Opening Context
Nick Cutter’s The Troop strands a Boy Scout troop and their Scoutmaster on remote Falstaff Island, where a bioengineered parasite reduces order to chaos and friendship to survival calculus. With adult authority crumbling and rescue sealed off by quarantine, the boys’ loyalties, fears, and hidden natures collide, revealing the best and worst of human nature under pressure.
Main Characters
#tim-riggs
Tim Riggs is the troop’s Scoutmaster and the only adult on the island, a physician whose training initially makes him the boys’ lifeline when an emaciated stranger staggers into camp. Calm, principled, and methodical, he tries to impose reason on the irrational, but infection corrodes his judgment and body alike until he becomes a danger to those he meant to protect. His paternal care extends to the whole troop—especially vulnerable Newton—yet his waning authority fuels Kent’s power plays and heightens the group’s panic. Locked away by the boys as his paranoia worsens, Tim dies when the collapsing cabin buries him, a symbolic end to adult order and a grim catalyst for the boys’ brutal self-governance.
#max-kirkwood
Max Kirkwood is the troop’s steady center and the novel’s primary survivor, a quiet observer who absorbs trauma without surrendering his core decency. Thoughtful, empathetic, and resilient, he balances caution with courage, often stepping in to calm Ephraim and shield Newton as the group fractures. His loyalty is tested by escalating horrors—field “medicine,” murder for survival, and the loss of every friend—yet he retains a moral compass even as the island strips away innocence. Max endures Shelley’s violence and the troop’s implosion, surviving not because he is the strongest, but because he refuses to abandon his humanity.
#kent-jenks
Kent Jenks is the troop’s swaggering alpha, a would-be leader who imitates his police-chief father’s command without the judgment to wield it. Physically imposing and confrontational, he bullies Newton, clashes with Ephraim, and constantly challenges Tim, mistaking intimidation for authority. When fear and infection enter the camp, Kent’s bravado collapses into panic and ravenous degradation, exposing the hollowness of his dominance. His arc ends when Shelley drowns him—an ugly, ironic reversal in which raw strength proves powerless against manipulation and the horror inside his own body.
#ephraim-elliot
Ephraim “Eef” Elliot is the troop’s daredevil and powder keg, propelled by anger, a combustible home life, and fierce loyalty to Max. Impulsive and volatile, he channels fear into violence—especially against Kent—until Shelley’s mind games turn his terror inward. Convinced he’s infected, Ephraim spirals into self-mutilation and, in a blaze of despair, takes his own life, transforming pent-up rage into self-destruction. His tragic end underscores how shame and fear can be as lethal as any parasite.
#newton-thornton
Newton “Newt” Thornton is the troop’s brainy underdog, overweight, anxious, and often targeted by bullies, yet quietly courageous when it matters most. His curiosity and practical knowledge—scouting skills, basic science, and resourcefulness—repeatedly help the boys find food, improvise care, and make sense of the threat. Though he looks to Tim for guidance and relies on Max for protection, Newton grows into his own agency as the island hardens him. In the end, after he is infected, a clinical military kill order cuts him down at the edge of rescue, delivering the novel’s bleakest blow.
#shelley-longpre
Shelley Longpre is the troop’s smiling void, an unassuming sociopath who thrives once rules disappear. Detached, eerily perceptive, and cruel, he studies the others the way a scientist studies specimens, exploiting insecurities and fear to isolate victims and maneuver for control. He torments Ephraim into self-harm, eliminates Kent, and stalks Max, proving that the most terrifying predator on the island isn’t the parasite but a boy without empathy. Shelley’s own infection eventually destroys him, yet his legacy is the psychological ruin he leaves behind.
#thomas-henry-padgett
Thomas Henry Padgett, the “Hungry Man,” is Patient Zero—a desperate, skeletal carrier of a weaponized tapeworm whose arrival detonates the island’s nightmare. Both victim and vector, he embodies the story’s body horror as insatiable hunger devours identity and reason. Padgett dies soon after bringing the contagion to camp, but the parasite he carries survives, undoing Tim’s authority and setting the boys against one another.
Supporting Characters
#dr-clive-edgerton
Dr. Clive Edgerton is the unseen architect of the disaster, a brilliant, amoral researcher whose genetically engineered tapeworms turn human bodies into laboratories of horror. Revealed through documents and testimony, he treats suffering as data and the outbreak as a fascinating miscalculation. His shadow hangs over every death on Falstaff Island, a cautionary emblem of scientific ambition unmoored from ethics.
Minor Characters
- “Big” Jeff Jenks: Kent’s father and North Point’s police chief, a blunt-force avatar of outside authority that proves useless when it matters most—and whose values Kent disastrously imitates.
- Dr. Harley: The unseen therapist for Ephraim and Newton, glimpsed in case notes that expose preexisting wounds conventional treatment couldn’t heal.
- Nathan Erikson: Edgerton’s lab assistant, a reluctant witness whose testimony maps the experiment’s slide from innovation to atrocity—and his own complicity.
- Admiral Stonewall Brewer: The quarantine commander whose cold calculus culminates in Newton’s killing, embodying institutional inhumanity.
Character Relationships & Dynamics
Tim’s authority initially binds the troop, but Padgett’s infection corrodes that bond: as the Scoutmaster weakens, the boys fracture into improvising factions. Max tries to keep the group humane and functional, often partnering with Newton’s practical intelligence to offset panic. Opposing them, Kent pushes a crude hierarchy built on strength and threat, provoking constant clashes with Ephraim, whose volatility erupts whenever he senses bullying or hypocrisy.
Shelley moves like a parasite among personalities—observing, isolating, and weaponizing others’ fears. He nurtures Ephraim’s dread of contamination until it consumes him, then exploits Kent’s deteriorating body and bluster to stage a lethal “correction” of the troop’s bully. With Tim sidelined and then dead, informal alliances harden: Max and Newton operate as a fragile conscience; Kent and his followers try to enforce control through intimidation; Shelley stalks the margins, waiting for moments of maximum vulnerability.
The island itself enforces new rules: infection turns bodies into battlegrounds, making touch and trust perilous, while the military’s invisible perimeter ensures no help is coming. Under these pressures, friendship (Max and Ephraim), rivalry (Kent and Ephraim), and scapegoating (the group’s treatment of Newton) intensify into survival choices. By the end, only Max remains to bear witness, his survival a bittersweet testament to empathy tested against terror.