In the midst of a raging war, a plane evacuating a group of English boys from Britain is shot down over a deserted tropical island. Marooned, the boys set about electing a leader and finding a way to be rescued. They choose Ralph * as their leader; Ralph appoints Jack as the leader of the hunters. Ralph, Jack, and Simon set off on an expedition to explore the island. When they return, Ralph declares that they must light a signal fire that passing ships might see. The boys begin to do so, using the lens from Piggy *s eyeglasses as a means of igniting dead wood. But they are more interested in playing than in paying close attention to their duties, and the fire quickly ignites the forest. A large swath of dead wood burns out of control. One of the youngest boys disappears, presumably having burned to death.
At first, the boys enjoy their life without grownups. They splash in the lagoon and play games, though Ralph complains that they should be maintaining the signal fire and building huts for shelter. The hunters have trouble catching a pig, but Jack becomes increasingly preoccupied with the act of hunting. One day, a ship passes by on the horizon, and Ralph and Piggy notice to their horror that the signal fire has burned out; it was the hunters' responsibility to maintain it. Furious, Ralph accosts Jack, but the hunter has just returned with his first kill, and all the boys seem gripped with a strange frenzy, dancing about and reenacting the chase in a kind of wild dance. When Piggy criticizes him, Jack hits him across the face.
Ralph blows the conch shell used to summon the boys and gives the group a furious speech in an attempt to restore order. But beyond the more immediate problems of the signal fire and the difficulties of hunting creeps a larger, more insidious problem: a growing fear among the boys. The littlest boys (known as "littluns") have been troubled by nightmares from the beginning, and more and more boys are coming to accept that there is some sort of beast or monster lurking on the island.
