Jack Merridew - Plot Summary

Plot Summary

In the midst of a wartime evacuation, a British plane crashes onto an isolated island in a remote region of the Pacific Ocean. The only survivors are male children below the age of thirteen. Two boys, the fair-haired Ralph and an overweight, bespectacled boy reluctantly nicknamed "Piggy", find a conch, which Ralph uses as a horn to bring all the survivors to one area. Ralph emerges as one of the survivors' leaders during the meeting, as does Jack Merridew, a member of a boys' choir that survived the crash. The survivors elect Ralph as their "chief", losing only the votes of Jack's fellow choirboys, who support their leader. Ralph asserts two primary goals: to have fun and to maintain a smoke signal that could alert passing ships to their presence on the island. The boys decide that a conch shell they found embodies the society they shall create on the island, and declare that whoever holds the conch shall also receive the respect of the larger group.

Jack organises his choir group into a hunting party responsible for discovering a food source; Ralph, Jack, and a boy named Simon soon form a troika of leaders. Piggy, although Ralph's only confidante, is quickly made an outcast by his fellow "biguns" (older boys) and becomes an unwilling source of laughs for the other children. Simon, in addition to supervising the project of constructing shelters, feels an instinctive need to protect the younger boys.

The semblance of order imposed by Ralph and Simon quickly deteriorates as the majority of the boys turn idle and begin to develop paranoias about the island, referring to a supposed monster, the "beast", which dwells nearby. Jack, who has started a power struggle with Ralph, gains control of the discussion by boldly promising to kill the beast. At one point, Jack summons all of his hunters to hunt down a wild pig, drawing away those assigned to maintain the signal fire. After the fire burns out, a ship passes by the island, but does not stop as it has seen nothing amiss. Angered by this, Ralph considers relinquishing his position, but is convinced not to do so by Piggy.

While Jack schemes against Ralph, twins Sam and Eric, now assigned to the maintenance of the signal fire, see the corpse of a fighter pilot in the dark. Mistaking the corpse for the beast, they run to the cluster of shelters that Ralph and Simon have erected and warn the others. This unexpected meeting sees tensions between Jack and Ralph flare again. Shortly thereafter, Jack decides to lead a party to the other side of the island, where a heap of stones forms a place where he claims the beast resides. Only Ralph and Jack's supporter Roger agree to go; Ralph turns back shortly before the other two boys. When they arrive at the shelters, Jack calls an assembly and tries to turn the others against Ralph, asking for them to remove him from his position. Receiving little support, Jack, Roger, and another boy leave the shelters to form their own tribe. The tribe, which receives recruits from the main group of boys, grows in strength and begins to adopt customs common to primitive cultures, including face paint and bizarre rituals including sacrifices to the beast. When the tribe grows to a size that rivals Ralph's, they begin to harass those who remain at the shelters and make pronouncements encouraging them to abandon Ralph and the societal order he has imposed.

Simon, unable to bear the stress of his position, goes off to think. Alone, he finds a severed pig head, left by Jack as an offering to the beast. Simon envisions the pig head, now swarming with scavenging flies, as the "Lord of the Flies" and believes that it is talking to him. Simon hears the pig identifying itself as the real "Beast" and disclosing the truth about itself – that the boys themselves "created" the beast, and that the real beast was inside them all. Simon also locates the dead parachutist who had been mistaken for the beast, and is the sole member of the group to recognise that the "monster" is a corpse. Simon, hoping to tell others of the discovery, finds Jack's tribe in the island's interior during a ritual dance and, mistaken for the beast, is killed by the frenzied boys. Ralph, Piggy, Sam, and Eric feel guilty about what they did not stop.

Jack and his band of "savages" decide that they should possess Piggy's glasses, the only means of starting a fire on the island. Raiding Ralph's camp, the savages confiscate the glasses and return to their abode near the great rock heap, called Castle Rock. Ralph, deserted by most of his supporters, journeys to Castle Rock to confront Jack and secure the glasses. Taking the conch and accompanied only by Piggy, Sam, and Eric, Ralph finds the tribe and demands that they return the valuable object. Turning against Ralph, the tribe takes Sam and Eric captive while Roger drops a boulder from his vantage point above, killing Piggy and shattering the conch. Ralph manages to escape, but Sam and Eric are tortured until they agree to join Jack's tribe.

The following morning, Jack orders his tribe to begin a manhunt for Ralph. Fleeing through the forest, Ralph watches as the "savages" set fire to the forest, drawing the attention of a passing naval vessel. A landing party from the vessel encounters Ralph as he desperately tries to escape the onrushing "savages", and the British officer leading the party, at first mistaking the violence for a game, scolds that he would have expected better from British boys.