Get Lord of the Flies straight once, then move.

During a wartime evacuation, a British plane is shot down and a group of schoolboys land on a deserted tropical island. There are no adults. Ralph, a confident and fair-minded boy, discovers a conch shell with Piggy, a chubby, asthmatic boy who is intelligent but socially weak. Ralph blows the conch to gather the scattered survivors. The boys hold a vote and elect Ralph as chief, passing over Jack Merridew, the leader of a choir group who becomes head of the hunters instead.

Early on, the boys attempt to build a functioning society. Ralph focuses on three priorities: shelters, fresh water, and a signal fire on the mountain to attract rescue ships. The fire is lit with Piggy's glasses. Jack's hunters are supposed to maintain the fire but let it go out when they get their first pig kill. A ship passes while the fire is dead. Ralph and Jack clash directly for the first time. The tension between order and excitement, between rescue and hunting, is now open.

Fear grows on the island. The younger boys, called littluns, report seeing a beast in the dark. Older boys dismiss it at first, but the fear spreads. A dead parachutist from the war above drifts down and lands on the mountain, tangled in the trees. Boys who see it at night mistake it for a living creature. The beast becomes real to them, and this shared terror gives Jack a political weapon: he can promise protection from the beast in a way Ralph's logic cannot.

Simon, a quiet and spiritual boy, wanders alone into the forest. He finds the pig's head that Jack's hunters have mounted on a stick as an offering to the beast. In a hallucinatory state, Simon imagines the head — which Golding calls the Lord of the Flies — speaking to him. It tells him that the beast is not something outside the boys; it is part of them. Simon climbs the mountain, discovers the dead parachutist, and understands the truth. He rushes down to tell the others, but stumbles into the middle of a ritual hunting dance. The boys, in a frenzy, mistake him for the beast and beat him to death. His body washes out to sea.

Jack formally breaks from Ralph and establishes a rival tribe at Castle Rock on the far end of the island. He offers the other boys meat, excitement, and a tribal identity built around face paint and ritual. Most boys join him. Jack's tribe raids Ralph's camp at night and steals Piggy's glasses — the only way left to start a fire. Ralph, Piggy, and the twins Sam and Eric go to Castle Rock to demand the glasses back. The confrontation turns violent. Roger, Jack's sadistic lieutenant, levers a massive boulder off the cliff. It hits Piggy, shatters the conch, and sends Piggy falling to his death on the rocks below. Sam and Eric are captured and forced to join Jack's tribe.

Ralph is now alone and hunted. Jack's tribe sets the entire island on fire to drive him out into the open. Ralph runs in terror across the island and collapses on the beach — where he nearly crashes into a British naval officer who has come ashore, drawn by the smoke of the fire. The officer expects to find boys playing an adventure game. Instead he finds filthy, painted children in the middle of a manhunt. Ralph breaks down crying, and several other boys follow. The officer turns away, embarrassed, and waits beside his warship — which is itself engaged in the same kind of war the boys have just been playing out on their smaller stage.