Duringa war, an airplane carrying British boys crashes down in the Pacific.
All the boyssurvive, except for the pilot, who was the only grown up among them.Ralph,a handsome boy with long and fair hair, whose father works in the English military,is the first to be introduced in the story. Along with Ralph is Piggy. Piggy isa chubby short boy who wears glasses and have Asthma. Ralphfinds a conch from the sea, and uses it as a trumpet to call the remainingsurvivors from the crash site. Throughout the book, the conch is used as asymbol of civilization, order, and power.
When he blows the conch, he startsseeing presence of live on the beach. The first boy who follows the sound ofthe conch is Johnny, then the twins, few younger boys, and at last, Jack, whois accompanied by his Choir. Theyask for a chief and they all vote for Ralph to be their leader. Ralph being incharge now, choses jack to be the leader of the hunting group. Then, Ralphchose Simon and Jack to go with him to explore the island. In their expeditionthey climb a mountain, where they realized that they are on deserted island. Theydecided to go down the mountain and go back to other boys. On their way theyfind a pig, and jack boldly decides to kill it, but then he hesitates and thepig runs away.
Blowingthe conch, Ralph calls on an assembly. He talks about having a fire signal, sothe ships passing by could notice the smoke and could come to rescue them. Ayoung boy with a huge birth mark on his face from the littluns is pushedforward by the littuns to talk for them. He asked Ralph “what are you going todo about the snake thing, it was a beastie”. But Ralph tells them(the litteuns)that there is no such thing as beastie, but if they ever find such thing thenthey will kill it.
The rest of the boys were already overwhelmed because of thefire, so they all start shouting “FIRE” “FIRE” “FIRE” and Jack led them intothe wood part of the island. They make fire using Piggy’s glasses, but soonafter, the fire becomes uncontrollable and burns many tress. The littlun withthe large birth mark vanishes that night. And no one knows what happened tohim.
Jackbecomes very jealous, of Ralph having all the authority, so he tries to tellthe other boys that they should spend most of their energies in hunting ratherthan maintaining the fire signal. One of the boys help Ralph to make huts, wherethey could be safe during storms and rain. Jack takes all the older boys(including those who should be maintaining the fire) with him for hunting.While Jack and his hunters are in the jungle, hunting the pigs, a ship passesby the island, but the fire is already out. And this make Ralph very angry.When Jack returns with his hunters, Ralph starts shouting at them and so doesPiggy. Jack, who is already not liking Piggy and Ralph loses his temper and hitsPiggy in his stomach, and breaks one of the lenses from his glasses.
Thehatred towards Ralph is growing in Jacks mind like a wild flower. No one needsto water it or take care of it, the wild, itself, is helping in its growth.Ralphcalls on a meeting trying to set everything right. But, the meeting becomeschaotic when some of the boys start talking about some sort of beast. Theprevious night when everyone was sleeping there was an air battle, far away andone of the dead parachutists landed on the island, and the boys who were onfire duty thought it was some kind of beast. Whenthe littluns heared about the beast, they started having nightmares every othernight. Seeing this, Ralph decides that all the older boys (except for Piggy)will go to the jungle to kill the beast.
They searched everywhere but they didnot found anything. They came across a dark cave and because it was night timeand most of the boys did not wanted to go there and search. Ralph decides thathe will go alone, but soon after Jack accompanies him.
When they go to the cavewhich is located on a mountain, they see the shadow of the dead parachutist,and fell into thinking that it is the beast. They feel frightened and start to run away. Though Ralph explains toPiggy the mysteries dark thing which he saw on the cave, but still Piggyremains doubtful. Thevery next morning Jack opposes Ralph’s power, and he asks all those who are inhis favor to raise their hands, but no one does. Ralph remained their chief.Jack got angry and he leaves the group.
Saying “those who want to hunt and havefun can follow me”. Soonenough, Ralph is left only with the twins and Piggy. All the older boys joinJack.
Jack leads his hunters to the “Castle Rock” (which is one the other sideof the island) and they all settle there. Jack paints them all in color,”behind which they hid, liberated from shame and self-consciousness.” (4:34) theybecame savages.
Jack decides that he will throw in a feast with the meat whichthey will hunt, and he will invite Ralph and the other boys to join his tribe. Someof Jack’s hunters are very afraid of the beast, but Jack tells them to forgetabout the beast (8:168). The savages go into the forest and kill a pig, andJack decides that he will leave the head of the pig on a stick as an offeringto the beast so that he don’t come out to feed on his hunters.Accidently,Simon finds out the head of the pig in the forest, and he gets into thisillumination and he starts seeing this head floating into the air and talkingto him. He calls it the “Lord of the flies” because of the ugliness of the headwhich was caused by the worms and flies which were roaming around the pigsface. The lord of the Flies tells Simon that he (lord of the flies) can’t bekilled, and that he is part of them, and he is in them. Simon faints away.
WhenSimon comes back to his consciousness, he finds the dead parachutist, and hedecides to go down to tell everyone the truth. Jackand his tribe go to Ralph’s side of the island. Jack take away their fire andinvites them all to his feast. Afterthe twins, and the littluns go to feast with Jack, Ralph and Piggy decide thatthey should go to and see what is happening.
Thefood was finished and the feast was over, when Ralph tell all the boys thatthey should all go to the huts because of the rain. It was this moment whenJack orders a dance, and his tribe start rehearsing how they killed the pig.Simon crawls out of the forest and he gets inside the circle of the dancing boys,but he could hardly make himself heard because of the storm and the chant thatthe boys were singing.
The boys start hitting Simon as if he was the beast andeventually they kill him. That night there was a heavy storm, and it broughtthe dead body of the parachutist onto the beach, and it made the boys morefrightened and they all start screaming and running around. The nextmorning Ralph and Piggy were feeling sad and guilty for what they had done toSimon the other night. On the other side of the island the savages were notfeeling anything at all.
Jack’s plan was, to first hunt, and then later in theday they will go and steal fire from Ralph and Piggy. Ralph was feeling theneed for more people to keep the fire signal on. It was during sun set whenRalph gave up on the fire signal and decided to go back to the huts and takerest. Inthe midst of the night, the savages attacked the huts.
They beat the four boys,and they stole Piggy’s glasses. But the four boys gave tit for tat.Thenext morning, all the four boys groom themselves very nicely, so that theycould look like civilized people and not savages. They went to the castle rockto meet the savages, and call on an assembly. When they reach there, Ralphblows the conch— calling on an assembly, but jack tells him that this is his areaand the conch does not have any value here, on his side of the island. Ralph makesJack angry by calling them “painted fools”. Jack rages upon Ralph and he stabshim with his spear in the chest.
But Jack fights back, and in the midst ofexchange of fists between Ralph and Jack, Piggy holds on the conch high andstart shouting at everyone. Trying to bring them back to their senses.Meanwhile,Roger, who was very sadistic and cruel, and also was very loyal to Jack fromthe beginning of the story, was standing on top of the hill. He pushed a hugerock on Piggy from the mountain top. The rock hits Piggy and before anyonecould move, Piggy fells 40 feet down the castle rock and dies. Everyonebecame very silent. There was no sound of the boys in the island for a moment.
The only thing you could hear was the sound of the waves crashing into eachother. After a moment of utter silence, Jack declared himself as the new chiefand he threw his spear towards Ralph. Seeing all this Ralph runs away. Thesavages take the twins as their prisoners and make them their gate guard. Jackas their new chief, give order to the savages to kill Ralph. They were into thinkingthat Ralph was hiding somewhere in the jungle. Ralphwas smart so he hid near the castle rock, because there, no one would ever findhim. When the night arrived and all the savages were gathered around the fire,eating and having fun.
Ralph crawled to the castle gate and draw the twin’sattention towards him. The twins told him to go back and to never come backhere again. They gave him a piece of meat and sent him back, and told him tostay near the castle, so that no one could suspect about him. Thenext morning Ralph finds out that Jack is trying to burn down the whole forest,thinking that the fire would burn Ralph too, who according to him was hiding inthe forest. When Ralph sees this, he gets frightened and starts running.Savages take a notice of him and they start running behind them. Assoon as Ralph is exposed in open beach, he falls down and collapses.
When helooks back up, he sees a newly arrived British naval officer. Ralph startscrying. He cries for losing his friends. Ralph wept for the end of innocence,the darkness of man’s heart.
