s are abandoned. In one scene, Jack and his boys raid Ralph’s small camp.“Ralph trotted down the pale beach and jumped on to the platform. The conch still glimmered by the chief’s seat. He gazed for a moment or two, then went back to Piggy. ‘They didn’t take the conch.’‘I know, they didn’t come for the conch...’” (Golding, 194). The boys instead come for Piggy’s glasses, the one thing that could create all important fire. They are concerned with the physical necessity of fire, not the abstract ideal of rules and order. The shell is no longer important to the boys because it is the agent of old social order. The boys are no longer part of that society, therefore, the symbols and rituals of that order mean nothing to them. They have become part of a different society. In contrast to Riley’s suggestion, the boys aren’t responding to an irrational urge for destruction, they are responding to the “rational” urge of society to find and place blame somewhere and in doing so, create a connection that will hold the group together. Both the emotional hatred of the scape goat and the physical attempt to expel it are something shared by all members of the society. “If a movement must have its Rome, it must also have its devil...the symbol of a common enemy...Men who can unite on nothing else can unite the basis of a foe shared by all.”(Burke, 96). Though the boys are all different ages, in different grades, and have different life experiences, they can all understand hatred and they can all chase the perceived reason for their troubles. Further evidence of this is found in Girard’s writing,“Men feel powerless when confronted with the eclipse of culture; they are disconcerted by the immensity of the disaster but never look into the natural causes...Those who make up the crowd are always potential persecutors, for they dream of...
