The main theme that William Golding focuses on in Lord of the Flies is his opinion that, once removed from a civilized society, people will return to being primitive creatures, similar to animals. He portrays this point of view throughout the book using very different characters, almost all of whom eventually forget their civilized ways. The book tells the story of a group of schoolchildren who, after the plane crash, are stranded on a tropical island without adults. At first they seem enthusiastic about the situation and quickly elect one of the boys, Ralph, as leader, but soon things start to go downhill. Another of the boys, Jack, leaves the group to form his own tribe which becomes increasingly violent and obsessed with hunting pigs and the "beast", which they believe lives on the island. Their violence leads to the killing of two of the other boys, and at the end of the book they try to kill Ralph before being rescued by a naval officer. The book's title comes from an episode in which Simon, a shy boy, described by others as "crazy", hallucinates because the dead pig's head in front of him is talking to him. The pig's head is surrounded by flies, so Simon calls him the Lord of the Flies. The title could also have another more symbolic meaning, because as time goes by the boys themselves become more and more similar to flies. Ralph, the main character of the story, is presented to the reader as a fair and nice boy, he is the only boy who will listen to Piggy, an overweight boy who is ridiculed by all the others because he is fat and because he wears glasses and suffers from asthma, even though he is the smartest of all the boys. When he finds a conch, some kind of conch, Ralph heeds Piggy's suggestion to "use it to call the others. Arrange a meeting. They'll come when they hear us." At first Ralph is greatly respected and admired by the rest of the boys, who choose him as their leader. "There was a stillness about Ralph as he sat that set him apart: there was his size and his attractive appearance; and darker, but more powerfully, there was the shell." The respect the boys had for Ralph did not last long.