Source : The Australian Pocket Oxford Dictionary (fourth Edition)
“What are we? Humans? Or animals or savages?”
Piggy says this to Ralph during one of their assemblies. Piggy is consistently in support of keeping a signal fire going, and concentrating on their rescue. He sees the boys’ potential for violence long before the others. Here, he pleads with his listeners to remember their civilization back home, while articulating a central question of the novel.
“Jack stood up as he said this, the bloodied knife in his hand. The two boys faced each other. There was the brilliant world of hunting, tactics, fierce exhilaration, skill; and there was the world of longing and baffled commonsense.”
Throughout the novel Golding suggests that the path to civilization is more difficult and less likely than the path to tyranny. Here, Jack and Ralph fight. Jack is described in terms of his adroitness, Ralph in terms of his shortcomings, and the ideals he represents are presented as less tangible or attractive.
''What's that?'' Ralph had stopped smiling and was pointing at the lagoon. Something creamy lay among the ferny weeds ''A stone'' ''No. A shell ''. Suddenly Piggy was a-bubble with decorous excitement. S'right. It's shell! I seen one like that before. On someone's back wall. A conch he called it. He used to blow it and then his mum would come. "
At the beginning of the novel, Ralph and Piggy discover the conch shell on the beach.
They decide to use it to call other boys after the crash separates them "we can use this to call others.
After the boys assemble, the conch takes a symbolic meaning; becoming identified with "democracy and free speech'' .
The boy who holds the conch has the authority to speak, and has democratic security.