What are the descriptions of each important place on the island in Lord of the Flies by William Golding.

There are four main locations where important events take place in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.  The meeting place, referred to by Golding as “the palm terrace,” represents the boys’ attempts to form a civilized society, since this is where they initially gather and where they hold their meetings.  It is “roughly a triangle; but irregular and sketchy, like everything they made.”  Located on a sandy, grassy ledge, it faces the lagoon, near...

There are four main locations where important events take place in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.  The meeting place, referred to by Golding as “the palm terrace,” represents the boys’ attempts to form a civilized society, since this is where they initially gather and where they hold their meetings.  It is “roughly a triangle; but irregular and sketchy, like everything they made.”  Located on a sandy, grassy ledge, it faces the lagoon, near the bathing pool. Past storms have toppled palm trees, which the boys use to sit on. The chief’s log sits nearest the edge, so that Ralph faces the reality of the jungle during meetings, and the boys face the immense antagonist, the ocean.

The next important spot is the mountain top.  It is a place that always seems to give the boys a dose of reality, from the first time Ralph and Jack climb it and discover that they’re on an island, to the time Piggy scolds them for acting “Like a pack of kids!” when they burn down part of the island and a littlun goes missing, to their failed signal fire and the first real argument between their leaders. The mountain rises out of the jungle in roughly the middle of the boat-shaped island.  The back side of it angles down sharply into jungle.  The front side is rocky, which the boys use to climb up.  On top there is one area that is rather flat, on which they build their signal fire. The mountain, like the rocky ledge on the beach, is made of pink-toned granite. It is very beautiful, but also looms over the boys as though mocking their attempts at rescue.

Less seen but equally important is Simon’s hiding place in the jungle.  He goes there to escape the other boys when he feels overwhelmed by their mocking or all the arguing and dissension.  In chapter three we get a detailed description of it.  “[T]he creepers had woven a great mat that hung at the side of an open space in the jungle; for here a patch of rock came close to the surface…The whole space was walled with dark aromatic bushes.” The fact that Simon goes here sometimes at night shows his deep intuition that it isn’t the jungle they should fear, but each other. It is from within this little nook that Simon witnesses Jack and his hunters savagely murder the mother pig, hack off her head, and put it on a stick as a sacrifice to the beast, resulting in Simon's famous interview with the Lord of the Flies in chapter 8.

A final place of importance in the novel is Castle Rock. The boys first discover it while searching the island for the beast. Jack describes it as “’The tail-end part, where the rocks are all piled up…The rocks make sort of a bridge.  There’s only one way up.’” It is located on the very tip of the island, a 15-foot rock ledge that sticks out into the ocean. On one side is the calm lagoon; on the other is the violent Pacific Ocean, crashing into the rocks below.  Such a contrast is perhaps symbolic of the good and evil we see in the boys themselves.  This outcropping becomes the convenient location for Jack’s tribe, since it is easy to defend.  It’s where Piggy dies when Roger levers a rock down onto him, and it's the place where the murderous hunt for Ralph begins.  This “castle,” then, represents the lair for the evil inside the boys, which savagely spills out during their time on the island.