lord of the flies passage?
hello! I’m hoping someone can help me understand a passage from lord f the flies. I don’t need an analysis or anything, just a literal meaning of what’s going on. I just need a summary because I’m a little confused about what’s going on!!
"Ralph shuddered. The lagoon had protected them from the Pacific: and for some reason, only Jack had gone right down to the water on the other side. Now he saw the landman’s view of the swell and it seemed like the breathing off some stupendous creature. Slowly the waters sank among the rocks, revealing pink tables of granite, strange growth of coral, polyp and weed. Down, down, the waters went, whispering like the wind among the heads of the forest. There was one flat rock there, spread like a table, and the waters sucking down on the four weedy sides made them seem like cliffs. Then the sleeping levianthan breathed out, the waters rose, the weed streamed, and the water boiled over the table rock with a roar. There was no sense of the passage of waves; only this minute-long fall and rise and fall."
that’s from ch. 6. particularly the last 3 sentences confuse me.
thanks!
"nothing important to the story"
haha yeah, that’s what I thought. I have to write an essay over this single passage though. I can pick out personification and how basically the environment is "alive". but I don’t know… I just need to understand the literal meaning a little better before I can go further with my own analysis :]
August 5th, 2009 at 3:27 am
the first part of the paragraph is talking about how he is watching the water of the lagoon recede to get ready for a wave. he can see the things that are usually underwater etc. the last three sentences talks about what happens when the waves come in. its covering everything that was uncovered during the receding waters, rather violently.
simply put ralph is watching the tide
August 5th, 2009 at 3:27 am
It’s pretty much just a description of the water’s tide and the things such as seaweed and coral surrounding it; nothing really important to the story. What might have been confusing was the author using metaphors to compare the rocks with flat tops to tables and described the water as sounding like winds in a forest.
August 5th, 2009 at 3:27 am
It is talking about heavy waves on a rocking windy side of an island.
the rock are covered with sea weed. The Writer is trying to let you see the sea as a beast big and powerful.