Jack Merridew

In the time of World War II, a plane carrying a group of British schoolboys was shot down; leaving the pilot dead, and the schoolboys deserted on an isolated island without any adult supervision. The protagonist, Ralph, who can be assumed to be a confident boy and Piggy, who is chubby but intellectual, are introduced to us in the beginning of the story. Piggy finds a shell and concludes that they should use it to call the other boys and teaches Ralph how to blow the conch shell. Ralph agrees, and blows into it, within seconds, groups of young kids from various places emerge from the jungle. Amongst the boys, a contentious boy named Jack Merridew is introduced and is represented as the antagonist of the novel. Ralph is then chosen as the group’s

Another meeting is called and it is evidently shown that many of the littluns are having nightmares about a “beast” lurking on the island. Not long after this discussion, an aerial battle has taken place and a former soldier comes down in a parachute. The man is dead and his body hangs from the branch of a tree. This sight scares the children for they mistake this man for the beast they all feared. As a result, Jack forms a hunting group that eventually most boys join. We can see they start to play a role as savages when the boys put on camouflaging paint and join in “tribal dances.” The group does find a sow pig and slaughter it, later offering it to “the beast” by putting its head on a stick. Simon, out of all the children had gotten the courage and discovered that there was no beast, but a figure of imagination in each boy’s psychology. Processing all this information in his mind, Simon loses his consciousness. Waking up later that evening, he climbs to the mountaintop and discovers that the beast is only but a dead pilot. In a pursuit to tell the others, he is mistaken as the beast by the tribe and is beaten by bare hands and teeth to death. Piggy is the only character that does not take part in this event. Later on, only three boys are present in Ralph’s camp, including Piggy. Jack’s hunting tribe steals Piggy’s glasses in order to start cooking fires, which leaves Ralph unable to keep