Sam and Eric: These two twins are the only boys who remain with Ralph and Piggy to tend the fire after the others abandon Ralph for Jack's tribe. The two twins are thought of as a single individual, and even their names become blurred into one.
Roger: One of the hunters and the guard at the castle rock fortress, Roger is Jack's equal in cruelty. Even before the hunters descend into savagery, Roger is boorish and crude, kicking down sand castles and throwing sand at others. When the other boys do lose all sense of civilized behaviour, it is Roger who murders Piggy.
Maurice: During the hunters' "Kill the pig" chant, Maurice, who is one of Jack's hunters, pretends to be a pig while the others pretend to slaughter him. When the hunters kill a pig, Jack smears blood on Maurice's face.
Percival: One of the littlest boys on the island, Percival attempts to comfort himself by repeating his name and address as a sign of home life. He falls into hysterics during the course of the novel and requires comforting by the older boys. At the end of the novel, as the boys are rescued, Percival finds himself unable to repeat his name and address.
Phil: This "littlun" claims that, after awaking from a nightmare, he saw a beast walking around the jungle at night, mistakenly identifying Simon as the beast.
Bill: One of Jack's hunters, he searches for Ralph after Piggy's murder. Ralph notices how he no longer resembles the civilized English boy in short pants that Ralph once knew.
Henry: One of the younger boys on the island, he plays in the beach, building sand castles with Percival.
Wilfred: Roger discusses how Jack orders that this boy be tied up for no apparent reason.
Character Profiles
Jack: Jack is described by Golding as "tall, thin, and bony; and his hair was red beneath the black cap. His face was crumpled and freckled, and ugly without silliness. Out of this face stared two light blue eyes, frustrated now, and turning, or ready to turn, to anger."
Jack is the leading advocate of anarchy on the island. Jack is the leader of the savage tribe which hunts the pigs. Opposed to Ralph and Piggy on almost all matters, Jack represents the id of one’s personality— he supports the notion that one’s desires are most important and should be followed, regardless of reason or morals.
Jack is the kind of person which Golding believed everyone would eventually become if left alone to set one’s own standards and live the way one naturally wanted. Golding believed that the natural state of humans is chaos and that man is inherently evil. When reason is abandoned, only the strong survive. Jack personifies this idea perfectly.
Piggy: Piggy is described by Golding as short and very fat. It’s no coincidence that Piggy’s nickname is such; the overwhelming emotion Jack and his hunters have to "kill the pig" is an indirect and clever author metaphor to suggest the boys are also killing a part of Piggy. In fact, while Jack and his gang continue to kill more pigs, the logic and reason which Piggy symbolizes progressively diminishes with the pigs. Piggy’s hair never grows, suggesting that he is not vulnerable to the progression of savagery the other boys seem to be drawn towards.
Piggy represents the law and order of the adult world. He is the superego, the part of man’s personality which attempts to act according to an absolute set of standards. Throughout the novel, Piggy attempts to condition the island society to mirror the society they all lived in in England. Piggy’s continual references to his auntie demonstrate this philosophy. He tries to pull Ralph towards the reason-oriented side of human nature.
Piggy is obsessed with the signal-fire. This is because he wants to return to England where adults are, but also because the fire is one of the only symbols of order on the island. When the fire goes out, Piggy mentally collapses.
Ralph: Ralph is the main protagonist of the novel; he has fair hair and is very tall and thin. Jack is the only other character who is close in physical stature to Ralph. This is appropriate since these characters represent two competing philosophies of life on the island.
Golding uses Ralph do represent the perfect human— someone who does good but isn’t so out-of-touch that he can’t relate to normal human temptations. This is the Ralph of the beginning of the novel. Later, however, Ralph grows distant from Piggy, the good side, and grows closer to Jack, the anarchical side of human nature.
In his way, Ralph represents the ego of the human personality. He must compromise both the id (the ‘if it feels good do it’ attitude of Jack) and the superego (the strict adherence to the logic and order of the adult world symbolized through Piggy).
After Piggy’s death, Ralph finds it impossible to determine what action to take next. This goes along with Golding’s view that if left alone, human nature will naturally be pulled to the id side of one’s personality.
Roger: Roger becomes a self-proclaimed torturer and executioner for Jack and the rest of the tribe. Even at the beginning of the book when Roger throws stones at Henry, Golding shows that the seed of anarchy has taken root and is spreading in the hunter’s mind. Roger symbolizes man’s natural tendency to cause harm to others.
Sam & Eric: These twins represent the need humans have for moral support from others. Sam and Eric are so connected that they must do everything together. As soon as one of them takes an action, the other follows. Both twins respect Ralph because he offers them a sense of security. Sam n’ Eric’s main job throughout the novel is to tend the fire.
Soon, however, when the sense of security Ralph provides is threatened by Jack and his hunters, Samneric decide to join Jack’s tribe (after they are threatened). Later, they even betray Ralph, showing his hiding place to the others. In this way, Samneric symbolize the weakness of human nature. When really pressed, these twins decide to join the dark side.
Simon: Simon is described by Golding as one of the in-between boys-- a "skinny, vivid little boy" with straight, coarse black hair. Simon shares the experiences of both the littluns and the older boys. He has the innocent perceptions and feelings of littluns but the knowledge of the biguns.
However, Simon is alienated from the rest of the group. He takes life much more seriously than the others, being plagued with a certain moral consciousness which the other boys don’t understand. Simon has a heightened perception, even more so than Piggy. Simon is unique because he can actually hear the voice of the beast. He realizes that the beast is not something one can kill because it’s inside the boys.
Most importantly, Simon makes the connection between the dead parachutist and the Lord of the Flies. He understands that with the death of the man in the parachute which symbolizes the death of reason, the chaos of the Lord of the Flies is free to reign supreme.
Lastly, Simon is seen as a Christ figure. He gives up his own life in an attempt to tell the rest of the boys about the beast. Yet when he crawls out of the forest, Jack and his hunters see him as the beast, and murder his body which floats out to sea.
Metaphor Analysis
Beast: The beast, the Lord of the Flies, is seen as a real object on the island which frightens the boys. Actually the beast is something internal; the Lord of the Flies is in soul and mind of the boys, leading them to the natural chaos of a society with no reasoning adults. Only Simon understands what the real beast is, but is killed when he tries to tell the boys about the Lord of the Flies.
Conch: The conch shell symbolizes the law and order of the old adult world which Piggy tries so desperately to protect. The conch represents all the authority which the boys are so used to obeying. When Jack destroys the conch, anarchy quickly ensues because any hope of strong, central leadership has been abandoned. The island society collapses into chaos.
Facepaint: This is the excuse many of the boys use for living as hunting savages, instead of civilized English citizens. The paint symbolizes the smoke-screen the beast uses to infiltrate the boys’ souls.
Fire/Smoke: The smoke of the signal fire symbolizes the last best hope of the boys being rescued. To Piggy and Ralph, the fire represents the moral influence of their old life in England. When the fire goes out, Ralph loses his bearings, unsure of his next move.
The fire is diatonically opposed to hunting, the activity of anarchy on the island.
Island: Golding purposefully picked an island to be the landing place of the crashed plane because an island is isolated from the rest of society. The boys have no contact with the outside world and must look to themselves to solve the problems of their own micro-society. In this way, the island, which symbolizes isolation, serves as a perfect backdrop for the frailties of human nature which eventually surface.
Glasses: The glasses symbolize the voice of reason and logic among the boys. Piggy defends his glasses even more than the conch. Piggy, who represents the superego of the boys’ (and societies) collective personality, uses his glasses to find solutions to the boys’ problems. The most important solution the glasses find is the lighting of the fire, the boys’ best chance of being rescued.
The Parachute Man: The dead body flying in the parachute symbolizes the end of adult supervision of the boys on the island. While the parachute man is flapping back and forth on the island, conjuring up a powerful image of its prolonged death, the Beast, or Lord of the Flies, is prospering under its new control over Jack and most of the other boys on the island. So while the law and order of the adult world is waning, childish chaos is growing exponentially. Simon has a special connection with the parachute man. He climbs the mountain, subconsciously, to determine whether the parachute man is still alive. When he finds out that the man is dead and that the Beast is alive, Simon has a nervous breakdown. The moral confrontation which occurs when Simon has the interview with the Lord of the Flies symbolizes man’s inability to conquer the evil anarchy of the devil.
