Lord of the Flies (1954)

When is a children's book not a children's book? No, no, this isn't a Christmas cracker joke I found while hoovering up. What's that? You'd rather read some Christmas cracker jokes than a carefully constructed and intelligent critique of Lord of the Flies? Well lucky for you I'd rather write some Christmas cracker jokes than a carefully constructed and intelligent critique of Lord of the Flies. However, be warned that some of the jokes below will be a review in disguise. Now let's do this thing.

Why did the fish blush?
Because the sea weed!

What do you call a man wearing paper trousers?
Russell!

What's the difference between a children's book and an adult's book?
Normally kid's book star kids, with maybe a token adult to get in the way or be the bad guy. Adult's books, conversely, almost always star adults. If you want the reader to identify with your main character you should probably have a character they can identify with, which means someone the same age. Perhaps one of the things that makes Lord of the Flies so unsettling is that it features only child characters, yet is not a children's book. Twenty five years of reading experience went out of the window as my brain tried to consolidate child characters in a worryingly adult scenario.

On which side do chickens have the most feathers?
The outside!

Who hides in the bakery at Christmas?
A mince spy!

What's brown and sticky?
A stick! And stick, incidentally, is something a consensus on this novel refuses to do. My friends on Goodreads give it a spread of four stars, three stars, and two stars. The top six reviews give it, respectively, five, one, five, one, five, and one star. The ending appears to cause a lot of the problem. And I too was torn over it. Having established that kids, left to themselves, turn into murderous brutes (basically adults), all it takes is for one disapproving adult to show up for them all to transform back into little kids. Is it a clever metaphor? Or just a lazy way to tie up the novel. I have no idea. But I quite enjoyed the journey to that tipping point.

What's furry and minty?
A polo bear!

Why is it ever more difficult to buy advent calendars?
Because their days are numbered!

And finally…

What's yellow and dangerous?
Shark infested custard!

Thank you very much.
( )

When is a children's book not a children's book? No, no, this isn't a Christmas cracker joke I found while hoovering up. What's that? You'd rather read some Christmas cracker jokes than a carefully constructed and intelligent critique of Lord of the Flies? Well lucky for you I'd rather write some Christmas cracker jokes than a carefully constructed and intelligent critique of Lord of the Flies. However, be warned that some of the jokes below will be a review in disguise. Now let's do this thing.

Why did the fish blush?
Because the sea weed!

What do you call a man wearing paper trousers?
Russell!

What's the difference between a children's book and an adult's book?
Normally kid's book star kids, with maybe a token adult to get in the way or be the bad guy. Adult's books, conversely, almost always star adults. If you want the reader to identify with your main character you should probably have a character they can identify with, which means someone the same age. Perhaps one of the things that makes Lord of the Flies so unsettling is that it features only child characters, yet is not a children's book. Twenty five years of reading experience went out of the window as my brain tried to consolidate child characters in a worryingly adult scenario.

On which side do chickens have the most feathers?
The outside!

Who hides in the bakery at Christmas?
A mince spy!

What's brown and sticky?
A stick! And stick, incidentally, is something a consensus on this novel refuses to do. My friends on Goodreads give it a spread of four stars, three stars, and two stars. The top six reviews give it, respectively, five, one, five, one, five, and one star. The ending appears to cause a lot of the problem. And I too was torn over it. Having established that kids, left to themselves, turn into murderous brutes (basically adults), all it takes is for one disapproving adult to show up for them all to transform back into little kids. Is it a clever metaphor? Or just a lazy way to tie up the novel. I have no idea. But I quite enjoyed the journey to that tipping point.

What's furry and minty?
A polo bear!

Why is it ever more difficult to buy advent calendars?
Because their days are numbered!

And finally…

What's yellow and dangerous?
Shark infested custard!

Thank you very much.
( )

“Why don’t I write a children’s story about how people really are, about how people actually behave?” asked the author of Lord of the Flies.

Indeed…

William Golding’s chronicle of the descent of Ralph, Jack and their minions into tribalism and savagery is only so horrific because deep down—without the guardrails of civilization—we know that it is true.

And here and now, watching the unrelenting rage of young protesters as they attack the icons and foundations of society, it gives me pause to wonder what kind of islands those “safe spaces” of academia actually are. ( )

I decided to not read this book after reading an article about an obscure event when some boys actually were stranded on a small island.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/the-real-lord-of-the-flies-what-ha...

Well thank goodness for short books. I loved The Lord of the Rings, but 1,000 plus pages is a lot to get through. This whole book felt more like a short story to me (that is not a complaint by the way) and I was able to get through it in about 2 and a half hours.

Though I liked the book (4.5 stars) I did think that ultimately the book suffered from a lack of world building. There is some discussion of a nuclear war taking place, but it didn't feel right in terms of this book. I mean if there is a nuclear war why in the world are you depositing kids on an island? It also seemed weird that there were no girls, no adults, just these boys from age 5 to at least 12 or 13 I would guess. So for me, there was a lot of suspension of disbelief going on here for me to get past that whole thing.

Reading about how initial attempts for this cadre of boys to build their own society goes to the wayside once some decide they will be hunters while others will focus more on shelter and keeping a signal fire going was fascinating. I often got the feeling we were watching an experiment and the ending sort of bore that out in a way when we get to it.

The main characters we follow in this book is Ralph (chief of the boys), Piggy (the only boy with common sense who is loathed by mostly everyone because of his size), Simon (who appears to also believe in a beast that walks in the woods like the younger kids), and Jack (who is angry that Ralph is chief and leads his group of hunters to hunt wild pig that are on the island).

I had great affection for Piggy (and am still angry that we never did find out his real name) and Simon. Piggy was the smartest of the boys, and it was gratifying to see Ralph realizing too late he was not smart to have dismissed Piggy's concerns and to have made him into a source of ridicule by the other boys. Ralph and Jack's power struggle was fascinating, especially because you can see Ralph doesn't get why Jack is jealous of him, and Piggy understands all too well.

Even though this is a short book, we can understand all of the characters motivations and Golding managed to do a great job with all of them, especially Ralph. Ralph is the high school football player who realizes that after high school he's not top dog anymore. Ralph just figured that out a lot earlier in this book.

The writing worked and Golding did a great job with dialogue though often at times I would get a bit confused on who was speaking. I think that was during any of the fighting/argument scenes.

The flow was not great, I think that's because at the end of each chapter it was like, mini-endings. Then you would get to the next chapter and the book would feel like it was starting all over again. This and the world building were honestly the only problem I had with the entire book. It felt spotty in places and then it felt like we were at an ending and then nope, I would see more pages ahead for me.

The setting of the island didn't make a lot of sense to me at all. I am still wondering how big it was. I think that Piggy had the right idea at first and the boys should have been focused on food, water, and shelter. But heck, I have a hard time trying to make my cat understand that no she can't jump on people when they come to visit, I can't imagine trying go instill discipline into about 20 boys of various ages to do chores.

The ending was very bleak and you are definitely left with the sense that all of these boys are now going to be different and haunted by what they did and what they let happened on their island. ( )