The Dead Kids: Nancy Linwood
Lord of the Flies OC - The Dead Kids
TW: Intense misogyny and themes prevalent in LoTF
Nancy Virginia Linwood
Nancy Linwood is a Lord of the Flies OC belonging to Admin Bubbles.Nancy is an attendee of an all-girls Catholic school back home. However, during evacuation she got mixed up in the madness of it all and ended up being evacuated with Jack's school instead, landing her on the same plane as the other boys. She falls into the age range of biggun, being 14 years old and the oldest person on the island. However, she is treated more like a littlun by others.Nancy is first noticed by the boys after crawling out of the woods, where she ends up in the crash. Almost immediately, her striking appearance is taken note of.Her first scene is as follows: "A rustle breaks up the commotion of the meeting. Ralph's gaze falls on a girl standing before him, with eyes a shade of green that can only be found in synthetic objects. She doesn't look hurt, simply out of breath, and speaks in a clear and curt tone, "My, there are a lot of you. Are there any adults near?" The boys all shake their heads no. The girl shrugs and sits on a fallen log as daintily as someone in this situation can. She never offers up her own name."
Nancy is characterized by having waist-length black hair that falls pin straight, no matter how much of a messy state she's in. She also has bright green eyes, that are said to be an almost fake shade of green. Her uniform is foreign to all of the other boys in the area.Her personality is "aloof" and silent for the most part. She makes no comments to the boys unless she feels the need to, and she keeps to herself for the most part. She harbors no close relationships with any of the boys at any point on the island due to their gender differences and her attitude.
Pre-Island LoreNancy is from an Italian family that immigrated to England during World War I. Her father works within the English government and knows of the impending war, as well as the chance to evacuate, before most people do. He is a strict man and enrolls Nancy in etiquette classes from a very young age, resulting in Nancy being extremely posh with her language, as well as better educated than most kids her age. Nancy is taken care of by a governess for most of her upbringing due to her father's important work status, and her mother's emotional absence from her life.Nancy's mother was forced to marry her father through a family oath. She has no love or respect for Nancy's father and her hatred for him seeps into her relationship with Nancy. She has no emotional connection to Nancy and never tries to upkeep one. She rarely calls Nancy her daughter, and her absence sustains a rumor that Nancy was only conceived in order to keep her father's name alive, as Nancy was expected to be a boy up until her birth.Nancy is outcast from social groups of girls her age (as she only ever attends all girls' schools) due to her "strange" personality. She has a fascination with death and practices to keep death away from a very young age that only strengthens as she gets older. She hardly has any friends pre-island and spends most of her time going back and forth between England and small-town France, where her father's parents live. Behind her England home is a cemetery that she commonly plays in as a child.On IslandNancy stays alone for the most part of the beginning of the island. She does not engage with the other boys, unless it is through the mandatory meetings that Ralph calls. Initially, the job of the littluns is attempted to be given to her, but she is nowhere to be found by the time Piggy is decided to be watching them. This would eventually make Piggy resent her for giving him a more "feminine" role whilst she is a woman.Nancy spends most of her time in the woods, doing what she had done before the island. She collects items and makes piles or shrines to different deities, and continues to observe death through the lens she always has. However, during all of this she notes that Roger is following her from place to place. He just watches her, and it is easily written off as an accident running into him. She doesn't think much of his observance.The boys make a point of never giving Nancy the conch. She raises her hand during one meeting to receive the conch, but Ralph pretends as if he doesn't see her. Nancy keeps to herself after that, and any comments she has during the meetings she doesn't attempt to voice.During a meeting where Percival is crying about a nightmare beast he had seen, and the older boys brush off the concerns, Nancy snaps (without the conch) that maybe they should take the child's worries into consideration, since there was no way that boys their age could kill something that the boy was describing.The blow goes straight to the hunters and in return, Jack tells her that she should "bark like a dog if she was going to act like a bitch." and storms off into the woods. Ralph goes to follow him, and berates Nancy for her comment, and says she should "shut her mouth like a good woman knows how to do next time."
Nancy's experiences with the boys only worsen from there. After the initial snap of Jack, it seems to become commonplace that the boys start seeing her through his eyes, as if she is a lesser person than they are.Nancy spends most of her time doing things such as washing up when the other boys aren't present. While she thinks everyone is busy, Nancy takes a bath in the bathing pool that they all seem to use. However, Piggy ends up finding her. She covers up quickly in shame, as it was an accident. Piggy tells her that she "shouldn't act like such a whore" if she wanted the other boys to like her.He continues to heavily imply for the rest of the time on the island that Nancy utilizes her femininity in order to manipulate the boys. After the death of Simon, he justifies what they have done by saying it was a trance that Nancy probably put them under to do her bidding and for the hunters to make her their queen.Nancy makes a point from then on to cover herself up as best as she possibly can. It is rare the boys see her at all now, but when they do, it is never for long before she goes back into the woods.
Nancy has brief interactions with Simon while she is in the woods. She knows that he has a hiding spot, but doesn't know where it is. They run into each other every once in a while. Simon is described to be the only boy who seems to think Nancy is an equal to him. He expresses to her that "We all live, die, and bleed the same blood, why would I see you as anything but human, like me?"Nancy only makes appearances during meetings. The tone that the boys use toward her has shifted dramatically during the meetings. They never refer to her by name, and will only reference her as "woman" or "girl." After a particularly stressful meeting, she is told by Ralph that she is no longer allowed to run off (something he calls a "command") and that a biggun must always have an eye on her. The boys start to give her chores to do, like collecting fruits or firewood and keeping the signal fire going.The only other boy who offers any form of kindness to her is Roger. He is usually the one who follows her around, except for when hunts are occurring. The two of them have an understanding silence with one another, that none of the other boys seem to pick up on. He sleeps next to her, and says that he is protecting her if the beast gets to the other boys. She does not take his words as an omen.At the death of Simon, Nancy is present, however, she is swept up in the whirlwind of the boys. She ends up getting her dress torn off of her in the chaos by the other boys, referencing her loss of modesty that she tried to hard to upkeep.
Roger drags Nancy out of the circle of boys while laughing and chanting along with them. He drags Nancy to castle rock forcefully and gleefully announces that he is going to hide her from the other boys, because she is now his prisoner and his prisoner alone. Roger sees her as the ultimate prize due to how much the other boys despise her existence, therefore making her dead body worth more than a carcass of a littlun. In the moment, Nancy has the realization that even in the eyes of the men she trusts, she will be nothing more than a woman.Roger ends up tying her to a tree and says that if she tries to escape or call for help, he will skin her alive, like he does to the pigs. He continues to mess with Nancy's head, feeding and hydrating her only when necessary. The power dynamic between them quickly goes sour as Nancy begins to rely on Roger for food and water and begins to develop a very Stockholm syndrome attitude toward him. She begins to mentally excuse all the harm and damage he does to her, because he is also the very thing that keeps her alive.During the time Roger keeps her in the woods, their toxic relationship develops into something along the lines of Roger weakening her in order to make hunting her easier for him, and Nancy continuing to believe that one day, Roger will free her because he enjoyed her company for such a long time.Roger eventually brings Maurice to visit Nancy, as the woods are burning down from attempting to smoke out Ralph. Maurice cuts her loose and Roger begins to chase her, but inevitably gets distracted in attempting to kill Ralph. Maurice continues to follow her through the woods, although to Nancy, it no longer feels like a chase.Nancy trips and falls on a log, seeming to seal her fate with death. However, Maurice ends up grabbing her and tugging her to her feet and running her to safety. By the time the two of them reach the beach that the naval officer has found Ralph at, they are both aware that they finally have an opportunity to go home. On the ship back to England, Nancy offers her gratitude toward Maurice through an embrace, which is one of the only positive forms of physical contact she has ever had with anyone.
The RavenRavens are associated with loss and ill omen due to their black feathers and their call. Nancy is a death omen herself as things always seem to worsen when she is around, eventually leading in death. It also represents the fascination she has with the spiritual world, and her relationships with exploring death practices. Additionally, ravens can represent prophecy or wiseness, which Nancy exhibits by being one of the most level headed people on the island, who never truly gives into the horrors of the island, as the hunters did.
Gender AnalysisNancy being a female OC means that she is starkly different than the male ocs around her. She is still applicable to the themes of LoTF as she knows war from a very young age. Her grandfather is a war veteran and commonly has PTSD attacks with her in his vicinity. She is exposed to the brutalities of man and what they can do from youth.She never succumbs to her innate desires, like the others do. Instead, the island causes her to form toxic relationships with Roger. The effects of the island eventually drive her into thinking that she is cared for by Roger, and that despite his previous actions, he does want her alive. Her Stockholm Syndrome surrounding him is clear, due to the fact that he confesses from the first day that he has her captive that he will eventually hunt and kill her, just like he does to the pigs on the island.Lord of the Flies, as stated by William Golding himself, is a novel that can be interpreted in any way, and varies depending on person to person. There is no one "correct" way to view the novel. Nancy's femininity is something that is deeply rooted into the same patriarchy that causes the boys to evolve into madness on the island. The way she was raised has it culminate in gripping onto whoever she thinks will be her martyr, because all of the other men in her life have failed her before then.