roger
i dont care if mondays blue. tuesday coo and wednesday coo. thursday yea im gonna coo it's friday im a dove
ralph - that one actually chill popular guy that everyone just has a mutual liking too, plays on the football team and is team captain, all the girls call him leng and ask him to snap them back. tells his annoying ass friends to stop when they make fun of some random year 7 with a big bag. amazing grades, him and jack have rivalry over it
jack - i don’t care what anyone says he’s an absolute SWAT. teachers pet, puts his hand up for every question and has all those badges on his blazer. gets made fun of for being ginger and a neek. still head choir boy in the school choir and also gets made fun of for that. predicted 8s and 9s and cried to his mum about a predicted 7. his parents definitely have him saved in their phones as “jackie sweetie pumpkin ❤️❤️”
piggy - gets picked on for every question and jack rages about it and sometimes gets sent out. exactly the same type of guy as beefy bert from horrid henry. also gets picked on but just for being fat and eating in the canteen by himself. jacks choir have their own table in the canteen and they throw food at piggy. actually pretty good grades though he just doesn’t work well under pressure.
roger - quiet ass emo looking guy no one really knows anything about but they don’t pick on him because he sent a kid to hospital once. has a criminal record. jacks closest mate, the two sing surprisingly well together. has a collection of animal skulls in his bedroom and he def has that voice that sounds like he has a blocked nose all the time. grades are in the middle ish the only reason he’s good is because he copies off of jack.
maurice - tries to be class clown. sometimes succeeds sometimes fails. only reason people like him is because he’ll do anything to get a laugh out of people. mates with roger, hes the type of guy to turn to roger and say “hey bud, why don’t you turn that frown upside down!” and he sings “i fell in love with an emo girl” at roger. completely dumb as hell tho has predicted 2s with the occasional 3 or 4. in choir but his voice is AWFUL so they got him to play piano. he plays rugby and is an INSANE tackler.
samneric - class clowns that are actually funny. also relatively good grades. they switch classes to mess up their teachers but one time eric fell down the stairs and broke his nose so you could tell the two apart. they’re funny at the right place in the right time and they’re in the year below jack, ralph, simon etc and they look up to maurice. they follow around jack and his choir or ralph but jack gets mad when they hang out with ralph and not him.
simon - also quiet kid but he’s painfully shy. pretty nice overall and he’s friends with ralph which is the only reason he doesn’t get picked on. people whisper about him though and he’s like a time bomb you never know when he’s gonna lose it. that one kid that has every pet at home known to mankind and he def brought his ferret into school once. in choir with jack and the others and they’re actually pretty nice to him, he hangs out with maurice and bill and harold etc. also piggy’s only friend. but secretly doesn’t really like him.
extra :
-the littluns are the year 7s that run for their lives to the canteen
-jack and maurice use brainrot language and jack will angrily huff “what the sigma?!” when he can’t figure something out
-jack and ralph both did the school play one year and actually became pretty good friends but then stopped talking for some unknown reason
i’ve seen a similar post on here i’ll tag who i was inspired by, but i just wanted to share one of my interpretations about roger and perhaps an explanation as to why he acts why he does, this isn’t canon at all it’s just my interpretation and thoughts and i’m aware the killing of the sow is meant to interpret how boys were taught to treat woman as the female pigs were the only female things on the island.
( tw for SA mention and racism )
alright so we know roger is a part of jacks choir, described as a “quiet furtive boy” (this will be important later), who we don’t see much of until chapter 4 when he’s with maurice and the littluns and towards the end of the book. during the killing of the sow, we all know roger pushes his spear into the pigs ass which the boys all find funny; “a phrase which was received uproariously” but why?
this book was set in the time when the book was written, around 1940-1950, and as we know roger is in a presumably strict catholic choir with jack and the others. around that time period, the church held a lot of power over people and especially schools. this then meant that vicars, priests and other people of the church were extremely respected people. because of this as im sure we’ve heard in instances before, child sexual abuse was in fact alarmingly common and unreported in the church, especially back then when churches had so much power. i’m sure you can see what i’m trying to imply here but it’s a possibility that jacks choir could’ve been in the same unfortunate situation.
now, when i said roger is described as a “quiet, furtive boy”, this could represent how kids that had succumbed to sexual abuse acts in the church were told to stay silent about what was happening, and/or turn a blind eye when it happened to other people. then with the killing of the sow, what roger did isn’t normal and clearly isn’t something that should be the first thing that comes to mind when you see a female pig. this could mean that an adult had told him that that stuff was okay, thus why he did what he did. sexual abuse victims often also become angry and develop personality disorders because they’re confused and scared and they don’t understand what’s happening to them, this also would further explain roger’s ‘sadistic’ behaviour, and inability to communicate a lot.
i’d like to add in something about simon too, how he’s in the forest and watches the killing of the sow take place but doesn’t do anything. in my opinion, this heavily represents seeing something take place (sexual abuse in the church) but being taught to stay silent because it’s the ‘right thing to do.’
alright this is the second part of my essay which is my other interpretation which in my opinion could lead roger to act the way he does. throughout the book, roger is described as having a dark complexion, but sometimes it’s hard to tell whether golding is talking about dark nature-wise or in skin colour. sometimes throughout the book though you can tell he’s of a dark complexion such as; “the swarthiness of his skin” “a dark face appeared” and the fact he’s so dark he doesn’t tan. taking this into account i personally am very convinced roger isn’t white. in chapter 4 when roger throws stones at henry, it quotes “round the squatting child was the protection of parents and the school and policemen and the law” also in the time period when this was set, it was common for policemen to pick on kids that aren’t white because they hold a prejudice against them, the same of which could’ve happened to roger pre-island. it doesn’t say anything else which could have a meaning to racism anywhere in the book but it’s just an interpretation i thought of, that roger could’ve been subjected to racial profiling before the island thus another reason as to why hes ‘uncommunicative’ and rather aggressive.
thank you for reading this! again i’d just like to remind that this is just an interpretation, none of this is canon and it was just a thought of mine id like to share! this was inspired by @shaky-b0n3s post 😎😎
My bestfriend just called Jack Merridew, “So he’s Ed Sheeran gone bad”
Totally never done before modern school au
they’re so cute it makes me wanna kms guhjhususjkk
you’ll get back all right
samneric in another universe
post island jack asks ralph if he ever looked up at the moon and wondered if jack was looking at it too and ralph tells him to kill himself