Characters

Ralph - The novel's protagonist, a boy twelve years of age. Marooned on a tropical island with a group of boys, Ralph is elected leader of the group and attempts to coordinate efforts to build a miniature civilization on the island, as well as to attract the attention of rescuers by maintaining a signal fire on a mountain. But as the restraints of civilization fall away and the boys begin to act more and more wildly, Ralph is supplanted by the savage Jack. By the end of the book, Ralph has become a hunted outcast, as doomed as his civilizing endeavor; it is only the improbable arrival of a navy ship that saves his life. Throughout Lord of the Flies, Ralph represents the civilizing instinct within human beings, as opposed to the savage instinct symbolized by Jack.

Jack - The novel's antagonist, one of the older boys stranded on the jungle island. Jack is the leader of the choirboys, and, after Ralph is elected leader, Jack becomes the leader of the hunters. But Jack longs for overarching power; he becomes increasingly wild, barbarous, and cruel as the novel progresses. By the end of the book, he has learned to use the mythology of the beast as an instrument of control over the other boys, and has supplanted Ralph as ruler of the island. Jack's behavior leads directly to the murders of Simon and Piggy, and the only thing that keeps him from killing Ralph is the arrival of the navy ship at the very end of the book.

Simon - One of the most important and difficult characters in the novel, Simon is in some ways the only naturally "good" character on the island. Simon acts kindly toward the "littluns" and is always helpful to Ralph; moreover, because his motivation seems rooted in his deep feeling of connection to nature, Simon is the only character whose moral behavior does not seem a forced imposition of society. Simon is also the first character to realize that the "monster" frightening all the boys is indeed real (though not externally); it exists within each of them. After a terrifying, hallucinatory confrontation with the Lord of the Flies, Simon discovers that the figure the boys thought was a monster is only the body of a dead parachutist. But before he can reveal this knowledge, Simon is brutally murdered by the other boys, who mistake him for the beast as he approaches them on the beach.

Piggy - Ralph's lieutenant; a whiny, intellectual boy whose inventiveness frequently leads to innovation, such as the makeshift sundial. Just as Ralph represents the civilizing instinct and Jack the barbarizing instinct, Piggy represents the scientific, rational side of civilization. He is killed toward the end of the book when Roger drops a boulder on him, also crushing the conch shell that symbolized the boys' early, orderly civilization on the island.

Roger - Jack's lieutenant, a sadistic, cruel older boy who brutalizes the littluns and eventually murders Piggy by rolling a boulder onto him.

Sam and Eric - A pair of twins closely allied with Ralph until the end of the novel, when they are tortured into joining Jack's tribe. They are the first characters to mistake the body of the parachutist for the beast; they later betray Ralph by divulging his hiding-place to Jack. Sam and Eric are always together, and are often treated as a single entity by the other boys; they are frequently referred to as "Samneric."

The Lord of the Flies - The name given to the sow's head impaled on a stake and erected in the forest as an offering for the "beast" just after Jack's most brutal hunt. Just as the conch shell symbolizes order and civilization, so does the blood-encrusted sow's head, covered with flies, come to symbolize the primordial instincts of power and cruelty that take control of Jack's tribe. Simon has a hallucinatory encounter with the sow's head, during which it comes to life as the Lord of the Flies; it tells Simon horribly that he will never escape the Lord of the Flies, for he exists within all human beings. Toward the end of the novel, Ralph lashes out against the totem and casts the sow's head, now a bare skull, to the ground. He takes up the leftover stake as a weapon to use against Jack.

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