Lord of the Flies Summary: Plot, Characters and Themes of Golding's Novel
What Lord of the Flies is about
Lord of the Flies is the first novel by the British author William Golding. It was published in 1954. It follows a group of British boys who are stranded on an uninhabited island and try to govern themselves. They fail, and their attempts slide into savagery.
The story opens during a wartime evacuation. A British aeroplane crashes on an isolated tropical island in the Pacific. The only survivors are boys in middle childhood or just before their teens. There are no adults.
Two boys, Ralph and Piggy, find a conch shell on the beach. Ralph blows it like a horn to call the other survivors together. The shell gives him instant authority, and the boys elect him their chief. He sets three goals. They should have fun, they should survive, and they should keep a smoke signal burning at all times so a passing ship might see it. Using Piggy's glasses to focus the sun, the boys light their first signal fire.
That early order does not hold. The boys grow lazy and ignore Ralph's efforts to improve life on the island. They become frightened of an imaginary monster they call "the beast". A rival leader rises, and the group begins to split.
The main characters
Ralph is a fair-haired boy who becomes chief. He stands for order and rescue. He keeps returning to the signal fire as the one thing that matters most.
Piggy is a pudgy boy and Ralph's first ally on the island. His glasses are the boys' only way to make fire, which makes him more important than the others want to admit. He is the voice of reason, and at one key moment he talks Ralph out of giving up the leadership.
Jack is a red-haired boy who wins popularity by promising to hunt and kill the beast. Hunting becomes his source of power. He eventually breaks away to form his own tribe.
Simon is a quiet boy who often goes into the forest alone. He is the one who comes closest to understanding what the beast really is.
Roger is one of the boys who follows Jack. Sam and Eric are twins who stay close to Ralph for much of the story.
The themes
The novel is about morality and leadership. Above all it is about the tension between civilised behaviour and chaos. Ralph and Jack offer two different ways to run the group. Ralph has rules, meetings and the conch. Jack has hunting, excitement and fear. As the story goes on, more boys choose Jack.
Fear drives much of this. The beast does not exist, but the boys' belief in it shapes everything they do. Ralph cannot argue them out of it. Jack gains power by feeding it.
The book's title comes from a pig's head that Jack's tribe mounts on a stick as an offering to the beast. It swarms with flies. Simon has an imagined conversation with it, and it tells him there is no beast on the island. It suggests that the beast is inside the boys themselves. This is the idea at the heart of the novel. The danger on the island comes from the boys, not from any monster.
Survival and growing up run through the book too. The boys must feed themselves and stay safe. They also lose the innocence they arrived with, and the story treats that loss as permanent.
Full plot and ending (spoilers)
Stop here if you want to avoid spoilers.
When Jack takes the boys on a pig hunt, even the ones meant to watch the fire go with him. The signal goes out just as a ship passes, and the chance of rescue is lost. Later, an air battle takes place near the island. A dead pilot drifts down in a parachute. Sam and Eric take the body for the beast. Ralph, Jack and Roger go to look and flee in terror. Jack then forms his own tribe, and most of the boys join him. They paint their faces and hold ritual dances.
Simon works out that the beast is only a dead pilot. He runs to tell Jack's tribe during one of their dances. The frenzied boys mistake him for the beast and beat him to death. Ralph and Piggy take part. Afterwards they tell themselves it was not their fault.
Jack's tribe steals Piggy's glasses. When Ralph and Piggy go to get them back, Roger drops a boulder that kills Piggy and smashes the conch. Sam and Eric are taken hostage. Ralph escapes, and the next day Jack's tribe sets the forest on fire to hunt him down.
Running from the boys and the flames, Ralph falls at the feet of a British naval officer. He has landed to investigate the smoke. The boys break down in tears over the "end of innocence". The officer says he is disappointed by their warlike behaviour, then turns to look at his cruiser offshore. The adult who rescues them belongs to a world that is itself at war.
Why it still matters
Lord of the Flies was generally well received on publication, and it is still one of the most commonly assigned books in schools. Its setup is simple enough for younger readers to follow. Its questions about power, fear and how people treat each other give older readers plenty to argue over.
It suits anyone studying it for class and anyone interested in what holds a society together. It also suits readers who like short, tense stories. The conch, the fire and the pig's head are easy to remember, and each one carries a clear idea. That clarity is a large part of why the novel has kept its place for so long.
