In Chapter 4 of the novel Lord of the Flies, Golding writes, "Piggy stood behind him, islanded in a sea of meaningless color, while Ralph knelt and...

In Chapter 4, Jack slaps Piggy's glasses off of his face and ends up breaking one of the lenses. Ralph calls out Jack by saying, "That was a dirty trick" (Golding 102). After the boys collect wood to begin rebuilding another signal fire, Ralph goes over to Piggy and takes his glasses. As Ralph attempts to light the fire, Golding writes, "Piggy stood behind him, islanded in a sea of meaningless color,...

In Chapter 4, Jack slaps Piggy's glasses off of his face and ends up breaking one of the lenses. Ralph calls out Jack by saying, "That was a dirty trick" (Golding 102). After the boys collect wood to begin rebuilding another signal fire, Ralph goes over to Piggy and takes his glasses. As Ralph attempts to light the fire, Golding writes, "Piggy stood behind him, islanded in a sea of meaningless color, while Ralph knelt and focused the glossy spot" (Golding 103). Throughout the novel, the ocean symbolizes the barrier between the boys on the island and the civilized world. The ocean alludes to how civility gradually gives way to primitive savagery on the abandoned island. Much like how the waves crash against the shore and erode the landscape, the vast ocean represents the passage of time which decays the boys' moral characters on the island. However, Piggy's character represents civilization and morality. When Golding writes that Piggy stood "islanded in a sea of meaningless color," he was representing how Piggy's civility contrasts with the boys' immorality on the island. The sea's "meaningless color" alludes to the symbolic nature of the vast ocean, which separates the boys from civilization. On the island, society's rules and regulations are lost, making them essentially "meaningless."