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"We are going to have fun on this island."
Repeated line

Lord of the Flies is a 1954 novel written by William Golding. It is a Deconstruction of the Kids' Wilderness Epic and Robinsonade. A plane full of British schoolboys crashes on a Deserted Island, and the darkness of humanity spills forth as they turn against each other.

It's had three cinematic adaptations (a British one in 1963, an American one in 1990, and a little-known Filipino adaptation called Alkitrang Dugo in 1975 that had boys and girls; a second American adaptation was announced in 2019, to be directed by Luca Guadanigno) and is referenced and parodied in various media. It is very popular for English Literature assignments in High School on both sides of the Pond and Down Under, thanks to its themes about morality and authority, and its symbolism, which is extremely easy to spot, but open to many different interpretations.

The best-known example (and possibly the Trope Maker) of a Teenage Wasteland, even when all the kids are under the age of fifteen.

Now with a character sheet.


This work provides examples of:

  • Acting Your Intellectual Age: Zigzagged with Piggy. As the most intellectual member of the group, Piggy often comes across as an adult in a child's body and thinks the others are acting like "a bunch of kids", but the fact that he is still a child with a lack of control over his own emotions is obvious when he allows his indignation to take him on unimpressive rants that makes him increasingly unpopular, and he is unable to accept that, in the eyes of the group, his points are undermined by the fact that he's the one making them, and makes them less likely to listen to Ralph, who could make the same point in a more persuasive way.
  • Adaptational Attractiveness: Jack is stated to be ugly in the novel, however, he is good looking in both the 1963 and 1990 version.
  • Adaptational Badass: In the 1990 film, the boys are recruits from military school. Therefore, they are able to adapt to the island much better than their book counterparts.
  • Adaptation Expansion:
    • A unique variation. The book's original opening, which explained the war and the plane crash in more detail, was cut from the final print (you can still read it if you plan to visit the University of Exeter where it is held). The 1963 film, however, restores the prologue by telling it through photographs, which depicts the plane being struck by lightning during a storm.
    • Some stage adaptations begin with a voice over mentioning the war in passing.
  • Adaptation Dye-Job:
    • In the novel, Ralph has light hair and Jack has red hair. The movies have Jack as a blond, Ralph as a brunette.
    • Simon is blond in the 1963 film, as opposed to having dark hair in the book.
  • Adaptation Name Change: All the boys who aren't Ralph, Jack, Piggy, Simon, Roger, and the Twins in the 1990 film have different names than the ones they have in the book.
  • Adaptational Nationality: The boys are British in the novel and 1963 film. In the 1990 film, they're American.
  • Adaptational Nice Guy: Ralph in the 1990 film. In the book and 1963 film, he's the one who spills the beans about Piggy's Embarrassing Nickname and takes part in killing Simon along with the other boys. In the 1990 film, it's the twins who reveal Piggy's Embarrassing Nickname and he doesn't take part in the melee.
  • Adults Are Useless:
    • The adults (at least the ones off-screen) are very inane and negligent regarding how they handled the future of the boys. They just dump an entire class of boys into a plane without any adults supervising them (unless the adult marshals on the plane died?) and you can tell they're not putting much effort in investigating what has become of the boys. The plane that did come near the island doesn't even see Ralph trying to signal it. Both the beginning and end of the novel suggests that adults are preoccupied with their own wars and are not much better from juvenile boys.
    • The one adult in the 1990 film (the plane's pilot) can qualify as this. Thanks to getting injured in the plane crash, he spends most of his screentime in a delirious state.
  • After the End: The boys were on a plane fleeing the soon-to-be-nuked UK. Though the home country is apparently in dire straits, the British Navy is still out doing its job as best as possible. May have verged into Cosy Catastrophe if it wasn't for the fact that mention of the war was a very minor framing device with little direct bearing on the story.
  • Ambiguous Time Period: The book does not give an exact time period beyond basic 20 Minutes into the Future though it cannot be earlier than October of 1952 when the book was written or even 1954 when it was published. Some say the book is set during World War II.
    • The 1990 film gives a more definitive setting: the late 80s.
  • Ambition Is Evil: Jack. His desire to be leader is evident from the outset.
  • Animal Motifs:
    • A sow's head on a pike, slowly decaying, serves as the metaphor for the decay of children's morals, thus making them closer to hoglike greed.
    • The title itself is a reference to Beelzebub.
  • Anti-Intellectualism:
    • With the exception of Ralph and Piggy, making a strong logical argument tends to be the quickest way to lose your audience when the oldest among them is fourteen, until eventually even trying to do so is an automatic failure; when Jack completely splits from Ralph, the most damning condemnation he can think of is that Ralph is "like Piggy. He says things like Piggy" and this may indeed have been what convinces so many people to join him.
    • The book itself looks at both sides; while firmly in favour of civilisation itself, it is clear from the beginning that Piggy, the most intellectual, never has a chance of being leader and Ralph, the second-best in terms of intelligence, is actually the best candidate. Ralph also notes repeatedly that being able to think about what they should do is no use to anyone if you don't have the strength and charisma to make it happen.
  • Anyone Can Die: It's far from pretty. From within the adventure on the island several characters do not survive regardless of how much focus they get in the narrative.
  • Artistic License – Physics: The divergent lens of Piggy's glasses (required for his short-sightedness) would be useless for lighting a fire. You would need a convergent lens, found in reading glasses. The kids would have had to learn one of the other methods for starting fires that they discussed, but that would break the plot.
  • Beauty Equals Goodness: In the book, The Hero Ralph is described as fair-haired, athletic, charismatic and handsome; Rival Turned Evil Jack is a redhead with freckles and is "ugly without silliness". The movie averts this. Jack is a perfectly pleasant-looking boy.
  • Be Careful What You Wish For: At one point Ralph wishes that "grown-ups" far from the island would send them "something grown-up... a sign or something." That very night a corpse from a nearby dogfight parachutes onto the mountaintop, excacerbating the boys' paranoia over a "beast" being loose on the island, scaring them from the best place to build a signal fire, and hastening the schism between Ralph and Jack.
  • Big Bad: Jack Merridew leads the hunters in revolt, causes all of the children to descend into savages, and is ultimately responsible for all of the conflict in the final act.
  • Big Eater: Most of the littleuns. Played for Drama because they spend most of their time eating fruit, which causes them to suffer from persistent stomach cramps and diarrhea since they never bother to check whether the fruit is ripe.
  • Big "NO!":
    • Ralph's reaction to Piggy before he's about to be killed by a rock, dropped by Roger, in the 90s remake.
    • In the book, when Jack completely splits from Ralph, Ralph calls after him one more time. Jack, with tears of humiliation in his eyes and his voice tight with fury, shrieks this in reply, both to Ralph and by extension to civilisation and decency in general.
  • Bittersweet Ending: A Deus ex machina prevents a Downer Ending, but the psychological scars remain. Just as Jack and the mob are about to kill Ralph, an officer of the Royal Navy appears on the island, which shocks all of the boys back to their senses as they realize that they're about to be rescued from the island. The boys all end up crying as they realize what they almost did, and how everything on the island was just leading up to brutality and death for no reason at all. In this case, the sudden appearance of the naval officer was intentional, as it was meant to highlight how the sudden appearance of authority changes everything.
    Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.
  • Black-and-Gray Morality: A number of those who side with Ralph are closer to the white side, but they're certainly not saints. The only character who is really above this is Simon. His foil, Roger, is established as someone who's pretty far on the black side.
  • Blow That Horn: Ralph and Piggy sound a conch shell to gather the boys together. The eventual crushing of the shell alongside Piggy symbolizes the descent into savagery of the boys.
  • Break the Cutie: All the kids to some extent given what they go through on the island. In the case of Piggy and Simon, Kill the Cutie.
  • Break Them by Talking:
    • Done by the Lord of the Flies to Simon about human nature and law of the jungle and stuff.
    • Averted with other characters, though, as both Jack and Ralph (in a more benevolent way) try to cow dissenters to their point of view with words at first, but their listeners tend to lack the mental sophistication to be argued with, and the increasing loss of words and articulacy is one of the clearest signs of their collapsing civilisation.
  • Character Catchphrase:
    • Ralph with 'sucks to your ass-mar''.
    • Piggy, also, with "I've got the conch!"
  • Chromosome Casting:
    • A male example - a bit less than half of the characters are pupils at single-sex boarding schools.
    • Averted in the Filipino adaptation Alkitrang Dugo, where the characters are male and female students (equivalent of junior high in the U.S.) who were on their way to compete in an athletic meet.
  • Coming of Age Story: Ralph is very happy about the absence of adults on the island, but quickly realizes how much responsibility he must take as the chief. At the end, when the mere presence of an adult stops their murderous battle instantly, it is shown that actually they haven't matured at all, and they are all still children with an instinctive deference to authority.
  • Cult: Jack's tribe becomes one by the end, offering sacrifices to the Beast that ultimately become its avatar.
  • Dare to Be Badass: Piggy, especially considering he's the most Non-Action Guy of the survivors...
  • Death Glare: When Jack allows the fire to go out just before a ship passes the island, preventing their rescue for the sake of fulfilling his obsession with hunting.
    Simon looked now, from Ralph to Jack... and what he saw seemed to make him afraid.
  • Deconstructive Parody: It was actually written as a parody, though the specific form of Kids Wilderness Robinsonade that it was attacking is something of a Forgotten Trope. It is also considered a rather brutal skewering of the pip-pip-cheerio book The Coral Island.
  • Description Porn: One major complaint about the book is that several paragraphs in a row can do nothing but describe the setting of the island. Word of God says this is to make it easier for the reader to visualize the characters' environment, as it punctuates the relativeness of just how hopeless their situation is. For some readers it works very well, for others it's alienating or even distracting.
  • Deserted Island: The stranded boys are the only humans on the island where the story is set.
  • Deus ex machina: This is what turns the ending into a Bittersweet Ending instead of a Downer Ending. Ralph is rescued by the Royal Navy at the last minute, effectively out of the blue. This was intentional, as the Naval Officer is important in rounding off the themes of the story; and the sudden abruptness with which he appears, with absolutely no foreshadowing, is crucial to highlighting the rapidity with which the appearance of an authority can change everything.
  • Disaster Democracy: They try something like this at first. Ralph is the chief, with some level of dictatorial power that he seldom uses, but he is put there by the consent of the group.
  • The Dividual: Sam and Eric, who are commonly referred to with one name (Samneric) and are recognized as one person in the assembly. The silliness of this gets mentioned late in the book by Piggy, who notes that they take one shift at keeping the fire lit, even though they should split up and take two.
  • Double Entendre:
    • The scene early in the book when Jack and Ralph are getting embarrassed about having to start a fire by rubbing two sticks together. Probably an Accidental Innuendo on William Golding's part, though, if his comments about not intentionally including anything about sexuality in the book are to be believed.
    • The scene where the screaming sow is killed with sharpened sticks is written as a gang-rape. The scene where the kids reenact this, using Robert as a replacement pig, is even worse, what with lines like "Ralph too was fighting to get near, to get a handful of that brown, vulnerable flesh."
  • The Dragon: Roger becomes this to Jack as his tribe's executioner and torturer.
  • Dying for Symbolism: Two incidents mark milestones in the makeshift society's descent into barbarism.
    • Simon's death represents the end of innocence of the kids on the island.
    • Piggy's death, after he makes a moral stand for order and unity, marks the complete collapse of civilization, symbolised by the shattering of the conch. Sam and Eric are captured, and Ralph is left helpless and alone.
  • Eldritch Abomination: One of the many theories about what the beast really is. At first it's bad enough that there might be a beast on the island, and the boys argue over the beast's possible form. Until little Percival drops this bombshell:
    Ralph: He says the beast comes out of the sea.
  • Enemy Within: "Maybe there is no monster on the island. Maybe... it's just us..." The Lord of the Flies outright states this to Simon in a vision.
    Lord of the Flies: You knew, didn't you? I'm part of you? Close, close, close! I'm the reason why it’s no go? Why things are what they are?
  • Even Evil Has Standards: Jack does have the capacity for guilt and shame for some of his Kick the Dog actions, though he buries his guilt with anger, making him likely to Kick the Dog again. One example of this is after the first hunt, he leaves Piggy without any food at first as a display of dominance (while intending to give him some eventually), but then, when Piggy asks him about it and brings the issue into the open, he flatly refuses to give him any. However, when Simon gives Piggy his share, Jack's deteriorating conscience still won't let the unselfish Simon go without, so he gives him more, and then furiously shouts at Simon to eat it. Also, he is as shocked by the accidental killing of Simon as all the others, and his shouting at Roger after he kills Piggy for something unrelated could suggest he actually was horrified by what happened, and was trying to find some other excuse to be angry.
  • Evil Redhead: Jack is the cruelest character in the book (apart from Roger) and is also a redhead.
  • Expository Hairstyle Change: As the months pass, all the boys' hair becomes long and shaggy (except for the wise Piggy's), and, especially for our hero, Ralph, starts obscuring their vision.
  • Failed Future Forecast: Lord of the Flies is actually set in the near future (of 1956), after a nuclear war between the USSR and Britain. This is mentioned by some of the boys in the book (along with the existence of nuclear bombs and their use), although usually in passing.
  • Fate Worse than Death: If you think about it, the boys becoming forced to live on an island and form their own government is worse than having just died in the plane crash.
  • Follow the White Rabbit: In the 1990 film, one of the boys in Jack’s hunting party wanders off to follow an iguana into a cave, leading to him to encounter the delirious Captain Benson and mistaking him to be a monster, thus kicking off the film’s beast subplot.
  • Foreshadowing:
    • In hindsight, the arrival of the Royal Navy at the book's climax is predicted early in the book, though none present could have guessed the circumstances under which that would happen.
    • In the 1990s film adaptation, the ritual we see at the feast foreshadows that there must always be a pig, or better yet a beast to be hunted, even if one of the boys has to play the role. Their new society cannot exist without one. Immediately after, Simon is mistaken for a monster and killed, followed by Piggy some days later, with the final target being Ralph.
  • Four-Temperament Ensemble: Ralph and Jack are Choleric, Piggy is Melancholic, Samneric are Sanguine, and Simon is Phlegmatic.
  • Friend to All Living Things: Simon is the only boy who enjoys the island as a natural paradise and adopts a lizard as a pet. He even makes a little "Happy Place" for himself in the more nature-beautiful side of the woods that represents his innate good nature and innocence. The sow's head placed later represents how evil has started to contaminate.
  • Genre Deconstruction: Takes a sledgehammer to the Kids' Wilderness Epic. The whole story is a depiction of what would really happen if a group of (city) kids are trapped on an island with no adult supervision. However, this has to be taken with a grain of salt as the author based it on his very negative experience of being a teacher to children who never had to worry about basic necessities, which may explain why things went as extreme as they did.
    • Ralph has trouble governing the other boys because they're either scared, power-hungry or just plain irresponsible. The kids goof off during one of their tasks and the group misses the first boat, the younger kids also start believing there's a monster on the island and Jack starts going crazy due to a newfound love of hunting.
    • The monster in question is revealed to be a dead fighter pilot, the boys are frightened of it because they've never seen a human corpse before. The closest thing to a supernatural element in the story is the conversation between Simon and the pig head (which calls itself "The Lord of the Flies"), which is only possible because Simon was hallucinating.
    • When the boys work themselves into a frenzy, they unwittingly kill Simon. Who came to disprove the existence of a monster by charging into the feast and screaming, which causes the boys to mistake him for the monster.
    • One of the boys, Roger, is harboring psychopathic urges, and with no adults to rein him in, he starts entertaining the idea of killing one of the boys, which then leads to the death of Piggy.
  • Genre Savvy: Ralph describes being on an island "Like a book." Which causes many of the littluns to name out titles such as "Treasure Island" and similar stories. Just how Wrong Genre Savvy they are about this becomes increasingly apparent as the book goes on.
  • Good Is Impotent: A major theme of the book.
    • Ralph and Piggy can't get the boys to work together for their own good when faced against the savage impulses that Jack champions, Simon, The Heart, spends all his time alone until he has an epiphany about "the monster" and is unable to tell the others about it, and in a subtle but telling passage, when the twins, the last boys who support Ralph and Piggy, are bound by Jack and the others, the text describes their meager protests as "protested out of the heart of civilization" with lines like "Oh, I say!" and the like. This is contrasted with the brutal directness and action of Jack and his followers, and how easily it overwhelms the good.
    • Piggy more or less symbolizes this. He is the only one who keeps any kind of straight mind, but his severe physical handicaps and his own nerdiness prevent him from asserting these ideals. And when his glasses are stolen from him, it symbolizes the collapse of order as he is left helpless. The fact that he then acts as a standard-bearer for the conch while having to be led by The Leader and flanked by the twins with spears suggests that civilisation is useless without the vision to go forward and the ability to defend itself.
    • While Piggy represents the goodness of lawful civilization, Simon represents the inherent goodness in humanity by being the one boy who's compassionate, cares for the "littluns", is actually nice to Piggy and he's introspective enough to look within himself and self-regulate. He's also isolated for being "weird", and suffers from debilitating fainting spells and implied epilepsy. He's the only boy who reaches an epiphany about the true evil in the island and uncovers the truth about "the beast" only to be killed right after in a blind frenzy, and he's quickly forgotten, symbolising how goodness is forgotten in favour of savagery and alluviation of guilt.
  • Greater-Scope Villain: The nation(s) that started the war that led to the evacuation that got the boys stranded on the island in the first place.
  • Grey-and-Grey Morality: All the boys (except Simon) show great potential for cruelty, sadism and tendency to unite with each other by bullying the vulnerable. Ralph takes out his frustrations on Piggy several times, and Piggy joins in the other boys in denigrating Simon when he tries to point out that maybe the Beast is an Enemy Within, despite it being exactly the sort of thoughtful point he gets mocked for making himself. However, rather than depicting them as nasty hypocrites who are little better than Jack or Roger, the book uses this to show that every person, no matter how admirable they usually are, suffers from similar weaknesses.
  • Half-Hearted Henchman: Some of those who join Jack's side only do so out of fear of being killed by him. Piggy even suggests to Ralph (when they're the only ones left of their team) that they might as well join him too or else they'll get killed like Simon was. Later on in the book, when Jack's group murders Piggy and is searching for Ralph to kill him too, the twins who were formerly on Ralph's team find him, but they don't blow his cover since they don't want to kill him, and never wanted to in the first place.
  • Headache of Doom: All of the boys get headaches as a result of the humidity on the island, which is foreshadowing how quickly they're going to lose their minds. Simon in particular mentions suffering a headache not long before encountering the Lord of the Flies himself.
  • Heavy Sleeper: All of the boys are somehow able to sleep right through the aerial battle (the one that results in the dead pilot landing on the island) that's going on right above their heads.
  • Heel Realization: After spending the entire book descending further down the pit of insanity, the appearance of the Naval Officer at the very end to come rescue them only crystallizes exactly how far the boys have fallen. It makes all the events of the book aside from the initial plane crash seem exceptionally small, petty, and ultimately meaningless in the face of such a stark reminder of the order and culture everyone so casually sloughed off.
  • Heroic BSoD:
    • Piggy starts to break down when Jack and his choir steal his glasses to start fires. Without those glasses, Piggy is virtually blind. He then gets desperate enough to start begging Jack to join him with promises to share those glasses for his vision and for starting fires. Roger ultimately kills him with a rock in the middle of Piggy's pleas for the return of his glasses.
    • Ralph falls into one at the end (after the Navy saves him just in time from being executed by Jack) due to the trauma he has from being on the island, losing his friend Piggy, and nearly being killed himself.
  • He Who Fights Monsters: Jack and his choir and eventually almost every boy on the island turn into savage beasts in their obsession with killing the beast.
  • Hobbes Was Right: Could be considered to be an example of this trope, but it could also be considered to simply be an example of a Crapsack World setting implying that government and anarchy are both bound to fail given that it starts with a wartime evacuation and ends with the boys being rescued by a naval warship, thereby subtly implying that even "civilized" society is not actually any better. The book is accessible to several critical interpretations.
  • A House Divided: The boys quickly devolve into two groups, a small one led by Ralph, and a much bigger one led by Jack. While Ralph understands that the boys wish to have fun (let alone he even encouraged having fun a few times), the real reason he's pissed at Jack and splits ways with him is because Jack made them miss a chance to signal an adult to go home.
  • Humanoid Abomination: The pig's head on a stick is suspiciously human-like, especially at a distance. It's about the height of a person... only with a pig's head instead of a human head. Considering it was quite dark when the boys first put it up, no wonder they ran away.
  • Humans Are Bastards: The Beast is strongly implied to be a product of the boys' own natures.
  • Hypocrite:
    • Hinted at, at least. When the Naval Officer who finds the boys scolds them for reverting to savagery in a way he describes as unbecoming of British boys, it is noted that when they start crying he turns away uncomfortably... and looks at the warship he serves on.
    • Jack, bigtime. He starts out saying that rules are what make us civilized and that they're not savages, they're proud Englishmen...yet he's the first person to leave the group because of the rules and in turn creates and leads the savage tribe.
  • Ignorant About Fire: The boys light a large fire in the middle of some dry grass. When the grass around them starts to burn, they need a few minutes to realize this.
  • Incorruptible Pure Pureness: Simon, who is usually described by literary critics as a Christ-like figure.
  • Irony:
    • Ralph wants to keep the fire lit to attract rescue. Jack wants the fire snuffed out so their fun won't end. Jack manages to draw the attention of the Royal Navy by setting fire to the entire island in an attempt to kill Ralph. It is implied that they wouldn't have noticed the island at all otherwise.
    • The savagery ends and "humanity" seems about to be reasserted... by the arrival of the military. In a big moment of self-awareness after scolding the surviving boys, the officer even realises that the war he is fighting is fundamentally the same situation as the boys, but on a bigger scale.
  • Isle of Giant Horrors: Played with. Most of the boys think there is a physical beast and by the end of the book start to almost worship it, but there is no "real" beast. The idea of the beast is actually used to represent humanity's innate evil.
  • It Gets Easier: Roger escalates from hitting "littluns" with rocks to participating in Simon's kill in mass hysteria to outright murdering Piggy.
  • The Ken Burns Effect: The events leading up to the plane crash in the 1963 film are told through photographs. The opening credits play over said film as well.
  • Karma Houdini: Jack, Roger, and their followers receive no punishment for killing Simon and Piggy.
  • Kids Are Cruel: Big time, especially with Roger. The islanders are particularly mean to Piggy.
  • Kill the Cutie: Simon and Piggy.
  • Lampshade Hanging: The officer who rescues them just as Ralph is about to be killed remarks, "Jolly good show. Like The Coral Island," with said book being one of the cheerier Rousseau Was Right novels.
  • Loners Are Freaks: Roger is described as being a mysterious and quiet boy who likes to keep to himself when he and the choir boys are telling Ralph and Piggy their names.
  • Madness Mantra:
    • "Percival Wemys Madison, The Vicarage, Harcourt St. Anthony, Hants, telephone, telephone, tele–..."
    • "Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!"
  • Mature Work, Child Protagonists: A group of British schoolboys crashes on a Deserted Island where, instead of engaging in a traditional Robinsonade, they devolve into brutality and turn against one another. And yes, nowadays it is a set book at many schoolsnote  but originally it has not been aimed at kids.
  • Meaningful Name: Three of the main characters are named directly after Coral Island characters. The fourth? Simon from Peterkin.
  • Messianic Archetype: Subverted and deconstructed. The description of Simon's death sounds very much alike an atonement sacrifice, but rather than save the boys for their sins, or just show them that how they act is wrong, it just pushes them deeper into moral guilt as they proceed to completely forget about him, cementing the loss and oblivion of innocence.
  • Murder by Mistake: Simon's death at the hands of the other boys.
  • My God, What Have I Done?: Ralph, Piggy, Sam and Eric when they realize they and the other boys killed Simon.
  • Naming Conventions: At that time and place, the pupils should be on a Last-Name Basis and Jack insists on "Merridew", but everyone quickly accepts First-Name Basis, except for Piggy, whose nickname started out as an insult. Due to this, none of the important characters has his full name revealed except for Jack. And, to a lesser extent, the littlun with the birthmark.
  • National Geographic Nudity:
  • Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Jack sets the entire island on fire to kill Ralph, but the massive amount of smoke attracts a Naval ship, which Ralph and Piggy have been awaiting the whole book long.
  • No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: In order to soften the blow of losing his leadership to him, Ralph declares Jack leader of the hunters. This earnest gesture can largely be seen as the beginning of the end, as it inadvertently sows the seeds of a rival faction with Jack at its head.
  • Oh, Crap!: Ralph, upon seeing Sam and Eric fighting each other, realizes how screwed his order is.
  • Only Known by Their Nickname: Piggy, whose nickname started out as an insult. Ralph never bothers to learn his real name.
  • Parachute in a Tree: The 'monster' is actually a dead parachuter.
  • Primal Fear: What gradually leads the boys into becoming superstitious and violent savages.
  • Psychic Nosebleed: Simon and his feverish confrontation/hallucination with the pig's head.
  • Psycho Supporter: Roger.
  • Putting on the Reich: Jack's attitude, rhetoric and eventual reign over the other boys have strong shades of Nazi Germany. His mud mask is a striking design in red, white and black...
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni: Jack and Ralph, respectively.
  • Red Scare: In the 1990 movie, Ralph and Piggy contemplate the idea of building a wooden raft to sail away from the island. Piggy proposed this idea, but then he scraps it because he doesn't want to run into any Russians who might be circling the seas.
  • Robinsonade: Though depicts a Man vs Man story rather than one of Man vs Nature. While the island does have fish and wild pigs to help sustain the boys, the protagonists are still in grave danger because of their inability to save their failing government and because Ralph is in danger of being killed by the same boys he tried to govern.
  • Rule of Symbolism: Most of the book. Jack insists on being called "Merridew" and leads a choir. Eventually, after he discovers how to kill, his group degenerates into savagery. Sound similar to the story of anyone we know? Oh, and the spectral corpse on the mountain that terrifies everyone is the Shadow of War, harmless in fact (the pilot is dead), but terrifying to look at.
  • Sanity Slippage: All the boys in general except Piggy, but Jack in particular. In Roger's case it's a short trip.
  • Saying Too Much: Roger asks one of the boys what his name is, and he replies that he doesn't care what they call him, as long as they don't call him "Piggy" as he was called in school. Had he never revealed that, none of the boys on the island would have called him that in the first place.
  • Screams Like a Little Girl: In the 1990 film, Larry does this when he encounters the beast (who in actuality is the delirious Captain Benson) in the cave.
  • Sensitive Guy and Manly Man:
    • Ralph and Jack. The blonde Ralph is mostly calm, sensible, collected and usually avoids confrontation, while the red-haired Jack is loudmouthed, aggressive, even downright brutal, and loves confrontation. They even practice different activities, as Ralph usually stays in the same place, watching over the other boys and trying to assure them their safety, while Jack runs around the entire island and is obsessed with hunting and killing animals.
    • Also, Simon and Piggy are the sensitive guys compared to the rest of the boys.
  • Shout-Out:
    • Golding wrote Lord of the Flies partly to subvert children's adventure literature, in particular The Coral Island by R.M. Ballantyne, which also provided the names of Ralph and Jack. The Naval officer even has the following line:
      "I know. Jolly good show. Like The Coral Island."
    • This completes the Book Ends begun when the children first realize they're alone on a tropical island.
      "It's like in a book."
      At once there was a clamor.
      "Treasure Island—"
      "Swallows and Amazons—"
      "Coral Island—"
      Ralph waved the conch.
      "This is our island. It's a good island. Until the grownups come to fetch us we'll have fun."
  • Single-Minded Twins: Sort of. Sam and Eric are separate people, but separately, they can't do anything. They are treated as one person: Samneric.
  • Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism: Way, way down on the cynical end of the scale. It's big on the Kids Are Cruel/Teens Are Monsters and nothing the "good" characters do yields good results. Just ask Simon and Piggy... oh wait.
  • Small, Secluded World: The whole plot takes place on an deserted remote island.
  • The Sociopath:
    • Roger.
    • And likely Jack, after a while. It's clear he didn't arrive on the island as a sociopath, but it seems his psyche eventually descended into sociopathy.
  • Solar-Powered Magnifying Glass: Piggy's glasses are used to set fires, despite the above mention of Artistic License.
  • Stealth Parody: The author hated the "British boys able to survive with a Stiff Upper Lip" stories that were popular at the time, and this book was meant to be a realistic parody at best, and a Take That! at worst.
  • Survival Mantra: Poor Percival, one of the littluns, having been driven to a depression and loneliness from the neglect by the older boys, tirelessly recites his name and address—"Percival Wemys Madison, The Vicarage, Harcourt St. Anthony, Hants"—like an incantation", only for his memory to begin to falter as the story and degradation of the island's civilization progresses. By the end, when Percival is finally able to recite this crucial information to someone that can actually help him, he can only mouth wordlessly at the naval officer, his time on the island causing him to have forgotten it.
  • Symbolically Broken Object: The destruction of the conch shell symbolizes the breakdown of civilization.
  • Take That!: To The Coral Island at the end.
  • Team Mom: Simon is the one who mostly takes care of the littluns. In a lesser degree, Piggy, whose constant quoting of his aunt makes him the only female voice around the bunch of boys. Ralph also shows his concerns over the younger boys later and actually bickers with Jack about this, who doesn't care in the least about the problem.
  • Teens Are Monsters: While some of them are in their pre-teens, they're all very mean-spirited, especially toward Piggy.
  • Teenage Wasteland: The children have to figure out how to govern themselves on the island. It doesn't go well. Possibly the Trope Maker.
  • Tempting Fate: Piggy specifically tells the boys he didn't want to be called by that nickname, which they wouldn't even have known about otherwise. What did he expect?
  • That Man Is Dead: Implied when Percival Wemys Madison, who has made of his name and address his Survival Mantra, forgets it exactly at the moment he meets someone who can really help him.
  • Those Two Guys: Samneric are Sam and Eric. However, they're so often together that the story considers them as one character.
  • Title Drop: The title comes from when Simon hallucinates that a dead pig's head covered in flies is talking to him.
  • Toilet Humor: Ralph and Piggy, when they first try to blow the conch, find the loud farting noise extremely funny.
  • Token Minority: Rapper and Pablo in the 1990 film are the only boys on the island who are of African American and Hispanic American descent.
  • Too Good for This Sinful Earth: Simon is a Jesus figure, and meets a similar fate.
  • Tribal Face Paint: Featured with Jack and the hunters. One of the chapters is, after all, named "Painted Faces and Long Hair".
  • Tropical Island Adventure: The book is about a group of children being stranded on a tropical island and trying to survive.
  • True Companions: Subverted. The boys think they'll be like this, but they quickly turn against each other.
  • Waif Prophet: Simon is a male example.
  • Weird Moon: A thin crescent moon cannot possibly rise at sunset, as shown in one scene — such a moon would have to be full.
  • Wham Line: In-universe, when Jack and his hunters return from their first hunt (letting the signal fire go out in the process) and finding Ralph by the ashes.
    • When Ralph asks Samneric what Jack intends to do with him if they successfully hunt him down.
      "Roger sharpened a stick at both ends." note 
  • What Beautiful Eyes!: Simon's eyes are described as "so bright they had deceived Ralph into thinking him delightfully gay and wicked." In Fanon, these are portrayed as Innocent Blue Eyes due to Simon being the purest of the boys, or green eyes to show Simon's connection to nature.
  • What Happened to the Nuclear War?: Remember when Piggy mentioned the atom bomb being dropped on England in the first chapter of the book? Well, contrary to what Fanon tells you, it’s very unlikely that the boys will be going back to their families any time soon and the book leaves it ambiguous as to whether or not the war is over.
  • Wise Beyond Their Years: Ralph, Piggy and Simon are all the smartest characters, often trying to make logical arguments about how to survive. However, the Anti-Intellectualism on display means that they quickly lose their audience.
  • Wrong Genre Savvy: The kids initially think that the story will be like a Kids' Wilderness Epic and Robinsonade, and that they're "going to have fun on this island". However, they are very wrong about that. Without any authority around them, the kids quickly devolve into savage brutality.

And whatever you do, we mustn't let the fire go out. Because... because... oh God, I can't remember.

Alternative Title(s): Lord Of The Flies

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