“You can’t study the darkness by flooding it with light.”
Edward Abbey
Abbey’s quote is true from both the scientific point of view and from a symbolic perspective. Scientifically speaking, it is physically impossible to study darkness by using light. From a symbolic perspective, you shouldn’t shine light on the dark if you want to study it. You can only feel your way around while blind to get to the truth.
The Lord of the Flies is a good way to portray this. After the events that conspired on the island, each of the boys will carry the memories of what they did throughout their adult lives—even if they wish to forget it.
This is easily demonstrated through my continuation of The Lord of the Flies. Each of the boys has a darkness that they carry from the point of their rescue on to their reintegration into society. For each case, they react differently to the questions Agent Noah Brooks asks them. Seeing how they react—feeling his way through their answers—was the only way he came to an accurate conclusion; especially considering some of the boys weren’t completely truthful when answering his questions.
It was extremely cramped in the room they put them in. The walls were colored a light peach—the floors soft gray—in a failed attempt to make the boys feel more at ease. Nothing could make them the same after what transpired on the island. Ralph was the first one they conversed with in that very room, after he claimed leadership of the group.
Nervously, he looked around. “What was the question?”
A man in an all-black suit and tie asked him again, with a very soft yet serious expression, “Who is the first one killed on that island?”
Ralph sat in his chair, arms tucked between his legs, head tilted downward.
High overhead, Roger, with a sense of delirious abandonment, leaned all his weight on the lever… The rock struck Piggy a glancing blow from chin to knee; the conch exploded into 1000 weight fragments… Piggy fell forty feet… His head opened and stuff came out and turned red.
The boy started shaking in his seat at the memory. “Piggy…oh, Piggy!” The room filled with the sound of his ragged breathing. Slowly, the pale man started to speak. “Piggy was your friend?”
“Yes,” Ralph stifled his emotions, remembering the other person in the room. “No,” he thought shaking his head, “Piggy wasn’t the first person killed.”
“Who was?”
“That boy.”
A tree exploded in the fire like a bomb… “That little ‘un that had a mark on his face— where is— he now? I tell you I don’t see him,” cried Piggy… Beneath them, on the unfriendly side of the mountain, the drum-roll continued.
“What boy?”
“The one with a mulberry birthmark. When we started our first fire—on the mountain—you know, for a rescue, he…Piggy pointed it out, but…we never saw him again.”
“How did he disappear?” the man inquired.
“The fire,” Ralph started, shaking his head once more. “The first fire we started, Jack said he and the hunters would take care of it.” His eyes clouded over. He stopped trembling. “But they didn’t. They all thought hunting was more important. And then Simon…”
Simon was crying out something about a dead man on a hill… The beast was on its knees in the center, its arms folded over his face… Only the beast lay still, a few yards from the city. Even in the rain they could see how small a beast it was; and already its blood was standing in the sand… Falling, still falling, it sank towards the beach and the boys rushed screaming into the darkness. The parachute took the figure forward, furrowing the lagoon, and it bumped over the reef and out to sea.
“They killed that boy,” Ralph said. A certain ominous aura washed over him. His eyes were lifeless as he raised his head. “We all killed Simon, but they…they killed that boy and Piggy.”
The man nodded. He was thinking about a lot of things as their conversation went on. He thought about how on earth those English boys resorted to such atrocities. How could one so pure in the beginning turn out so tainted by the end. The things they all witnessed—participated in! And just what kind of darkness was within all of them.
What darkness that must reside within him, himself…
After a handful of questions, the man closed the folder he held his hands, uncrossed his legs, stood up, and thanked Ralph. His outstretched hand was not grasped for a minute, as Ralph wasn’t sure if he should or not. All the while hesitant, Ralph shook his hand, and the two left the light colored room together.
Stopping outside the door frame, another black suited man awaited Ralph. Though this man had an intimidating presence about him, Ralph wasn’t least bit frightened.
Not after what happened to him.
The man he was just with turned to Ralph’s and said, “Agent Smith will take you to the lunch room, as promised.”
Click, clack, click, clack.
As a man continued to talk nothingness to Ralph, he heard footsteps come from down the hallway. Turning, he saw none other than Jack heading his way. When he raised his head, the two boys locked eyes.
The madness was no longer found in Jack’s azure eyes. However, that didn’t stop him from returning Ralph’s cold, hate-filled stare. With the men pushing the boys along, their reunion was brief.
Jack disappeared into the same confined, light room. Ralph disappeared behind the corner.
“I’d like to say that I handled the situation very well.”
“That’s not what the other boys said.”
Jack scowled. “And you listen to the runts?” he scoffed.
The pale man observed Jack quietly. Jack sat in the chair with his legs and arms crossed. He stared blankly at the door when not conversing with the agent. Clearing his throat, the man asked another question.
“How was Ralph decided leader?”
This toy of voting was almost as pleasing as a conch… There was a stillness about Ralph as he sat that marked him out: there was his size, and attractive appearance; and most obscurely, yet powerfully, there was the conch.
An unusual grin was placed on Jack’s face. He leaned in closer, putting his elbow on the table in front of him, and half-covered the smirk. “A vote,” he claimed in remembrance.
“A vote?”
Jack nodded.
“Who ran against him?”
The smiles vanished.
Ralph counted. “I’m chief then.” The circle of boys broke into applause. The freckles on Jack’s face disappeared under a blush of mortification.
Jack turned his mask down to the seated boys and pointed at them with the spear. “Who’s going to join my tribe? … I gave you food, and my hunters will protect you from the beast. Who will join my tribe and have fun?”
“I will.”
“Me.”
“I will too.”
“I did.”
His eyes held a stubborn fierceness and then that the man couldn’t put his finger on.
“Just what kind of nightmarish creature did you become…?”
“When did I abandon my humanity?”
The agent nodded silently.
Roger sat silently. Slowly, a dark smile rose to his face.
Roger stooped, picked up a stone, aimed, and through it at Henry—threw it to miss. The stone bounced five yards to Henry’s right and fell in the water. Roger gathered a handful of stones and began to throw them. Yet there was a space around Henry into which he dare not throw. Here, invisible yet strong, was a taboo of the old life.
“I didn’t.”
The man looked blankly. “Even at the death of your friends?”
The storm of sound beat at them, an incantation of hatred. High overhead, Roger, with a sense of delirious abandonment, leaned all his weight on the lever … Then the monstrous red thing bounded across the neck.
Roger spoke. “If you’re fooling us—”
Immediately after this, there came a gasp, and a squeal of pain.
His eyes were dull. “I didn’t.”
After a moment of silence, the man in the suit nodded. “Alright.”
He moved on to his next question for the boy. “If you could guess, what did your peers think of you?”
He sat silently.
Roger and Maurice came out of the forest … Roger led the way straight through the sandcastles, kicking them over, burying the flowers, scattering the chosen stones. Maurice followed, laughing, and added to the destruction.
Roger, uncommunicative by nature, said nothing. He offered no opinion on the beast nor told Ralph why he had chosen to come on this mad expedition.
Roger spoke; they jumped, for they had forgotten him.
You don’t know Roger. He’s a terror.
The boy sat in his chair, silent as a church mouse. Chin tilted downwards, he looked on at the man in front of him.
“Roger?”
He tilted his head, eyes cast sideways. Finally, Roger said, “Everyone has their foes and allies.”
After a moment had passed, Agent Brooks claimed, “Isn’t that the unvarnished truth,” with a small smile.
Roger nodded slowly, gloomily.
Noah sat across from the quiet boy, collecting—hiding—his thoughts.
“After all…only children and drunkards tell the naked truth.”
After the boys had left their facility, two agents were standing in what could be considered their break room.
Agent Brooks sighed.
Beside him, pouring himself a drink, Agent Smith asked, “Were they as feral as you expected?”
He sat down. “British boys killing each other over childish fears.” After a moment of silence, he shook his head. “Not feral, Ethan,” he claimed.
“Then what?” Agent Smith asked, sitting beside him.
Brooks recalled each boy and his expression as he told his story.
“Just scared kids.”
“Killing…because they were scared?”
He nodded sadly. “Scared of whatever imaginary creature they thought was living on that island with them. Terrified they would never be rescued.”
“But they were rescued,” Ethan pointed out.
“Eventually,” Noah added.
The two sat for a minute, thinking.
“Killing one another not out of spite, but because they were scared for themselves,” Agent Smith recapped.
Noah chuckled. “Sounds just like us, Ethan.”
Slowly, Ethan smirk faded. He said, quieter, “I wonder when we’ll be rescued…”
The Lord of the Flies, written by William Golding, is an excellent representation of Edward Abbey’s quote, “You can’t study the darkness by flooding it with light.” Abbey’s quote is true scientifically because if you shine light on darkness, you won’t be able to study it, since it wouldn’t be dark anymore.
The quote can be found symbolically throughout the continuation of The Lord of the Flies. The room that they put each boy in was a light colored room, which was an attempt to soothe them in case they got aggravated. This was also a form of irony, since agents were trying to study the darkness within the boys in a light environment.
Each boy reacted differently to the questions Agent Brooks asked, which helps them accurately study their “darkness.” By comparing the boys’ experience to the war England is currently in, Agents Brooks and Smith ceased to question why the boys carried their own “darkness.”
Paytan Douglas 
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