Lord of the Flies: Episode 4 Recap

Despite this episode’s title of ‘Ralph’, the first shot shows Piggy (David McKenna) sitting quietly on the beach, his broken glasses clearly displayed. Ralph (Winston Sawyers) appears, picks up the conch and sits on the sand. He asks if they are the only ones left. There are only littluns, and Sam (Noah Flemyng) and Eric (Cassius Flemyng). Piggy suggests they should call an assembly to discuss Simon (Ike Talbut). Ralph, seemingly desperate to explain what happened, says that Simon ‘had no business crawling about like that at night’. Piggy insists it was murder. Cut to Ralph alone in the forest. Ralph hears a whisper and we move into a flashback with Ralph and his father hunting. Ralph falls while chasing a deer. In his house, his mother is ill in bed, and Ralph tells his father he’d like to stay with her the next day.

Back on the island, Ralph and Piggy are sleeping in the shelter. Piggy wakes him to warn that there’s something outside. There are whispers of ‘Piggy’, and suddenly two boys are on top of them, grappling. Sam and Eric try to help but they are also dragged to the floor. ‘We got them’ say Jack’s hunters, and they run off. Piggy is clutching the conch tightly and reaches out to feel for something with his hands. He says ‘I thought they came for the conch … they came for fire’. The hunters have stolen his glasses. As the camera switches to daytime, we see what appears to be the parachutist  – mistaken for the beast in Episode 3 – blown out to sea. Ralph blows the conch on the beach but most of the boys don’t arrive. Piggy says: ‘I voted for Ralph for chief because he’s the best of us’, and he wants to know what the chief is going to do in response to the theft. Ralph takes the conch reluctantly, and summarises the situation with resignation. Piggy declares he’s going to go and ask for the glasses back. Ralph thinks it’s a terrible idea but off they go.

Jack’s camp is filthy and chaotic and Ralph, Piggy, Sam and Eric are quickly surrounded by boys wielding spears. Roger (Thomas Connor) calls, ‘Who goes there?’ from his position high on a rock cliff. Ralph blows the conch to call an assembly. Jack (Lox Pratt) appears and tells Ralph to go back to his camp. Ralph says that they voted him for chief, but Jack interrupts and says ‘I didn’t… And they’ve changed their minds. That is democracy’. Ralph calls them ‘thieves and savages’ which causes Jack to attack him with the spear. They fight. From his kneeling position, Piggy spots the conch, and reaches it, just as Jack is savagely beating Ralph who is helpless on the ground. ‘You’re acting like a bunch of kids,’ Piggy exclaims, a line that comes directly from the book. Jack tells Roger to ‘stop the boring Piggy’, and changes his name to ‘Nickpig’ when Ralph reveals Piggy’s name. Roger hurls a huge rock at Piggy’s head, and the conch is smashed to pieces. Piggy is on the ground and Roger whoops. Sam and Eric are taken prisoner as Ralph manages to drag Piggy to safety. Jack looks directly at camera and shouts ‘I’m chief’.

Ralph and Piggy hide in the undergrowth – Ralph has some injuries, but Piggy is clearly in a grave situation. The camera shows the deep red blood from the wound, and he vomits. Piggy apologies to Ralph and they grasp each other’s hand. Ralph tries to support him across the island, but walking becomes impossible. Despite the bandage, blood continues to flow down Piggy’s back, although he still tries to tell Ralph his plan of building a boat. Ralph goes to fetch Piggy water and movingly, Piggy says ‘don’t leave me, Ralph’. In order to find his way, Ralph counts trees on his water hunt. This count becomes interspersed with dark images of violence from the other boys, and particularly creepy-looking trees. Simon is also standing in the forest, in his school uniform. As he fills coconuts with water, two hunters appear across the stream, and they chase him. He falls, and gets a nasty injury to his leg. As Piggy tries to drink, Ralph sees the viscous blood from his head wound. He constructs a shelter from the red rushes to protect Piggy, who tells him that if the others find them, Ralph should run. He refuses.

Piggy is feeling cold and Ralph puts his arm round him as they try to go to sleep. Ralph apologises for telling the others his name was Piggy. In a moment that brought this writer to tears, Piggy tells Ralph it’s all right: ‘you weren’t to know you would like me so much’. In the morning, we see Ralph digging, then he drags Piggy’s body. We don’t see him buried, but the camera lingers on the mound. There is a flashback to Ralph’s mother’s funeral and he meets Petty Officer Wilkins (Daniel Mays), who offers some words of comfort. Back to the present, and he wraps his leg wound in leaves. He approaches Sam and Eric and tells them from the bushes that Piggy is dead. They implore him to leave and won’t go with him because of Roger: ‘He’s sharpened a stick at both ends’.

Roger discovers Ralph is nearby and the terrifying chase begins. Ralph hides underwater as the boys start to gather. With his face painted, Jack is beginning to resemble some kind of ghoul. Ralph throws a rock at Jack and asks him ‘what do you want? My friends are dead.’ Jack seems near tears as he tells Ralph that he is the one who ruined everything. He calls for the rest of his tribe.  Ralph half runs/half limps towards the beach through an open cave. The camera shows the hunters behind him, in the water and on the sand. He hides in the bushes but Maurice (Cornelius Brandreth) calls for the boys to ‘form a comb’ to find him. They pass him, a mere metre away. Roger says they have to ‘smoke him out’ so his only refuge will be the beach. He takes Piggy’s spectacles from Jack to get started. Roger states, ‘Jack doesn’t want Ralph getting out alive’ and as the fire burns, comes up with a new refrain: ‘Smoke the beast, burn its flesh, sear its blood’. Roger has a smile on his face, but Jack’s ambivalent expression is much more difficult to read. Ralph sees Piggy – with mended glasses – through the smoke. It becomes thicker and denser, and Ralph begins to shout for Jack: ‘I’m here’. Recalling Episode 1, the camera lingers on some of the boys faces, one by one (including the now deceased Simon). As he emerges onto the beach, he sees a figure dressed in white and a small boat. The Naval Officer (Tom Goodman-Hill) asks if there are any grown-ups. Before Ralph can reply, the hunters arrive on the beach, much to the astonishment of the officer. He asks if anyone has been hurt in their war – ‘any dead bodies’, he asks, clearly joking. Ralph explains that there are two. He raises his voice: ‘who’s boss here?’ The camera pans to Jack, who says absolutely nothing, so Ralph says ‘I am.’ He leads Ralph away, and Roger drops his spear, and follows. As choral music plays, the boys queue to board the boat. Jack, who was unmoving at first, eventually joins. As we get further away from the children, we see the island on fire, and an orderly queue of boys, waiting their turn.