Three-Act Plot Analysis

Act I

The boys arrive on the island, realize that no adults are present, and begin to organize themselves. Ralph is elected chief. Jack takes over the group of hunters. The boys explore the island and find that it is uninhabited.

Act II

Jack begins to hunt in earnest. He is obsessed with killing a pig for them to eat. Ralph is concerned with keeping the signal fire going in the hopes that they will be rescued, and the two boys have strong competing interests. Piggy’s glasses are half-broken. Jack and his hunters kill a mother pig in a gory rape/murder scene, leaving its head impaled on a stake as a gift for the beast, of which they are all afraid. Simon names the pig’s head “the Lord of the Flies” and has a vision in which it speaks to him.

Act III

Jack pulls many of the boys away from Ralph onto “his side,” and they become more and more violent and savage as they paint themselves with red and white clay, perform ritual pig hunts, and feast on the pigs they kill. Simon, in an act of great bravery, discovers that the beast is only a dead man. When he goes down the mountain to tell the rest of the boys that they have nothing to fear, they think he is the beast and beat him to death in a frenzy of violence. Piggy is murdered. Ralph is chased through the jungle, and the boys are rescued by the British Navy.