In the middle of a war, a transport plane carrying a group of English boys from Britain was shot down over the ocean and it crashed in thick jungle on a deserted island. Scattered by the wreck, the surviving boys lost each other and cannot find the pilot. The story starts with Ralph who meets with a chubby boy named Piggy. Ralph and Piggy look around the beach, wondering what has become of the other boys from the plane. They discover a large cream colored conch shell, which Piggy realizes could be used as a kind of fake trumpet. He convinces Ralph to blow through the shell to find the other boys. The boys were summoned by the blast of sound from the shell and they staggered onto the beach. The oldest among them are around twelve and the youngest are around six. Then a choir led by Jack shows up and all the assembled boys decide to elect a leader or Chief. Ralph is elected chief but with serious opposition from Jack and in order to satisfy Jack, Ralph appoints Jack and his choirboys as the hunters of the "tribe." He then takes Simon, and Jack to explore the island. They find a mountain and explored the land and they return to the beach.

Chapter 2

Ralph returns and tells everyone that the island has no adults that all have to learn to live together. They also agreed on meetings whenever the couch is blown and that, at meetings, the conch shell would be used to determine who has the right to speak. The boy holds the conch shell will speak, and the others will listen silently until they receive the shell in their turn. Even Jack agrees with this idea. Then one of the little kids claims that he saw a "beastie" on the island, which puts fear and scares everyone. Ralph tells the group to build a large signal fire on top of the mountain on the island so that any passing ships might see the fire and know that someone is on the island. Piggy tries to reason with the group about survival but they all ignored him.

Chapter 3

Jack follows and tries to kill a pig but he fails. He returns and finds that Ralph is busy with building the hut with Simon. Ralph is annoyed that boys are unwilling to work on the huts and Jack promises Ralph that they will have better luck with the pig next time. Ralph implies that Jack and the hunters are using their hunting duties as an excuse to avoid the real work. Jack responds to Ralph's complaints by commenting that the boys want meat. Jack and Ralph continue to bicker and grow increasingly hostile toward each other. Simon goes off by himself and finds a place where he can peacefully stay.

Chapter 4

The little kids now called "Littluns" plays all day long and at night has frightful experiences. Ralph is worried about this. The large amounts of fruit that they eat cause them to be sick in the stomach and get diarrhea. Roger and Maurice torture little kids by destroying their sand castles. Jack who is obsessed with catching a pig goes off with his hunters to get a pig. While they were gone, Piggy and Ralph spots a ships that passes by and finds that while the boys were out for the hunt, the fire on the mountain went out ending with the ship passing by without their rescue. Ralph is angry but the boys brought the pig back from the hunt and roasted it and gave it to everyone. Jack is now resenting Ralph and his leadership.

Chapter 5

Ralph goes to the beach and calls a meeting in order to bring the boys into line. Ralph tells them about their failure in duty and that they should do their duty. Ralph also tries to tell the young boys that there is no beast and that they should not be afraid but it failed. The little ones say that the beast hides at day and at night come out of the ocean to haunt the kids and that these kids are in danger. Suddenly, Jack proclaims that if there is a beast then he and his hunters will hunt it down and kill it. Then the group breaks away while Ralph tells Piggy and Simon that he might cease this leadership but they tell Ralph that he need to be leader or Jack might go on a rampage.

Chapter 6

In the darkness, military planes fight in the air above the island but the boys were sleeping so they miss it and they also miss when a parachute lands with a dead person onto the island. When Sam and Eric woke up, in the flickering firelight, they see the twisted form of the dead parachutist and mistake the shadowy image for the figure of the dreaded beast. They rush back to the camp, wake Ralph, and tell him what they have seen. Ralph immediately calls for a meeting, at which the twins reiterate their claim that a monster assaulted them. They look for the monster and when they get to the place where they did not explore the island, the boys start to play around so Ralph gets angry with them.

Chapter 7

As the boys eat, Ralph look at the sea without hope but Simon reassures him that he will get home safe. The boys go boar hunting as they chase the beast and Ralph gets excited when he get a "snot" at the boar's snout with his spear. The group frenzied with the hunt, reenacts the hunt with a boy named Robert as the pig and he gets almost killed before the boys realize what they are doing. Ralph sends Simon back to Piggy to tell him that the group will be back after dark. The group climbs to the mountain and Jack goes to the summit while Ralph and Roger wait at the mountain. Jack tells Ralph that he saw the beast and Ralph also checks it out and sees a beast too so they go to warn the group.

Chapter 8

The next morning, they call a meeting and Jack tells everyone that there is really a beast. He also goes to tell everyone that Ralph is a coward and a scared loser and he tries to vote him out of power and be the new chief but no one cares to remove Ralph. Then Jack goes off with his own followers. The boys wanted the fire back so Piggy suggests building a fire on the beach and they build one. At night, many boys go off to join Jack and Piggy tells Ralph that it is good that the deserters left. Then Jack declares himself the chief of his tribe and they hunt a pig and impale its head on a stick. Then they raid Ralph's tribe and steals fire while Jack invites them to come to his tribe and eat the feast and join them. Meanwhile, Simon sees the head on the stick and feels as it is talking to him so he faints.

Chapter 9

Simon then comes upon the dead body of the parachutist and he sees how the boys got mistaken about the beast so he takes the parachute to the feast by jack to tell them about it. At the feast, the boys eat and have fun and Jack invites Ralph's followers to join his tribe and many do even though Ralph tries to stop them. Ralph also tells them that in the storm, where will his tribe stay and jack ignore him. As the boys are dancing and reenacting the pig hunt, Simon comes to the party with the parachute but the boys did not see him but sees his shadow and thinks he is the beast and kills him. Then the wind blows the parachutist's body unto the beach and they run off scared.

Chapter 10

The next day, Ralph is feeling guilty over the death of Simon while Piggy claims it as a small accident. Many of Ralph's followers joined Jack's tribe and now Ralph and Piggy are almost alone. Jack made his base at Castle Rock and he is the true ruler. He commands his tribe to be on the guard against the beast since it can assume anyone's shape (they believe Simon is the Beast) and since it is not truly dead. He also tells roger and Maurice to go to Ralph's camp and steal the fire. Jack's hunters steal the fire and Piggy glasses and beats Ralph and his tribe.

Chapter 11

The boys at Ralph's tribe try to light the fire but fails. So they go to Jack's tribe where the encounter Jack coming back from the hunt with a pig. Jack tells Ralph to leave but Ralph tries to reason with him but ends in failure. They fight. Jack them orders the twins Sam and Eric to be ties up, leading Ralph into rage causing another fight. Piggy tried to reason with them but they continued fighting. Roger pushed a boulder at them and Ralph doges them but it breaks the couch and knocks Piggy off the mountainside into the rocks (he dies). Ralph runs into the jungle as Jack and others in the tribe attacks him. Sam and Eric started to get tortured as they were forced to join Jack and his tribe.

Chapter 12

Ralph hides in the jungle and then he goes back to jack's camp. The twins, who were the guards, see Ralph and gives him food but doesn't join up with him. They tell him that Jack is going to send the whole tribe after him tomorrow. Ralph hides in a jungle thicket. The boys try to get through but the thicket was too dense so jack sets it on fire. Ralph come out and fights his way past jack and his hunters. He runs and at last collapses on the beach after frantically trying to find a hiding place. Ralph look up and sees a navy officer standing there. The officer tells him that he saw the smoke and came to check the island out. Them Jack and his boys arrive and Ralph tells the officer everything that had happened and he was amazed how civilized boys turned into nothing more than barbaric savages. They get saved.

The fourth chapter, “Painted Faces and Long Hair,” often notes the ragged appearances of the boys, especially the growth of their hair and the paint they apply to their countenances, drawing attention to their encroaching savagery and the sluggish shedding of their humanity. Piggy seems to cling so much more desperately to order and civilization than his peers—with his useless suggestions for sundials and other foolish ideas—because of his reliance on modern life and its stability due to his asthma and myopia. His appearance reflects his inherent desire to remain civilized as he “was the only boy whose hair never seemed to grow,” (Golding 63), while the others remain “shock-headed” (Golding 63), demonstrating how they have slowly allowed their appearances to deteriorate, mimicking the way they gradually slip away from civility and into chaos. Slowly the boys abandon clothing as well when it proves too difficult to maintain, reflecting the conflict surrounding them: “Maurice’s trousers gave way with a sigh and he abandoned them as a wreck,” (Golding 65). Yet they still remain in control; though no longer governed by any authority, save themselves, the boys forgo causing intentional damage to one another, aiming instead to miss as the “invisible yet strong, taboo of old life,” (Golding 61) still hovers over them: “In his other life, Maurice had received chastisement for filling a younger eye with sand. Now though there was no parent to let fall a heavy hand, Maurice still felt the unease of wrongdoing,” (Golding 59).

 Jack, however, discovers a means to avoid that unnerving feeling of guilt by smearing his face with clay: “He looked in astonishment, no longer at himself but at an awesome stranger,” (Golding 63). By smothering his humanity beneath mounds of unnatural color, he reverts to a seemingly natural state of bestiality, providing him with a fear-inspired power over the other boys. His unnatural innovation mirrors the more effective and “humane” methods of ending human life, cloaking the morally wrong act by assuming a false identity, apparently cloaking and protecting the soul from harm.

But Jack does not wield true power, instead he brandishes a means of escaping the ever-present fear with his hunting and dancing. Fear governs the boys; fear of death, fear of the island, and fear of themselves. In Chapter 6, “Beast from Air,” a demonstration of the efficient devastation of mankind falls to the island in the form of a dead soldier: “There was a sudden bright explosion and a corkscrew trail across the sky […and] a figure dropping swiftly beneath a dangling parachute. A figure that hung with dangling limbs,” (Golding 96). Failing to realize its true form and thinking it a dangerous beast, the boys flee the mountain where it has landed, forsaking the fire—the smothering of hope by an unrecognizable horror: the savagery of mankind. The boys stranded on the island have escaped it, freed from the constraints of modern life, as well as the banal atrocities committed on a regular basis. Still young and naïve, they have not begun to fan the smoldering embers of their sadistic natures to life to develop methods of mass annihilation capable of sating these appetites in a socially acceptable manner. Abandoned by a world filled with anger and violence, they have not yet fallen back into the regime of their old lives. Like Piggy, the parachutist lacked enough protection to survive within the savagery of his world, so he succumbed, serving as a warning to the boys. Instead, they leave offerings to the victim of chaos and inhumanity in an attempt to appease it, practically worshipping the horrors creeping up on them: “‘this head is for the beast. It’s a gift,” (Golding 140). Only in the final chapter do the boys realize the state of the world and what they have become, bemoaning the destruction of mankind.

In chapter 12, “Cry of the Hunters,” Ralph remains the only sentient being on the island, as the choirboys have become savage hunters, and Piggy and Simon have been killed. When the boys first arrived on the island, the only group to have known each other prior to the crash consisted of Jack, Roger, and the rest of the choir. Throughout the book, they follow Jack obediently like a pack of dogs, especially after he breaks from Ralph and Piggy to go off on his own: “Jack was standing before a small group of boys […] each of them wore the remains of a black cap,” (Golding 136). The boys, who “ages ago…had stood in two demure rows and their voices had been the song of angels,” (Golding 136) no longer sing the praises of the universe, but now cry out bloody chants in hoarse voices “‘kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!’” (Golding 155), emphasizing their loss of innocence. The hunters submit to another cry when they and Ralph succumb to tears upon the realization of the atrocities they have committed, weeping for the death of Piggy and bemoaning the loss of innocence. Moreover, the navy officer who has come to rescue them merely looks away “allowing his eyes to rest on the trim cruiser in the distance,” (Golding 208). A man expected to possess more knowledge and maturity, not to mention more civility than a group of naked and dirty boys, and almost certainly guilty of the deaths of many a human being, redirects his gaze to the means of destruction as they grieve for their humanity.

Stranded upon a secluded island, freed from the atrocities of the rest of the world, the boys fail to live in peace due to their intrinsic lust for power and pleasure.  Only by being brought to heel by a higher authority do the boys recall their civility, though ironically, the higher power possesses no more than they themselves, serving only to drag the boys back into a world from which no escape is possible.

Is this your back that is bent
This back that breaks under the weight of humiliation
This back trembling with red scars
And saying yes to the whip under the midday sun
But a grave voice answers me
Impetuous son, that tree young and strong
That tree there
In splendid loneliness amidst white and faded flowers
That is Africa your Africa
That grows again patiently obstinately
And its fruit gradually acquire
The bitter taste of liberty

- David Diop, 'Africa'2

Chinua Achebe is a post-colonial Nigerian writer who almost all his life has been struggling to bring back to his own nation the sense of dignity which had been lost in the process of colonisation and gaining of independence. The purpose of this study is to present Achebe's ways of contradicting the long lasting idea of wild, uncivilised Africa. However, one should pay attention to the fact that Achebe does not put blame for what had happened to Nigeria on the white man only. He admits that what has been taking place in his country after the end of colonialism to the present day is the pure example of neo-colonialism.

The poem quoted at the beginning of my thesis refers to complex history of African path to the twice-lost freedom. First, this freedom was taken away by ignorant Westerners, who came to Africa and claimed it as their own. And it was taken away for the second time by African leaders who, under the disguise of the saviors, gave the false liberty a 'bitter taste.'

Although Achebe has written much more literature than is analyzed here, I have chosen four, probably most important novels.Things Fall Apart (1994),Arrow of God(1974) and No Longer at Ease(1994) create an African trilogy. Their main purpose is to display step by step the impact that the advent of the white man had on the Nigerian nation. Achebe introduces the Igbo3 people since he is the descendant of their tradition. He is on the crossroads of cultures because his parents were converted Christians but the rest of his family remained faithful to the tribal Igbo tradition. In effect he was given the possibility of learning both the religion of the colonizers and the culture of his ancestors. That is why the deep insight into two different and antagonistic worlds enabled Achebe to objectively display the past culture of the Igbos and the relationship between his nation and the Europeans. He is very critical about the white man's attitude towards Africans.

Equality is the one thing which Europeans are conspicuously incapable of extending to others, especially Africans. But anyone who is in any doubt about the meaning of partnership in that context need only be reminded that a British governor of Rhodesia defined the partnership between black and white as the partnership between the horse and its rider (...) For centuries Europe has ruled out the possibility of a dialogue. You may talk to a horse but you don't wait for a reply! (HI,23)

Since he does not expect the white man to clarify the true vision of past Africa, and, moreover, he is not willing to give the white man such a right, Achebe feels inclined to show to his people that they had a civilized and rich past. Things Fall Apart is the novel which describes the life of the Igbos before the coming of the colonizers. It introduces the complex religion and political systems that operate within the tribe. The social and moral values seem very often controversial, but at the same time they show the loyalty and faithfulnes of the Igbos towards the systems they had constructed themselves.

Arrow of Godis the continuation of the previous novel since it reflects the situation of the Igbo people right after the meeting with Europeans and the dangers they faced when accepting the new religion.No Longer at Ease, the last novel from the trilogy, introduces to the reader the situation the young generation of Nigerians is put into right after the gaining of the independence. There is the atmosphere of hopelessness and being lost in the disarray of old values and the new ideas about modernity with its corruption and ignorance. The main characters of these three novels fail because of the lack of flexibility in their personalities. However,the novels themselves do not carry negative pictures of these characters because they failed. The meaning of those novels is rather that the three men were left for themselves , they were abandoned by their kinsmen. And a single person, even if he or she has got the right intentions, cannot possibly realize them by him- or herself.

Anthills of the Savannah is the fourth novel analyzed in this study and, at the same time the latest one written by Achebe. It is different from the three mentioned above in the way that it shows the change of Achebe's attitude towards the situation of Nigeria. In this novel Achebe does not accuse colonialists for the devastated condition of his country any more. He makes it clear that these are Africans themselves that are responsible for the actual state of things in Nigeria. He proposes definite solutions for saving Nigeria from the impotent leaders. He claims that writers should take a strong stand and not hesitate to criticize the hopeless governments that reside over Nigeria.

In this analysis I will try to combine all those ideas presented by Achebe in his novels and divide them into the three most crucial themes: female position, the Igbo art, religion and language, and politics. They all constitute Nigeria as the country of 'peoples that did not hear of culture for the first time from Europeans; that their societies were not mindless but frequently had a philosophy of great depth and value and beauty, that they had poetry and, above all, they had dignity. (HI,25)

2 The poem comes from Anthiils of the Savannah and it begins the last chapter of this novel.

3 The name Igbo appears in this thesis written in two different ways. Achebe himself names his native clan Ibo, and in this form it appears in his novels. Critics, such as Ogbaa, prefer using the term 'Igbo'. Both forms are correct.

Visual differences made acceptance even less accessible. To have an extra finger or toe must have been looked on as being very odd in the 1800's because it was uncommon. People like Barnum traveled the world in search of human anomalies for his circus acts. Even today seeing a person with an extra digit is unusual but it should not characterize the person as being strange.

What is enjoyable about the book is that it can be considered to be an extension of what might happen if there was a nuclear catastrophe and how life might change. One sees how life gets simpler and that older dwellings were broken down and used to create homes that were more like community centers. This might very well be the scenario given the lack of proper building materials should an actual nuclear war occur.

The reader learns about how puritan David's grandfather and father are and how his uncle would have him promise not to talk about the ability to communicate without talking. We learned about his friend's mother who also asked him to promise not to talk about Sophie's "mutated" feet. One gets the message that the boy is going to be more at odds with the traditional way of thinking that he inherited because of his acceptance of "mutated" people and how he can communicate differently with them.

Is David like any other normal boy wanting to know what the real difference is between being with someone who has an extra toe and who doesn't? As his experiences with his world widen, he meets other humans like one from the Fringes who looked like his dad. But this person had long spindly legs, which was more visible than just seeing an extra toe. One wonders what David must think about his dad getting pale when spotting his double.

Would this have been a twin his who was separated from him when humans mutated and was then forced to live on the outskirts of their civilization? This is a question that one can ask when thinking about how people migrated in the story after a nuclear holocaust and one can only imagine that David knew very little about this. At the same time given the way he submits to his father's ridicule, we can only guess that David is not going to suggest any relationship his family might have with "mutant" human who knew his father's name.

All David knew was through his family; about the stories they passed down that people had somehow mutated and lived on the other bank. The bank symbolized then the margin of accepted human society in the future. As the story progresses the reader finds out about how David lives and how his world became a centre that would be used to combat the invasive forces of the people from the fringes.