Key Quote
“"The rules! You're breaking the rules!"”
Ralph · Chapter 5
Focus: “rules”
Ralph's desperate cry reveals the fragility of civilisation: rules have no inherent power — they only function when people choose to obey them, and when that choice is withdrawn, nothing remains.
Technique 1 — EXCLAMATORY DESPERATION / REPETITION
The double exclamation marks indicate desperation rather than authority: Ralph is not commanding but pleading. The repetition of 'rules' — twice in two short sentences — reveals its mantra-like quality: Ralph clings to the WORD 'rules' because the REALITY of rules has collapsed. When authority resorts to naming itself ('the rules!'), it has already lost its power — genuine authority does not need to announce itself.
The accusatory 'You're' identifies a specific violator (Jack and his hunters) but also inadvertently admits that rules are BREAKABLE. By saying 'you're breaking the rules,' Ralph concedes that rules can be broken — that they depend on voluntary compliance rather than inherent authority. This concession is fatal: once the boys understand that rules are choices, not laws, they choose savagery.
Key Words
RAD — REGRESS
Ralph's cry marks the regression of democratic order into anarchy. The rules that once structured the boys' society are now merely words — sounds without force. Ralph regresses from leader to pleader: he still has the title of chief but has lost the substance of authority. The regression from governance to impotence is Golding's commentary on democracy's vulnerability.
Key Words
Technique 2 — THE CONCH AS METONYM FOR CIVILISATION
Ralph's appeal to 'the rules' is inseparable from the conch — the shell that symbolises democratic order, turn-taking, and rational discourse. The conch is a metonym (a symbol standing for the whole) for civilisation itself. As the conch loses authority, civilisation collapses. When the conch is finally shattered alongside Piggy, the metaphor becomes literal: civilisation is physically destroyed.
The conch reveals the arbitrary (without inherent reason) nature of all social authority: a shell has no natural authority, but the boys AGREED to give it authority. When they withdraw that agreement, the conch becomes what it always was — a shell. Golding's point applies to all symbols of authority: constitutions, crowns, badges, and laws are just objects until people DECIDE to obey them.
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Context (AO3)
SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY
Thomas Hobbes argued that without government ('the state of nature'), life would be 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.' Golding tests this theory experimentally: remove civilisation's structures and observe what happens. Ralph's failing rules confirm Hobbes's pessimism.
THE BRITISH PUBLIC SCHOOL
The boys are products of British public schools — institutions that instilled discipline, hierarchy, and the belief in moral superiority through rules and tradition. Golding, himself a schoolteacher, tests whether this institutional conditioning survives when the institution is removed. It does not.
Key Words
WOW — THE STATE OF EXCEPTION (Agamben)
Giorgio Agamben's concept of the state of exception — a condition where normal laws are suspended and sovereign power operates without legal constraint — describes the island precisely. The boys' democratic system (the conch, the assemblies, the rules) represents normal political order; Jack's seizure of power through violence represents the state of exception — a condition where rules are suspended and power operates through force alone. Agamben argues that the state of exception is not an aberration but is ALWAYS latent within the system — every legal order contains within it the possibility of its own suspension. Ralph's cry — 'The rules! You're breaking the rules!' — is the sound of someone watching the state of exception emerge from within the democratic order he trusted. Agamben would argue that the rules were always breakable — their authority was always a polite fiction that depended on continued consent. Jack reveals what was always true: law is backed not by justice but by the capacity for violence.
Key Words