Do the boys get rescued from the island?

At the very end of Lord of the Flies, the boys are rescued from the island, but the rescue comes only after their society has completely collapsed into violence.

As Ralph is being hunted like an animal by Jack’s tribe, the boys set the island on fire to flush him out. That uncontrolled blaze—meant to kill—ironically does what their carefully maintained signal fire failed to do: it attracts a passing British naval ship. An officer arrives on the beach just as Ralph stumbles out, moments from being killed, and the boys are suddenly confronted with an adult for the first time since the crash.

The rescue stops the violence instantly. The boys, who had been chanting and hunting, fall silent. When the officer asks if they’ve been “playing at war,” Ralph admits that there have been deaths—Piggy and Simon—and begins to cry. One by one, the others join him, overwhelmed by what they’ve become.

The rescue is not particularly triumphant because it exposes a sharp contradiction: the boys are saved by an adult world that is itself engaged in a brutal war. Even the officer, representing order and civilization, stands in front of a warship. The moment suggests that the violence on the island isn’t an exception—it mirrors the wider human world.