LORD OF THE FLIES

The story begins with a boy, who we later find out is named Ralph. I should say the story begins with Ralph and Piggy. The boys, still in the early stages of adolescence, come to an agreement that their plane might have crashed, there were no grownups and they might be on an island. 

The two boys begin walking, Piggy seems to be a talker and is speaking mainly of his aunt and the things he couldn't do because of his asthma. Ralph is listening, hardly, when he assures that they will be found. His father being a commander in the Navy will come to get them, he's sure of it because he says, there is no island that has been left undiscovered. Piggy, as comforting as it would be to believe that, expresses he had overheard the pilot of their plane say an atomic bomb had been detonated. 

Continuing on their walk, a shadow is discovered in the water. A pinkish conch shell reveals its beauty and Piggy starts exclaiming all about its worth and significance when he tells Ralph to blow in it, to see if there is any other life wandering about. Struggling a little bit, the conch shell compromises with him and lets out a huge, echoing blow. Little by little more faces started to show. No one is older than the ages of 13/14, but they are able to divide the group up. The ‘littluns’ are around six years of age and the ‘biguns’ are ages 10-12. Knowing nothing but how to exist in a civilization, they try to mimic it. Ralph is elected leader as he wishes to survive in the best way they can. Jack is the ‘leader’ of a choir group and seems to be opposed to this idea but decides that he and his group will take responsibility for fueling the fire that they all decided was a good signal, they would also do the hunting. 

A new fear is expressed by one of the littluns, he claims to have seen a ‘beastie’ and wonders what they will do about it. This fear is laughed off by the others convinced that he had been dreaming, nevertheless Jack says he will hunt for any snakes and a ‘beastie’. 

Soon enough the group begins to divide. Jack is leaning more towards savagery and removes his group from maintaining the fire to just the means of hunting, especially for the ‘beastie’. Ralph on the other hand is still trying to maintain somewhat of a proper civilization and still believes there is no ‘beastie’. 

On one particular night, an aerial battle partook over the island. A man, a casualty, floats down on the mountaintop with his parachute opened, his body moving and making an odd figure, startling the choir of hunters. Going back to tell the others, Jack makes a splinter group, mostly all boys are influenced by his protection, except a few. The group turns into full blood savages,  they paint their faces, sharpen their spears and mimic tribal dances. The group being pushed towards violence, decide they need to give the ‘beastie’ an offering, the head of a pig on a stick. Delightful. Simion, seeing to be the most intellectual, along with piggy, begins hallucinating after seeing the death of the sow. The head of the pig turns into the Lord of the Flies in Simon's eyes and he has a revelation. The poor sow tells Simon what he has already deep down known, that the beast is not in physical form but exists in the psyche of each other's minds. This made him weak and he fell to the floor. Gaining back consciousness, it is revealed to Simon that the ‘beastie’ they claim to have seen was all but the body of a dead man. Rushing back to tell of his revelations, he gets caught in the midst of their tribal dance. Mistaking him for the ‘beastie’, they beat Simon to his death. 

Not too long after, Ralph makes a visit to Jack's camp. They had stolen Piggy's glasses for their cooking fires causing Ralph's smoke signal to be hard trying to maintain. Instead of returning the glasses, one of the choir hunters releases a boulder on Piggy, killing him. There had only been three people left in Ralph's camp but now, Piggy was dead and the other two were captured, leaving Ralph to be alone while Jack's group forms a manhunt to kill him. 

A small fire started by Jack's group, to smoke Ralph out of hiding, turns into a first fire on the island. A naval ship acknowledges the smoke and stops at the island. Ralph trying to escape from his own death falls at the feet of a naval officer, he's saved. Turning towards the falling island, the boys weep and their innocence burns with the land.