Lord of the Flies

Gosh, this is even bleaker than my hazy memories remember! Is this the message we want to impart to all GCSE children out of all the books in the world?

In the unlikely event that there are people left out there who don't know the plot, this is the story of a posse of school children who are stranded on a tropical island, after their plane crashes when they are being evacuated (there is a hazy WWIII theme going on in the background).

Despite some initial good will the boys soon schism - Ralph, the athletic upstanding son of a navel officer and all around Hero representing civilisation and keeping the fire going in the hope of rescue, and Jack representing savagery and hunting and the barbaric darkness in the heart of man if civilisation show more should ever falter.

The book powers on and is unputdownable. Despite the characters being cyphers to tell the story, you still find yourself feeling for them. Poor Simon, with his deep intuitive understanding, too terrified to speak. Piggy, with his weight and his asthma and his spectacles, being the main force for educated reason, but also mocked by all.

Like many books of its time, the most interesting characters are killed to help the Hero have his story arc. Yes, I'm pleased that brave Ralph makes it out alive, but the fat ones and the weak ones are foils to show the evilness of humanity and add terror to Ralph's story.

It is of course, deeply racist. The drawing of the loss of civilisation is deeply entwined with images of n*ggers, island savages, face paint and hunting with spears. As though civilisation and reason and caring for the weak are a White Mans prerogative, and all island people were savage reasonless hunters.

I found myself more inclined to read it as a christian allegory this time. The fire must be kept burning, because our eyes must be on Rescue from the Island, not on indulging our base desires for meat and hunting.

And I know the point is to set up a false dichotomy to tell a morality tale about the darkness of the human condition, but really, you can't help but think there is a huge excluded middle if you face onto it as a story, not an analogy. Ralph is sensible to want to build a fire, but there is some chance all other humans have been wiped out, and Jack is right that hunting has a place in survival as well.

It definitely felt like it had been written by someone well versed in office politics. The slow sliding away, the slights, the factions, the half-had arguments with no resolution that turn into bitter burning hatred...

Anyway, I definitely see why it is a classic, and it is an unputdownable and moving read. But wow, it's dark! show less

The conch shell never stood a chance.

I first read this book in high school, trapped in a classroom with fluorescent lights and the smell of chalk dust. I hated it. The boys were cruel, the ending felt cheap, and I was convinced Golding had never met an actual child.

I reread it last week, fifteen years later, and now I cannot stop thinking about it. That is the mark of a book that earned its place.

What it is:

A plane crashes on a deserted island. The only survivors are a group of British schoolboys, ages roughly six to twelve. No adults. No rules. At first, they celebrate: no parents, no homework, no bedtime. They elect a leader (Ralph), establish a signal fire, and use a conch shell to govern who gets to speak. But another boy, Jack, show more wants to hunt. Not for survival, for the thrill of the kill. Slowly, the veneer of civilization peels away. The conch shatters. The fire dies. And by the final chapter, the island is burning and the boys are hunting Ralph like an animal.

The brilliance (and why it haunted me):

1. The descent is gradual and terrifying. Golding does not turn the boys into monsters overnight. They start as recognizable children: scared, bored, eager to please. Piggy is the rational one, mocked for his weight and his glasses. Simon is the quiet, mystical one, who sees the truth and is killed for it. Jack is the charismatic bully who promises meat and freedom. The horror is not that they become evil. The horror is how natural it feels. One small compromise. Then another. Then you are painting your face and sharpening a stick on both ends.

2. The symbolism is heavy but earned. The conch is democracy. Piggy's glasses are reason and technology. The beast is the darkness inside each of them. Some readers find this too obvious. But Golding was writing in the shadow of World War II, the Holocaust, and Hiroshima. He was not trying to be subtle. He was trying to warn us.

3. The prose is lean and muscular. Golding writes with a journalist's clarity and a poet's ear for rhythm. Descriptions of the island: the pink granite, the platform, the creepers are vivid without being decorative. The dialogue sounds like real children, which makes their cruelty even more unsettling.

4. The ending is controversial, and that is the point. A naval officer arrives, sees the burning island and the painted savages, and says: "I should have thought that a pack of British boys... would have been able to put up a better show than that." He is relieved to have saved them. He does not realize he is looking into a mirror. The adult world, after all, had just finished dropping atomic bombs.

Where it stumbles (and why I cannot give it five stars):

1. The characterization is uneven. Ralph and Jack are fully realized. Piggy is memorable but almost a caricature (the fat, asthmatic intellectual who is always right and always ignored). Simon is barely a character at all; he exists mostly as a Christ figure who sees the truth and is sacrificed. The "littluns" are a nameless, faceless mob. Golding is more interested in the group than the individuals, which is fine, but it left me wanting more from the supporting cast.

2. The middle drags. The novel is short (about 200 pages), but there is a stretch where the conflict between Ralph and Jack becomes repetitive: Ralph calls a meeting, Jack defies him, the signal fire goes out, rinse, repeat. The momentum stalls until Simon's death.

3. The treatment of the "beast" is muddled. The dead parachutist is a brilliant image, but the transition from "external monster" to "internal darkness" is abrupt. The scene where Simon confronts the Lord of the Flies (the pig's head on a stick) is iconic, but it also feels like Golding explaining his thesis rather than trusting the reader to find it.

4. The lack of girls is not a flaw, but it is worth noting. Golding was writing about a specific kind of male socialization. The book is not universal, and that is fine. But modern readers (especially young women) may feel the absence keenly.

Who should read this:

Anyone who wants to understand why "civilization is a thin veneer" is a cliché that refuses to die.
Students of psychology, political science, and ethics.
Readers who appreciate allegory over realism.
People who want to be disturbed, not entertained.

Who should skip it:

If you need sympathetic characters to root for (there are none).
If heavy-handed symbolism frustrates you.
If you prefer your darkness with a side of hope (there is none).

Final verdict:

Lord of the Flies is not a pleasant book. It is not a subtle book. It is a necessary book; a cold shower of a novel that forces you to look at what happens when the structures of authority vanish and the only thing left is the naked human animal. Golding wrote it as a rebuttal to The Coral Island, a Victorian adventure novel where British boys on an island remain noble and Christian. He wanted to say: That is a lie. This is the truth.

I still do not like this book. But I respect it more than most novels I love. Four stars, because it is flawed and repetitive and occasionally preachy.

The conch shell is broken. Piggy's glasses are ground into sand. And the officer who rescues the boys turns his ship away from the burning island, never understanding that he is looking at his own reflection. show less

I'd never read this before, not on the sylabus when I did English. I usually read in bed, and this is not a bedtime book. So I finished it in the morning instead. It tells of a group of boys who come to be lost on an island and the way that the thin veneer of civility can so easily be fractured and shattered. Not one for a restful night.
I do wonder how this would differ had the group been mixed - and then I think it might not have been any better.

I believe that this book is the ultimate testament to how an ending can soil an amazing book.

When I was younger, fiction didn't really do it for me. I was, admittedly edgy, and wanted to step into the disturbing when I had free time. I think that is why horror movies and video games appealed to me so much. Stuff like 'Cabin in the Woods' and 'COD: Zombies' I gave reading many chances, and outside of a couple titles, The Hunger Games and The Road (odd combination I know), nothing hit that real, teenage angst disturbing that I wanted. But this book reawakened that in me, and I see now that myself as a teenager would have loved this. It is a shame I was never assigned to read it in school.

The premise is all too real for me. I can suspend show more my disbelief that all these kids survived a plane crash, because after that, there is no supernatural or unrealistic aspect to the story. Everything that happens is exactly what would happen in real life with a bunch of twelve-year-olds. The fighting over a leader, over priorities, and over control. The realism of one bad apple in the bunch ruining everything hits hard for me.

The characters are well written, not in crazy backstory or deep motivations and purpose, but just in their actions. They are, once again with the strength of this story, real. Ralph, our "hero" is still a jerk to the fat kid like most preteens would be. Jack, the villain, is a classic, but real bully, someone who knows how to have people on his side, and can convince them to commit very deep violence just because he is charismatic.

The events are meaningful as well. The deaths we see, though I won't spoil them, happen in a way that can be believed when you mix in the pressures the kids are dealing with. The first death is caused by a combination of fear/paranoia, and delirium brought on by malnourishment and exhaustion. The second death is forced by a young boy, who is beginning his journey in the way of manipulation, and on his way to becoming an adult devoid of empathy and emotion.

The ending, as I mentioned, is what killed me in the end. I know I am not the author, and I hate when people suggest different endings to works they didn't write, but the end feels like a cop out to me. I won't 'suggest' anything, I will simply say that Golding didn't hold back on realism and brutality until the end, where stories like this need that most. I can appreciate the thematic importance the ending has, but not much beyond that.

As I mentioned, I never read this in high school, so when one of my students wanted to read this on his own, then came to me asking questions about the characters, I had to take the weekend to lock in, and lock in I did. show less

"Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!"

One of my all-time favorites! I read this again, as my daughter will be in a young adult play version of this, starting next week. It's so different to read it now, as a parent of a child who is about the same age as the older boys in here! It seems even more likely to me now, knowing who that age group is, and how some of them might react to being in a situation such as this! I can see Ralph, Piggy, Jack, Samneric, and the littluns in many of her friends and classmates today.

And I can see our political crisis in here too! Jack appeals to the same baser instincts that Trump and his cronies do. Fear over logic. Might over right. And, trying to excuse oneself for the actions one has show more participated in. I think a huge strength of this story lies in the last three pages. The shift of responsibility happens so fast in those paragraphs. From chiefs in a lethal power struggle to boys playing a game, just like that.

"... and Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart..."

I do too. show less

I am at a loss to explain how I made it through my secondary schooling without having Lord of the Flies handed to me by a single English teacher. Perhaps they all assumed I had read it? There does indeed seem to be a sort of automatic reverence for this novel, with its ability to lift the curtain on the ‘darkness of man’s heart’. My central criterion, therefore, from the moment I turned the first page, was ‘How well does Golding convince me of his scenario?’ In other words, how completely does he maintain the realism necessary to generalise his ‘moral’ to all men, everywhere? The answer: I am almost convinced.

I say ‘almost’ for a reason. From the moment Golding’s characters are introduced, they have the feel of show more stereotypes. Ralph the rebellious and daring protagonist, Piggy the overweight, visually impaired, asthmatic nerd who eats ‘ever so many sweets’, (a line that Golding’s editor should have scratched without a moment’s hesitation,) and, of course, Jack, the bombastic prefect. As the novel progresses and the characters become more familiar, the authenticity does improve, but there are still occasional moments where Golding oversteps and pulls free from realism rather than leading it along gently; for example, Ralph’s inability to remember the importance of the fire. To compound this, the writing has inevitably dated. Readers of fifty years ago might not have batted an eyelid at the bigoted similarities between Golding’s savages and the Native American peoples, but the readers of today certainly will.

That said, the quality of the writing is generally very high. Golding’s evocation of the island in all its humours is particularly skilful, as are his breadth of symbols and his subtle replacing of names to indicate the boys’ changing attitudes. His depiction of group psychology, though overly blunt at times, is interesting, and his exploration of the nature of power, in all its capriciousness and fragility, is a definite highlight. Between this richness and the reasonably brisk pace, Lord of the Flies might almost be called a gripping and absorbing read.

So, considering that this novel is almost convincing and almost a page-turner, I might almost recommend it. Almost. show less

Perhaps as a mother I could read this as a story of children abandoned on an island and left to survive in any way they can.

I could read it as a story illustrating that children, unsupervised by adults, revert to a state of nature, which, because of the inherent violence of humanity, ignores all logic and reason for the allure of superstition, tribalism, and destruction.

I could read it as a story of how a crowd of children can be influenced to follow a despotic ruler, who offers chants and fun and jeers at those over whom the crowd would like to feel powerful rather than following the boring logic of democracy and the drudge of working toward a common, rational goal, while the majority, unnamed, unnumbered, and unconsidered, sit by show more without using their voices outside of mindlessly echoing the words of those in power, without action besides the basics of human existence.

I could read this story and think how tragic it is that children left to their own devices might act in a way contrary to their own self preservation.

I could wish that someone from a rational civilization that's above the squabbles of a handful of boys on an island would come and save them.

I could wish that there were anything left to be saved.

I could wish that I believed in salvation. show less