The central theme of this book is how people, children in this case, become when they live in a society where there are no rules or regulations they must abide by. This question asked by Piggy, was aimed at Jack's tribe of savages. He was asking whether it was "better to have rules and agree or to hunt and kill". Throughout the book the boys begin to change from proper, well groomed English boys into wild, out of control savages.
In chapter 4, the choir group led by Jack begins to show signs of savagery. In chapter 4, Jack and the hunters (choir group) slaughtered a wild pig, Jack and Roger smeared the pig's blood off the knife onto their cheeks, and then outlined it in clay or mud. Another instance was in chapter 5 when Ralph called an assembly, at the end of the assembly the hunters and some other kids did a savage dance. In chapter 9, the hunters have a big feast, things start to get out of hand and they begin to do the same savage dance. They see a shape moving in the forest and they assume it is the "beastie" (a creature that lives only in the boy's minds). The boys believe it can change its figure, and the boys attacked it, what they thought was the beastie, was actually Simon.
Out of the twenty five children on the island, Ralph, Piggy and Simon were the only 3 children that didn't turn into savages.
I think that these three children remained civilized because they might have had families that had strong morals and rules were probably enforced strongly.
Piggy despised the savagery but he wasn't really accepted into the first tribe that Ralph had led nor Jack's tribe of savages. Neither tribe gave Piggy the chance to fit in, because he always wanted to do things the correct and proper way. .
It was difficult for Simon to fit into any of the tribes because of his quietness, despite this Ralph and Piggy accepted him.
The boys didn't really make a concerted effort to stay civilized, because they basically saw Jack and the hunters become savage and it was sort of like "monkey see monkey do".