Jack is the leader of the choir. He was the chapter chorister and can sing C sharp, and was the head boy at school.
He has red hair and is tall, thin and bony. His face was crumpled and freckled, and ugly without silliness. His fiery hair and his ugly appearance give us clues to his fiery, ugly character.
He is proud and arrogant.
He is hungry for power. When we first meet him he bosses the choir around; later he undermines Ralph's leadership and sets up his own tribe against Ralph, even though he loses a vote. He gradually becomes a dictator and boasts to Ralph See? They do what I want when he orders the tribe to tie up Samneric.
He knows as soon as Ralph asks him that the choir should be hunters. Hunting then pre-occupies him more and more through the novel.
He can't kill the first pig he sees because of the enormity of the knife descending and cutting into living flesh; because of the unbearable blood. Yet he quickly puts aside any doubts.
Ralph gets angry when Jack thinks of nothing but hunting: All you can talk about is pig, pig, pig!
Jack paints on a mask to help him hunt better. The paint gives him a liberation into savagery: he is able to do savage things now he looks more like a savage.
He is so moved by having killed a pig that he isn't anxious about the ship that went by while the fire was out. All he thinks about is the knowledge that they had outwitted a living thing, imposed their will on it, taken away its life.
By the end, Jack has moved on even further. His prey has gone beyond pigs - he is keen to hunt Ralph.
He commits the first act of violence towards another boy on the island when he thumps Piggy and His voice was vicious. He gets gradually more violent towards other boys: he has no thought for Piggy when he steals his glasses and later he ties up and beats Wilfred.
He pretends not to be frightened of the beast - but is shivering and croaking when he sees the 'beast' on the mountain. Does this suggest that he's not really as brave as he'd like to think he is?
Although Jack says near the start: 'We're not savages', it's soon clear he doesn't care about the rules or being civilised. Bollocks to the rules! We're strong - we hunt! He rejects the order that had been established on the island: We don't need the conch any more.
At the end, he has no remorse for Piggy's death. He declares himself Chief. He has lost the name Jack, which suggests he has lost all.
Roger symbolizes the devil and he is the killer in the book. P22 "a slight furtive boy whom no one knew, who kept himself with an inner intensity of avoidance and secrecy"
P60 "the shock of black hair, down his nape and low on his forehead, seemed to suit his gloomy face and make what had seemed at first unsociable remoteness in to something foreboding"
When he is first seen, he is described as slight and furtive.
He is a loner and uncommunicative by nature.
He is cruel. He deliberately spoils the littluns' games. Later, he relishes sharpening a stick at both ends with which to kill Ralph.
He volunteers to go up the mountain with Ralph and Jack to find the beast.
He becomes Jack's right hand man: they torture Samneric together to find out Ralph's hiding place. Yet he is capable of acting independently: he levers the rock that kills Piggy on his own initiative.
He is an executioner. He kills Piggy and, in the final hunt, Ralph fears Roger, who carried death in his hands.
Piggy is the symbol for democracy on the island. P22 "what intelligence had been shown was traceable to Piggy"
P60 "Piggy was an outsider, not only by accent, which did not matter, but by fat, and ass-mar, and specs, and a certain disinclination to manual labour."
He has physical disadvantages because he is fat and asthmatic and is short sighted. Without his glasses, everything becomes a blur.
He is very intelligent - in Chp.1 it is his idea to make a list of names and it is he who realises that no adult knows the boys are on the island. Later he suggests making sundial and hats. Ralph recognises Piggy could think... Piggy, for all his ludicrous body, had brains.
However, he does not speak as grammatically accurately as the others - How can you expect to be rescues if you don't put first things first and act proper. Perhaps this is to suggest he wasn't as well educated as the others and that he is not from the right class of people to be a successful leader: at the time the novel was written, most power was still in the hands of the middle and upper classes.
He is embarrassed by his nickname, and he behaves with dignity when Ralph betrays the name to the others. We never know his real name.
He is kind and considerate to the littluns. He helps the boy with the birthmark talk about the 'snake-thing' and helps Percival talk about the beast. He is later often left to care for them when the others are exploring and hunting.
He has the most mature attitude of any boy on the island. He scornfully sees the other boys Acting like a crowd of kids.
He is pragmatic. When Simon dies, Piggy tries to convince Ralph there was nothing they could have done: It was an accident... and that's that.
Like Ralph, he believes in civilised values and clings to what creates order. I just take the conch to say this. I can't see no more and I got to get my glasses back. He shouts I got the conch when they go to the fort to confront Jack, to try to show Jack that he has a right to be heard.
Piggy and the conch are destroyed together by the rock Roger levers. Thus, intelligence and the symbol of authority are 'dead', so we know that there is nothing left to stop Jack gaining full control.
At the end, Ralph mourns the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.
Simon was the only character who to his death kept his goodness and innocence. P22 "he was a skinny, vivid little boy, with a glance coming up from under a hut of straight hair that hung down, black and course"
P56 "He walked with an accustomed tread through the fruit trees"
The first time we meet Simon, he is in his choir robes. He faints on the beach because of the heat and Jack mocks him. We know he is delicate. He has epilepsy.
He is a skinny, vivid little boy, with a glance coming up from under a hut of straight hair that hung down, black and course. His hair hides his face, which hints to us he is secretive.
He is imaginative: he sees the buds on the bushes as Like candles. Candle bushes. Candle buds.
He is helpful and works for the good of others; he is the only one to stick with Ralph to make the shelters. He is kind to the littluns and finds fruit for them.
The others recognise he is 'different' to them in some way. Ralph frowned. 'He's queer. He's funny.' Piggy says He's cracked.
He has a secret place in a clearing full of flowers and butterflies and is sufficiently at one with the jungle to walk in it alone at night. He is at one with nature and he has no fear.
He seems able to prophesy - he is the first to suggest as if it wasn't a good island and he tells Ralph, You'll get back to where you came from.
He is the most perceptive about the beast. He says maybe there is a beast... What I mean is... maybe it's only us. He is the only one to see that the problems on the island stem from the boys' relationships with each other, not from an outside force. Yet nobody understands what he's trying to say.
When the Lord of the Flies 'speaks' to him this idea is reiterated: the voice in Simon's head says Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill!... You knew, didn't you? I'm part of you?
He is killed just as he is about to reveal the truth. It is ironic that he is the only one who finds out that the 'beast' was a dead parachutist, but is denied passing on the message because the group of boys think, in their frenzy, he is the beast.
Nature cares for Simon's body in death just as it had in life. The waves turned the corpse gently in the water. ... Softly, surrounded by a fringe of bright inquisitive creatures, itself a silver shape beneath the steadfast constellations, Simon's dead body moved out towards the open sea.
Sam and Eric were two very similar boys.
"They were twins and the eye was shocked and incredulous at such cheery duplication. They breathed together, they grinned together, they were chunky and vital. They raised wet lips at Ralph, for they seemed provided with not quite enough skin, so that their profiles were blurred and their mouths pulled open."
The twins gradually lost their individual names on the island and become Samneric. They depend upon each other and do everything together.
They are the first to see the parachutist (while they are tending the fire at night) and think it is a beast.
They share Ralph and Piggy's dismay at the death of Simon.
They are involved in the first successful pig hunt with Jack, but more and more they grow to support Ralph. They join the fight against Jack when Jack raids the shelters at night to get Piggy's glasses. Finally, only Samneric and Piggy are left on Ralph's side. Yet they are not strong enough to withstand a lot of pressure and ultimately reveal Ralph's hiding place to Roger and Jack. Evil triumphs over good.
