In the middle of an evacuation, a British plane crashes in a remote region of the Pacific Ocean.

Finding themselves shipwrecked on a nearby desert island, the blond Ralph in the company of a
bespectacled and overweight boy (who immediately but reluctantly agrees to take on the
nickname "Piggy", i.e. little pig) finds a sea shell which, played by Ralph as if it were a horn, it
becomes the first call towards the other survivors. This sound brings together a large number of
missing children, including the twins Sam and Eric, and a group of choristers, led by the tawny
Jack.

Thanks in large part to the fact that Ralph appears capable of rallying the little ones and taking as
much responsibility for them as he can, he is quickly elected "leader", even though he does not
receive the votes of the choir members; and here the thoughtful and wise Ralph will immediately
indicate, as one of the main measures to be taken and respected, that of always keeping a fire lit
on the mountain and protecting it, so that the smoke signal can warn any passing ships of their
presence on the island .

The boys also decide that whoever stops the shell must have the right to speak, to therefore
express their opinion at the assembly meetings, obtaining in exchange the attentive silence of all
the others.

2 - Fire on the mountain

Jack organizes his group of choristers for a first hunting trip, so that he becomes responsible for
the supply of fresh meat; having gone inside, they head towards the mountain and, at a certain
point, decide to try to see if they can light a fire.

However, the two natural leaders are joined shortly afterwards by a quiet, somewhat dreamy-
looking boy named Simon; Piggy on the other hand, although he immediately became Ralph's
companion and advisor, is in fact relegated to the role of an outcast by the older kids and
continues to be a source of laughter and ridicule from everyone. At the same time, Simon, in
addition to supervising the housing and shelter construction project, demonstrates an instinctive
need to protect the smallest and most defenseless ones by taking care of them.

3 - Huts on the beach

Fear also begins to hover among the boys regarding the presence of an indefinable "Beast". Some
refer to an alleged monster that lives inside, an unknown ancestral demon that terrorizes young
people; this insinuates itself more and more into the souls of the kids until it makes everyone's life
more and more terrible.

Each of the kids must therefore begin to adapt as best they can to the new situation that has
arisen; shelters begin to be built and the first supplies of food and water collected; However, this
semblance of order quickly deteriorates and after a while most of them begin to no longer worry
much about these basic daily needs and instead spend the day calmly playing and eating freshly
picked fruit. Time passes and the kids get more and more used to that way of life made up of
games and fun, often forgetting to keep the fire lit.

4 - Painted faces and long hair

Jack, who has implicitly started a power struggle with Ralph, together with Roger and the more
adventurous, already quite intolerant of the calm, serious and quiet discipline imposed with
authority by Ralph, try to move inwards; as a sign of recognition and separation, but also to blend
in in the middle of the woods, they paint their faces with the black of charred wood. Added to the
hair that already falls a little long to the shoulders, the painting makes them look like authentic
primitive savages.

At a certain point, his followers, embarking on a pig hunt, abandon the places that had been
assigned to them to guard the hearth. Precisely at that moment a ship passes near the island.
However, as there is no smoke signal, none of the crew notices the castaways, so the boat
continues unaware to its destination, without having been alerted.

5 - A beast from the sea

Soon the cohesion of the two groups (one in charge of fire and housing and the other in charge of
game approval) loses its raison d'être and the role of commander in chief played until then by
Ralph begins to fail : the construction of the huts is therefore abandoned and Ralph's attempt at
organization is destroyed. Having put the latter's authority into question, Jack increasingly takes
his place in command with his group of hunters, now abandoned to the wild life and the most
archaic superstition. Extremely irritated by the turn of events, Ralph considers and ponders the
possibility of leaving his leadership position, but is convinced not to do so by Piggy with Simon's
support. Piggy finally makes his way into the hearts of the little ones, convincing them that
perhaps the terrible beast could be a huge sea monster that swims towards the shore during the
night in search of food.

While Jack begins to plot with his men against Ralph's leadership, the "Samneric" twins, now in
charge of maintaining the smoke signal, glimpse in the darkness the corpse of a pilot still attached
to his parachute, hanging from the branches of a large tree. At first mistaking the man's body for
the beast that scares the little ones, they run at breakneck speed to the shelters that Ralph, with
the collaboration of Simon, has just finished building, with the intent of warning everyone of the
danger.

This unexpected event seems to create new tensions between Jack and Ralph: the hunter in fact
promises him to leave immediately together with him to go and kill the elusive 'Beast'; indeed, he
thinks of taking the group to the other side of the island, and perhaps raising a fort there, from
which he can dominate with his gaze and control the entire surrounding area.

7 - Shadows and tall trees

The hunters are launched on the trail of a herd of wild boars and have caught one, they are now
able to follow the trail with agility, the direction is clear; taken by delusions of protagonism at a
certain point Jack imposes on the others a test of courage, that is, to go further and further inland
where a stony mountain stands - called "Castle Rock" - which could also be the true place of
residence , he claims, of the mysterious beast.

But only his already fanatical and somewhat sadistic ally and supporter Roger seems willing to
follow him with his eyes closed; Ralph, who could not help himself from demonstrating that he
was not afraid, continues for a while among the shadows of the large trees together with the
other two, until he convinces them to give up.

8 - A gift for the darkness

This last fact, added to the previous ones, further strengthens Jack's intention to oust his
adversary from the command post through a sort of 'general insurrection'; However, having once
again received very little support from the community, Jack, Roger and another boy abandon the
shelters to form a separate autonomous tribe.

Little by little, however, they manage to attract new recruits, taking them away from the main
group, also thanks to a fascinating ritual in which their members, biting into pork, paint their faces,
then perform strange dances and offer sacrifices in honor of the beast (or to try to attract her to
him). The head of a pig previously killed by Jack, impaled on a pole and surrounded by insects,
becomes their primary totem.

9 - A vision of death
Simon meanwhile (probably suffering from epilepsy), goes away alone to reflect until he stumbles
upon the severed pig's head left by Jack as an offering to the beast; the boy, seeing her swarming
with flies, immediately imagines her as "The Lord of the Flies" (Phoenician epithet of the god
Beelzebub) and has the hallucination that she is talking to him. This 'talking head' then seems to
reveal to him that they would never have been able to stop him as he is already inside all of them,
having infected the boys' souls.

Along the way back, Simon also identifies the dead paratrooper mistaken for the beast, and is thus
the first and only member of the group to finally recognize the 'truth': the alleged monster is
nothing more than a simple human corpse whose body lacks life is made to move messily by the
wind. The boy hopes to find Ralph as soon as possible to reveal the discovery he has just made;
while feverishly staggering back to the beach he instead finds Jack's tribe in the middle of a tribal
hunters' festival.

Intent on dancing half naked around the hearth surrounded by darkness, the boys mistake Simon
himself for the beast, who is thus murdered by spears thrown by his companions who seem to
have been seized by a frenetic delirium.

10 - The shell and the glasses

Jack and his band of savages decide that they must steal Piggy's glasses, the only means that can
allow them to light fire inside the island, concentrating the sun's rays; so they raid Ralph's camp
and manage to get hold of the glasses and then rush back to their home in Castle Rock. Ralph, who
has now been abandoned by most of his initial supporters, heads towards the fortress to confront
Jack face to face and try to recover Piggy's glasses, without which the boy cannot see within an
inch of his life. from the nose.
11 - The Castle
Carrying with him his last remaining symbol of authority, the conch, accompanied by Piggy and the
twins, Ralph arrives at the camp of his rival's tribe and asks Jack to immediately return what for
poor Piggy is a precious object in how much without them he can't see anything. But part of the
tribe has already surrounded them, taking them from behind; the twins are taken prisoner while
Roger, causing a boulder to fall from the point at the top of the cliff where he is observing, kills
Piggy and shatters the shell. Ralph barely manages to escape, while Sam and Eric are tortured until
they also agree to join Jack's tribe.

12 - The cry of the hunters

The following morning Jack orders his subordinates, the pack, to look for the enemy now made up
only of Ralph but, not finding him, he decides to set fire to the entire island to try to block him and
finally kill him. The manhunt continues frenetically with the flames advancing further and further
and the chased boy has no choice but to dive headlong into the forest and run towards the beach,
awaiting death. Here, however, he fortunately comes across a naval officer whose military ship,
having been attracted by the smoke, had stopped at that moment in front of the island.

Ralph cries in despair for the atrocious deaths that befell Simon and Piggy and for the end of the
innocence that the darkness has brought to them all. In asking for initial information on the status
of those present - by now the others have also arrived - the officer asks: "You haven't killed
anyone, I hope". However, the man who learns of the two crimes will be initially shocked, but then
becomes moved and embarrassed by the tears of the group, in whom the memory of the terrible
adventure they have just experienced has remained indelible.

THEME:
The predominant theme of the novel concerns the pessimistic view, on the conception of man,
which the author considers intrinsically "bad", both in nature and in society. In fact, Golding
himself wrote: "Man produces evil as bees produce honey".

The only two latent fears are the fear of what can happen to them during sleep (which we will call
primary fear) and the fear of no longer being saved (which we will call secondary fear).

in the story, the main promoter of the "beast" is Jack himself (the other children, including Ralph
and Piggy, avoid talking about it, they are so terrified of it!). Jack understands this weakness of the
group and wants to ride it to gain power: he therefore decides to face the beast and defeat it and
in this way he gains the consensus of the group, to the detriment of the democratic Ralph. Once in
power, he himself chooses to keep the beast alive, idolizing it and appeasing it even through
human sacrifices to fuel its fear. This allows Jack to easily exercise control over the group: each
child finds himself blocked within the perimeter of the enclosure for fear of the beast and unable
to contradict Jack and his colonels, for fear of becoming a sacrificial gift. This is the fate that awaits
Ralph, as the only possible destabilizing unit. For the rest of the group, there is no way out other
than the pursuit of the same established power and respect for the rules, the only possibility to try
to climb a few ranks in the hierarchy of power and thus improve their social status.