"A semicircle of little boys, their bodies streaked with colored clay, sharp sticks in their hands, were standing on the beach making no noise at all. 'Fun and games,' said the officer." Analyze this important quotation at the end of William Golding's Lord of the Flies in relation to the major themes and symbols within the book.

Toward the end of the novel, a fleet of British ships finally arrives to rescue the remaining boys from the island. The officer takes one look at the boys and says with a smile, "Fun and games." To him, they are just a bunch of little kids playing some silly game. By the looks of it, it seems that the boys have had an awfully big adventure on the island. He knows so little. He cannot possibly conceive that this group of boys on a deserted island, their faces caked with mud and holding sharpened sticks, is doing anything other than playing an innocent children's game. If someone told the officer the full lurid details of everything that has previously happened on the island, he simply would not believe his ears.
However, the boys are no longer just boys. Their brutal experiences on the island have changed them forever. They arrived on the island as upper-class English schoolboys, but they have now turned into men. Life on the island has forced them to grow up quickly. Too quickly, in fact. Those mud-smeared faces and sharpened sticks represent what they now are and what they have become. In their savage demeanor, one can see the triumph of barbarism over civilization, one of the book's most important themes.
Also important is the fact that the boys have formed themselves into a semicircle. It is almost as if they are expecting an attack. Their experiences on the island have made them so aggressive that by the time the ships arrive they are not dancing around in delight, wildly celebrating their imminent rescue; they are prepared, if necessary, to fight. It is now second nature to them.
Ralph, more than the other boys, still has a greater sense of what it means to be civilized. His soul has not been entirely corrupted by the blood, savagery, and endless conflict he has had to endure. In the presence of the officer, a representative of civilization, he loses his fear of the other boys, who remain in their barbarous state. This leads us to hope that Ralph will find it easier than the other boys to readjust to his former life.
One of the underlying themes of the book is that the gap between barbarism and civilization is much narrower than we might think. Yet, in the figure of Ralph, we see that it is still possible to hold civilized values and to aspire to an organized, cooperative, rules-based society—even in the midst of appalling savagery and bloodshed. We are led to hope that Ralph's example is one that may be followed in due course by the other boys, however long it takes.