Lord of the Flies, a book that mirrors us as humans, highlights human savagery at its core. The book starts with a plane crash that drops a group of English boys, majorly pre-teens, on an Island in the middle of nowhere. We hear that there’s an ongoing nuclear war.
Among these boys are Ralph and Piggy. Ralph crawls out of the burning wreckage, and Piggy soon joins him. Ralph is older and represents order and civilisation. Piggy is a short, fat, asthmatic kid - he represents adulthood. They find a conch shell which they blow into to summon the remaining boys on the Island. Eventually, a choir of boys led by Jack also comes out.
The boys all agree they need a leader as it's what they believe adults would do. They vote for Ralph because he appears older and more civilised, but Jack isn't happy about it. They soon discovered the Island had food and things they needed to survive. Jack leads his boys in hunting, and they hunt pigs for the boys to eat. The conch shell becomes a symbol of order amongst the boys. Anyone who holds the conch could talk without interruption.
After trying ever so well to maintain a semblance of order, they eventually fail and slip into chaos. The younger ones, called the littluns(as opposed to the biguns), start to worry and get paranoid about some beast they claim to have seen. Ralph is particular about escape and suggests they make a fire signal in case of a passing ship. They start a fire with Piggy's glass and promise to take turns keeping it on. However, the boys soon lose the fire signal. A ship passes while the boys are out murdering pigs with Jack, and there aren't enough boys to tend to the fire. They lose the fire and miss the passing ship.
Talk about tragic misunderstandings; a fight happens while they are asleep, which leaves a dead man hanging on a tree by his parachute. Two biguns(Samneric) see this dead person, which they mistake for the beast. They go and tell the other boys they'd seen the beast - Misunderstanding.
Jack immediately tries to rally the boys against Ralph and get himself selected as Chief, but he fails. He's annoyed and goes off with Roger - a psychopath - to another part of the Island. Because of his exciting lifestyle of painting his face and eating roasted porks and the fading hopes of escape, some of the boys start to join Jack. Unfortunately, they don't have their fire because they can't make one without Piggy's glasses. So they raid the shelters for fire and make a large feast which Piggy and Ralph join after some grumpiness.
Meanwhile, Simon - a wiser kid - stumbles upon a pig's head on a stake buried by Jack and the boys as a sacrifice to the beast. The pig's head calls himself Lord of the Flies and tells Simon that the beast was inside them all along. Simon passes out and then wakes up to find the dead pilot everyone thought was a beast.
Simon goes to tell the boys that the beast was imaginary and they had nothing to worry about, but on getting there, the boys, mistaking him for the beast, panic and brutally murder him - A tragic misunderstanding.
Piggy and Ralph are alone now as everyone has defected to Jack's group except the twins, Samneric. Jack steals Piggy's glasses to gain total control of the fire on the Island. Ralph and Piggy go to peacefully demand Piggy's glasses, but this goes wrong as the twins are captured, and a giant boulder is dropped on Piggy by Roger. Remember Roger, the psychopath? Roger tortures Samneric into agreeing to join their tribe, and Ralph escapes.
Ralph sticks around to save Sanmneric, who are now guards and lookouts, but they warn Ralph that Jack is planning on launching a full-on manhunt on him and that he should find somewhere safe to hide. Jack attempts to smoke Ralph out by setting the whole Island on fire.
Ralph runs onto the beach and crashes into an adult, a naval officer whose ships saw a worrying amount of fire, and comes to rescue them. Jack is also on the beach as he hears the officer criticising them for failing to coordinate themselves like proper British people. (Here, the adult fails to see the irony that the boys only got into this situation because there's an ongoing war). Jack breaks down and cries; the other boys also cry as they realise how terrible they are.
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See you next Thursday!