I’m reading Lord of the Flies with one of the high school students I’m tutoring.
I read this book quite a while ago, when I was in high school. I have a fairly clear memory of the pilot of the crashed plane having survived for a while. Specifically, I remember the image of the pilot lying under a mosquito net, delirious. I think it was mentioned that when the pilot breathed out, the netting billowed, making it look alive itself.
Well, I remember this fairly clearly. But upon re-reading, there does not seem to be any such thing in the text!
When I met my student after reading half the book, I even asked him: “Didn’t the pilot survive for a while?” He said that didn’t happen. This is a good student, and we’ve had good conversations about the novel, and he has independently brought up details from his reading while we were talking about it, so I don’t think his not remembering was just because he hadn’t read it.
But… did I somehow accidentally skim over all mention of the pilot?!
I know that later another pilot parachutes onto the island and his dead body is mistaken for the Beast. That’s different, it is not what I am remembering.
The edition my student and I are reading is the one with the very cover pictured at the top of the wikipedia article on the book. If the pilot is indeed mentioned in that book, could you just give me some page numbers o something?
I only remember one pilot, the one that you recall being mistaken for the Beast because he had parachuted into a tree and was killed, but the movement of the tree due to the wind caused the parachute harness to jerk him around like a puppet, making him seem alive.
That’s a run-on sentence.
But I read the book and only remeber one pilot, the one that…
All right, I pulled out my book. The pilot falls from the sky and is already dead or dies during his fall. The twins Samneric watching the fire see the dead pilot (chapter 6). Jack climbs the mountain, sees the dead pilot, returns to get Ralph, and they both climb up the mountain, see the dead pilot, and run away scared (chapter 7 - this all happens at night).
You must be thinking of this part in Chapter 9: Simon also climbs the mountain and finds the dead pilot. The description: “Simon saw a humped thing suddenly sit up on the top and look down at him. He hid his face, and toiled on. The flies had found the figure too. The life-like movement would scare them off for a moment so that they made a dark cloud around the head. Then as the blue material of the parachute collapsed the corpulent figure would bow forward, sighing, and the flies settle once more.” Simon runs back to the hunter camp to tell them of this, and the hunters, in a frenzy, kill him.
I just re-read it a few months ago and I don’t remember anything about a temporarily surviving pilot. My copy of the book is this edition. (That’s not my picture, I just searched for a photo of the same edition I have.)
No, as I said, I am aware of that part as well. What I am remembering is a seperate episode, about a different character. To my recollection, near the beginning of the book, the pilot of the boys’ plane is alive but incoherent, and the boys put a mosquito net over him. Later he dies.
I asked my wife about this. I said “Do you remember the pilot surviving?” And her response was “Yeah, and there was the mosquito net, right?” So I know I’m not crazy. But we may both be remembering a different book or something.
Update: Apparently, in the 1990 film, the pilot of the boys’ plane does survive. But I never saw that movie! (My wife did, though. Don’t know if there’s anything about a “mosquito net” in the film.)
Due to moving through a rapid succession of schools during my jr/senoir high school yrs, I got to do book reports on LOTF 4 separate times (got kind of good at it)…
The only mention of the pilot is the one with the parachute jerking the dead body upright in the wind…
Regards
FML