Piggy who is short and fat, wears glasses and has asthma. Jack is red-haired, with freckles and blue-eyed. He is strong and athletic. Simon is a bit frail and weedy. Ralph shows his resourcefulness in building shelters and in finding a use for the conch shell which he also uses as an image of his authority. Eventually the conch shell loses its significance and is left unnoticed at the other side of the island. Ralph has certain qualities that set him apart from the other characters at the start of the book: "There was a stillness about Ralph as he sat that marked him out: there was his size, and attractive appearance; and most obscurely, yet most powerful, there was the conch." (p. 24) Throughout the story we see the events through Ralph’s eyes and realise at the end how they children have lost their innocence and see ‘the darkness of man’s heart’. Though he started as a sensible boy who thought the best of people, he now realises that all people are flawed. Although rescued, Ralph weeps at the end because of his realisation of evil in themselves. There is even evil in Ralph himself, when he reveals Piggy’s nickname just to raise a laugh amongst the others and so he shows that he too wants to be one of the group. Golding himself describes Ralph’s character in an essay as ‘… the average, rather more than average, man of good will and common sense; the man who makes mistakes because he simply does not understand at first the nature of the disease from which they all suffer.’ This quote tells us that at the start Ralph is an exceptional able boy who is strong and athletic and has many of the qualities necessary to be a good leader, as he shows by his authority, resourcefulness and ability to organise the other boys into a community. Yet Ralph makes real mistakes. He participates when Simon dies, does not fully appreciate Piggy’s qualities until after he is dead and is prepared to...
