"Lord of the Flies" BY: William Golding When a group of children find themselves stranded on a desert island, the rules of society no longer apply to them. Without the control of their parents or the law, their primitive human nature is revealed. William Golding depicts this primitive human nature in a very exceptional way in the novel "Lord of the Flies". This interesting book is approximately 223 pages long and was first published in 1958. The key summary of this book is that a group of English schoolchildren who are between the ages of 6 and 12 and crash land on an island somewhere in the Pacific. This could have been a dream come true for the boys; no teachers, no parents and no rules telling them what to do or not to do, but it was far from a dream come true, in fact, it was a nightmare. There is a pretty decent range of characters who play various roles in the story but the main characters in the book are: Jack, Ralph and Piggy. Jack Merridew started out as an arrogant, self-righteous choir director. The freedom of the island allowed him to further develop the darker side of his personality as the leader of a savage tribe. He ultimately seized power through brute force and, towards the end, had no sense of humanity. He was completely a savage. Ralph, on the other hand, started out as a self-confident boy, whose self-confidence came from the acceptance of his peers. He had a fair character, because he was ready to listen to Piggy. He was gentler than Jack and also became quite dependent on Piggy's wisdom throughout the book. Piggy himself was an educated boy who grew up an outcast. Due to his academic childhood, he was more mature than other boys and retained his civilized behavior. But his experiences on the island gave him a more realistic understanding of the cruelty of some people, and this was due to his maturity level. He was actually able to observe what was happening to everyone. The setting of this book essentially takes place when a plane full of school-age boys gets stranded on a deserted tropical island after their plane is accidentally shot down during World War II. They are completely alone on this island in the Pacific Ocean. The island they are on is a tropical island, full of trees and greenery..