What Happens in Lord of the Flies?
A group of English schoolboys find themselves stranded on a desert island after their plane
crashes over the Pacific. Those who survive the crash elect Ralph, one of the oldest boys, as
their leader.
Ralph argues that the group's main goals should be to have fun, survive, and maintain a
smoke signal to catch the attention of the outside world and get rescued.
The boys quickly lose interest in the day-to-day tasks Ralph wants them to perform, like
building shelters. Instead of working, they spend their time playing and hunting pigs.
When Jack defies Ralph’s authority, the boys degenerate into a savage tribe. They set fire to
the island in an effort to drive Ralph out of hiding. A British warship, seeing the smoke,
stages a rescue. Ralph and the other children are saved.
William Golding's Lord of the Flies opens in the midst of a war with a group of British
schoolboys stranded on a deserted island in the middle of the ocean, with no adult
supervision. Two boys, Ralph and Piggy, meet near a lagoon, and Ralph finds a conch shell
while swimming. At the urging of Piggy, Ralph blows into the conch, summoning the other
boys. Once everyone is assembled, they decide to hold an election. Ralph becomes chief due
to his age, charisma, and role as the blower of the conch. Jack Merridew, who also sought
leadership, is appointed to turn his group of choir boys into an army of hunters. The older
boys—such as Ralph, Piggy, Jack, and Simon—perform the majority of the work, whereas the
younger boys ("littluns") prefer to play. The littluns also become afraid of a “beast,” which
the older boys dismiss as the product of nightmares.
After exploring the island, Ralph decides that the boys should try to build a fire in order to
signal passing ships. The first attempt ends in disaster. The fire, lit using Piggy’s glasses,
burns out of control and destroys a large part of the island, and a littlun goes missing in the
blaze. After Piggy scolds them for their recklessness, the boys learn from this mistake, and
Jack’s hunters agree to maintain the signal fire. However, Jack becomes increasingly
obsessed with hunting, to the point of donning face paint, neglecting the fire, and
squandering a potential rescue in favor of killing a pig. Ralph and Piggy scold Jack, who
proceeds to hit Piggy, breaking one of the lenses of his glasses. Ralph calls an assembly in
order to further scold the hunters, but Jack uses the younger boys’ fear of the “beast” to
garner support for his cause.
One night, while the boys are sleeping, the corpse of a parachutist lands on the mountain
where the boys make their signal fire. Samneric mistake the corpse of the parachutist for the
beast. Ralph, Jack, and Roger search for the beast and investigate a new part of the island,
with Jack noting its potential as a fortress. They climb the mountain and find the corpse of
the parachutist, but they all flee in terror, believing it to be the littluns' beast. At the next
meeting, Jack attempts to stage a coup, calling out Ralph’s cowardice while confronting the
alleged beast. However, the boys refuse to vote Ralph out of office, so Jack, in tears, leaves
the group. Shortly after leaving, he convinces his hunters to leave Ralph’s group entirely.
They move into the fortress the boys had previously discovered, which they name “Castle
Rock.” As the night goes on, most of the older boys quietly join Jack’s group.
,Ralph, Piggy, Simon, and Samneric are the only “biguns” who remain in the original group. At
Piggy’s suggestion, they attempt to create a new signal fire on the beach, away from where
the beast was seen. Meanwhile, Jack and his hunters decide to hunt and cook a pig in an
effort to tempt the rest of the boys over to their side. After brutally slaughtering a nursing
sow, they mount its head on a stick as an offering to the beast. Simon witnesses the hunt
from his favorite spot in the forest, and when the hunters have gone, he hallucinates having
a conversation with the head, which is identified as the “Lord of the Flies.” It tells him that
the beast—the brutality and fear that it represents—exists within all humans. Simon, who is
epileptic, suffers a seizure. After waking up, he climbs the mountain to investigate the
alleged beast himself and discovers the corpse of the parachutist. He rushes back to tell the
other boys what he has discovered.
Meanwhile, Ralph, Piggy, and Samneric attend Jack’s feast. Ralph and Jack argue again about
priorities, but the majority of the boys side with Jack this time. When a storm rolls in, Ralph
stresses the need for shelters, but Jack distracts the boys by telling them to huddle together
for a dance. As the dancing grows wilder, Simon, exhausted, emerges from the trees. The
frenzied boys mistake Simon for the beast and beat him to death before he gets the chance
to tell them the truth about the beast. The next day, guilt over Simon’s death plagues Ralph,
Piggy, and Samneric, but they all refuse to acknowledge it, instead claiming that they each
had left the feast early.
The next night, Jack’s hunters raid Ralph’s camp and steal Piggy’s glasses so that they can
make fire. At Piggy’s urging, Ralph, Piggy, and Samneric go to Castle Rock to get Piggy’s
glasses back. Ralph tries to assert the power of the conch, but it no longer holds sway with
the other boys. Piggy appeals to their sense of morality, but they continue to side with Jack.
As the hunters prepare to attack Ralph and Piggy, Roger rolls a boulder down the side of the
mountain, knocking Piggy to his death and shattering the conch. Samneric are captured, and
Ralph flees for his life.
Now an outcast, Ralph returns to Castle Rock, on the way passing through Simon’s favorite
spot and discovering the sow’s head, now reduced to bone. He knocks it off its stick, cracking
it in two and widening its morbid smile. Stealthily climbing the fort’s hill, Ralph speaks to
Samneric. The twins tell Ralph they were tortured into joining Jack’s group by Roger, and
they warn him that Jack is intending to hunt him down. Ralph hides nearby for the night. At
dawn, as the hunters pursue Ralph, they set the forest on fire in order to flush him out of
hiding. Just as the hunters close in on Ralph at the beach, a naval officer, drawn to the island
by the forest fire, appears. The officer is baffled and disappointed by the boys’ savage
comportment. The boys, including Ralph, burst into tears, recognizing the depravity to which
they have descended and the tragedies they have wrought.
, Chapter 1 Summary & Analysis
SUMMARY
In the middle of a war, a plane crash-lands on an uninhabited island. The passengers and
survivors are a group of British schoolchildren. In the novel’s opening moments, one of the
children, Ralph, traverses the island’s dense jungle, followed by a boy named Piggy.
Ralph and Piggy introduce themselves to each other as they get the lay of the land. Piggy,
asthmatic and fat, was raised by his Aunt, a candy-shop keeper. The heartier Ralph was
raised by his navy-commander father. They discern that the plane has been swept out to
sea, having scarred the jungle and leaving some survivors on the island.
Arriving at a lagoon, Ralph swims while Piggy stands in the water, unable to swim due to his
asthma, and watches. They see a shining object on the bank, which reveals itself to be a
large conch shell. At Piggy’s behest, Ralph uses the shell as a horn, sounding out a loud blast.
Immediately, other boys begin to appear, drawn to the sound, and gather around Ralph. The
boys are all wearing tattered school uniforms, and among their number are six-year-old
Johnny and a pair of twins named Sam and Eric (together known as Samneric).
Soon, two more rows of boys, marching in rank, approach from down the beach, all clad in
identical uniforms with badge-studded black caps and cloaks with silver crosses. They are led
by an intense, ugly boy named Jack Merridew, who orders his boys to stand in formation.
Jack asks Ralph if there are any adults left. Ralph replies to the negative, so Jack declares that
the boys must all fend for themselves.
Piggy rambles nervously, eliciting the names of the boys. Jack silences him by calling him
“Fatty.” When Ralph reveals Piggy to be “Piggy,” all the boys cackle at him. Jack’s group turns
out to be a choir, made up of Maurice, Roger, Bill, Harold, Henry, Robert, and Simon. Jack
then suggests that he be made the leader in their collective effort to be rescued.
The boys hold a vote. Jack’s choir votes for Jack, but the rest vote for the confident Ralph,
who wins. Ralph then names Jack the leader of the choir, which he frames as a task force.
Jack specifies the choir as the official hunting party.
Ralph, Simon, and Jack—who reveals a large knife—prepare to go scouting to determine
whether the island is actually an island. Piggy wants to go, too, but he is rebuffed by Jack.
Piggy tells Ralph that he would prefer that Ralph had not told everyone his name; Ralph
reminds him that Piggy is a better name than the alternative: Fatty.
Ralph, Jack, and Simon confirm that they are on an island, and they discover a path up a
mountain. From their vantage, they see that the island is surrounded by a coral reef and that
there is a second, smaller island connected to one end of the island by a landbridge. The
boys send boulders tumbling down the mountain and declare the island theirs.
As they head back to the others, they find a piglet trapped by foliage. Jack draws his knife
and prepares to slaughter it, but he falters, feeling the immensity and difficulty of the act.
