In the last paragraph, Golding writes "...Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of men’s hearts..." Discuss how this relates to the events that happened in the book.
I think what Golding meant by writing, "Ralph wept for the end of innocence,the darkness of men's hearts...", was that the schoolboys had witnessed so much on the island and had to grow up faster than other boys do. As a kid, parents are always laughing about the silly things kids say, because in all honesty, they aren't saying anything harmless.(Even when they are mad at another kid they usually say something like, "You can't use my markers anymore." That is not very harmful. No one is bleeding or dead, so after one comment the little "fight" pretty much ends.) Unfortunately, as a kid grows up, the innocent comments are gone, and replaced with hateful words and actions. The fight at work ends with comments about the other's mother or spouse and the F bomb is thrown around like candy at a parade. Hate can build up until a crime occurs and let's just say that someone is not coming down for breakfast. (They're dead.) How many times has there been an article in the newspaper about someone killing a friend for drugs or for a girl? Most of the time the article reports that the killer remembers having a weapon but, doesn't intend to use it. Either way there is someone dead.
This all relates to Ralph because of the progression of events in the book. At the beginning, all of the schoolboys are practically yelling, "Woah, no parents or teachers;Let's Party!!" They become too fixed on the idea of fun to grasp that they are alone on an island and may never be rescued. At this point in the book the boys are all still innocent. But, as the book progresses, the boys seem a little darker. The first sign of darkness comes when Jack decides to have his own society because he feels betrayed. He wants to hunt and have feasts, while the other boys starve. This is only the first step that takes Jack from an innocent choirboy to a cold-blooded killer. Next, Jack recruits boys to reanact his hunting by attacking one of the other boys for fun. He enjoys seeing the boy playing the "sow" run away scared. After that he went even further by killing Simon as he ran out of the woods to tell them about the body he found. Simon's body was just washed out to sea and never found. There was no real reason for the killing. Some say that it was Simon's fault for scaring them but, since when do you kill someone that is running toward you; especially when you know that person. If one murder wasn't bad enough, Jack then purposely kills Piggy by hitting him with a large boulder and lets him fall down onto rocks. Even if you believe the first time was an accident, the second time was obviously not. He even goes further by going on a "hunt" for Ralph with the objective to kill him. They sure must want him dead because he searches from one side of the island to the next, making sure that they find him.
Jack at the beginning Jack at the end
*respectful *Jealous
*good leader * leads boys to murder
*good helper *Selfish
*Murder 1 (Simon)
*Murder 2 (Piggy)
*Attempted Murder (Ralph)
Jack's actions make everyone else darker too. Ralph has to worry about death towards the end of the book because all his friends are being murdered. Ralph was always serious but, wasn't dark. Ralph cries at the end of the book because when looking back at all of the other events that happened on the island, he realized that all of the boys have grown cold. He now realizes that innocence doesn't last forever, which as a kid can be a hard thing to grasp.
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