lord of the Flies; Realtionship between Ralph and Piggy; Analytical

Lord of the Flies written by William Golding is meant to take place after World War II. Families had placed their children of different ages, wealth, and lifestyles on a plane to be taken away from the war to safety; but what the families don’t know is the plane didn’t make it to safety. The plane had crashed into an island in the middle of nowhere.

The relationship between Ralph and Piggy is like any other relationship when two strangers who know nothing about each other have to come together to survive. The boys are from different lifestyles, they speak differently from each other, their personalities are not the same, the wealth of their families is in no comparison, and the ways the boys look are different; but also in a way later in the book the boys have more in common than they knew at the beginning of the book. In the beginning of Lord of the Flies the boys are introduced as Fair Boy and Fat Boy; but later in the beginning of the book the boys exchange names. Fair Boy becomes Ralph and Fat Boy becomes Piggy. When exchanging names Fat Boy, also known as Piggy tells Fair Boy, also known as Ralph “I don’t care what they call me, so long as they don’t call me what they used to call me at school.” “They used to call me Piggy.” Ralph laughed at Piggy for having a funny nickname and even made machine gun gestures at Piggy.

            After Ralph and Piggy had talked and introduced themselves properly they are walking along and discover a shell, known as the conch. Piggy explains to Ralph that the shell can be used to call for other boys; Ralph blows into the conch and brings more children from the crash together on the island. When the boys began to come together a group of Choir Boys came to the sound of the conch, the leader of those boys was Jack. Jack is rude to the other boys and even the boys in his Choir, he also thinks he is an adult and wants to be leader of all of the children. When the boys are introduced Ralph becomes a little ruder to Piggy. Jack, Ralph, and Simon (one of the Choir Boys) decided that some of the children should stay at the site where they had called for the other boys with the conch and that they would go explore the island; but when Piggy asked Ralph to go on the exploration with him Jack and Simon they said no. Piggy tells them that he was with Ralph from the beginning and he was the one who was with him when they found the conch to call for the rest of the boys; but Ralph still tells him no and that tells him “Your no good on a job like this.” Ralph told Piggy to stay and watch over the other boys on the island. Piggy gets upset and tells Ralph “About being called Piggy. I said I didn’t care as long as they didn’t call me Piggy,” but Ralph just looked at Piggy and said “It is better than fatty.”

            Later in the book after many things had taken place like seeing the beast (which turns out to be a figure of imagination that the boys where thinking was real), splitting up, arguments (over being chief and bullying Piggy) and fights; Ralph and Piggy realize that they are the only ones besides Sam and Eric that want to survive on the island and get out alive. Under normal circumstances Ralph and Piggy would never be friends, but through the perilous situations the boys face being on the island and they become closer, true friends, unlike the other relationships on the island that began to fall apart not only in the middle of the novel but towards the end as well.

When Jacks tribe had asked about how they were going to have a fire Jack said to his tribe that a few of them where going to go and steal Piggy’s specs, which are his glasses that they have been using to make fire. Later that night Jack and some of the other boys went to where Ralph and Piggy where staying, Ralph and Piggy were asleep at the time. Piggy had heard noises outside and woke Ralph, Ralph went outside to a beating; Piggy’s glasses were taken by Jack. Ralph stood up for Piggy and told him that they were going to get his glasses back. Ralph and Piggy went to Jacks tribe to get his specs back, but all that happened was fighting and a tragic death of Piggy; Ralph was beaten to where if the Officer didn’t get there when he did he also would have died on the island for standing up for what was right.

Ralph and Piggy have a normal relationship in Lord of the Flies as if it was a real life situation. The boys’ new nothing about each other but the longer they were together the more they got to know each other and the more they understood each other and agreed upon things.