We just got to go on, that’s all. That’s what grown-ups would do.[Also known as:]We did everything adults would do. What went wrong?
We’ve got to have rules and obey them. After all, we’re not savages. We’re English; and the English are best at everything.
The world, that understandable and lawful world, was slipping away.
The fire’s the most important thing. Without the fire we can’t be rescued. I’d like to put on war-paint and be a savage. But we must keep the fire burning. The fire’s the most important thing on the island, because, because-
Maybe there is a beast… maybe it’s only us.
He knelt among the shadows and felt his isolation bitterly. They were savages it was true; but they were human.
“People don’t help much.” He wanted to explain how people were never quite what you thought they were.
What are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages?
There’s nothing in it of course. Just a feeling. But you can feel as if you’re not hunting, but – being hunted, as if something’s behind you all the time in the jungle.
Don’t you want to be rescued? All you can talk about is pig, pig, pig!
We ought to have more rules. Where the conch is, that’s a meeting. The same up here as down there.
The trouble was, if you were a chief you had to think, you had to be wise.
