Ralph is a boy of twelve years and few months, who had not yet lost his innocence after crash landing on the island. By the end of Lord of the Flies, Ralph cries for the end of innocence.
Lord of the Flies Quotes about Loss of Innocence
Describing Ralph: "He was old enough, twelve years and a few months, to have lost the prominent tummy of childhood; and not yet old enough for adolescence to have made him awkward." (page 5).
"there was a mildness about his mouth and eyes that proclaimed no devil." (page 5).
Piggy tries to use old rules his Aunt set for him in the newly civilization deprived island: "'I didn't expect nothing. My auntie-'. 'Sucks to your auntie!'" (page 8).
Piggy says "'I can't swim. 1 wasn't allowed." (page 8).
Piggy says 'I used to live with my auntie. She kept a sweet-shop. 1 used to get ever so many sweets. As many as 1 liked. When'll your dad rescue us?' (page 8).
Ralph is not a man, but an innocent golden child: "'There's no man with a trumpet. Only me.'" (page 16).
"What he saw of the fair-haired boy with the creamy shell on his knees did not seem to satisfy him. He turned quickly, his black cloak circling." (page 16).
When checking to see if the island is really an island, Jack cannot bring himself to kill the pig: "The three boys rushed forward and Jack drew his knife again with a flourish. He raised his arm in the air. There came a pause, a hiatus, the pig continued to scream and the creepers to jerk, and the blade continued to flash at the end of a bony arm. The pause was only long enough for them to understand what an enormity the downward stroke would be. Then the piglet tore loose from the creepers and scurried into the undergrowth. They were left looking at each other and the place of terror. Jack's face was white under the freckles. He noticed that he still held the knife aloft and brought his arm down replacing the blade in the sheath. Then they all three laughed ashamedly and began to climb back to the track. " (page 28).
"'This is our island. It's a good island. Until the grown-ups come to fetch us we'll have fun.'" (page 33).
"Startled, Ralph realized that the boys were falling still and silent, feeling the beginnings of awe at the power set free below them. The knowledge and the awe made him savage." (page 44) /
They refer to the island as a good island, so long as the snake is not real: 'As if it wasn't a good island.' (page 53). ''As if,' said Simon, 'the beastie, the beastie or the snakething, was real." (page 53).
"They accepted the pleasures of morning, the bright sun, the whelming sea and sweet air, as a time when play was good and life so full that hope was not necessary and therefore forgotten." (page 60).
"He stopped, facing the strip; and remembering that first enthusiastic exploration as though it were part of a brighter childhood, he smiled jeeringly." (page 81).
"With the memory of his sometime clean self as a standard, Ralph looked them over. They were dirty, not with the spectacular dirt of boys who had fallen into mud or been brought down hard on a rainy day. Not one of them was an obvious subject for a shower, and yet-hair, much too long, tangled here and there, knotted round a dead leaf or a twig; faces cleaned fairly well by the process of eating and sweating but marked in the less accessible angles with a kind of shadow; clothes, worn away, stiff like his own with sweat, put on, not for decorum or comfort but out of custom; the skin of the body, scurfy with brine- " (page 120).
"This was the divider, the barrier. On the other side of the island, swathed at midday with mirage, defended by the shield of the quiet lagoon, one might dream of rescue; but here, faced by the brute obtuseness of the ocean, the miles of division, one was clamped down, one was helpless, one was condemned, one was- " (page 121).
"Each of them wore the remains of a black cap and ages ago they had stood in two demure rows and their voices had been the song of angels." (page 146).
"There was something good about a fire. Something overwhelmingly good. " (page 180).
"'You're a beast and a swine and a bloody, bloody thief!' He charged." (page 200).
"the anonymous devils' faces swarmed across the neck." (page 202).
"And in the middle of them, with filthy body, matted hair, and unwiped nose, Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy. " (page 225).