In Chapter 10, Golding is bitterly
ironic:
Memory
of the dance that none of them had attended shook all four boys
convulsively.
At first, Ralph
openly admits that they murdered Simon. He does not deny the truth, and his guilt
overwhelms him. He keeps asking Piggy if he saw what was done to Simon, what they all
had done to Simon. But Piggy will not let him confront this truth. Piggy tells
him
"That's
right. We was on the outside. We never done nothing, we never seen
nothing."
When the twins
arrive on the scene, they claim that they left early. At that point, the boys stop
speaking and the memory of Simon's murder overtakes
them.
But Ralph was there, and he remembers that Simon
"said something about a dead man." And he somehow remembers the "ungainly figure on a
parachute." So, Ralph does know the truth of the beast, that it is a dead man on a
parachute. Not only has Ralph participated in the murder of Simon, but he has also
participated in the fear-mongering that has engulfed the entire island. He let himself
believe that there was a beast when he now knows what he really saw come from the sky
was a parachutist and what Simon was trying to tell them about the "dead man on the
hill."
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