"El Señor de las Moscas" de William Golding es una obra literaria que evoca reflexiones profundas sobre la naturaleza humana y el orden social. Ambientada en una isla desierta, la novela sigue a un grupo de niños que luchan por establecer una sociedad organizada después de quedar varados sin adultos. Golding hábilmente teje temas de poder, violencia y la dualidad inherente entre el bien y el mal a lo largo de la narrativa.

La fuerza de esta obra radica en su capacidad para provocar la reflexión y el debate. La exploración de la psicología humana en un entorno aislado es fascinante y plantea preguntas importantes sobre la civilización y la barbarie. La narrativa está llena de simbolismo y metáforas que invitan al lector a analizar más allá de la superficie de la historia.

Sin embargo, la complejidad de la trama y los personajes puede resultar confusa para algunos. La naturaleza sombría y a menudo perturbadora de los eventos descritos puede ser difícil de digerir, especialmente para aquellos que buscan una lectura más ligera. Además, la falta de desarrollo completo de algunos personajes deja ciertas partes de la historia sintiéndose incompletas.

Asi pues, "El Señor de las Moscas" es una obra literaria que desafía al lector a examinar las profundidades oscuras de la humanidad. Aunque su complejidad y sombrío tono pueden no ser para todos los gustos, aquellos que buscan una exploración provocativa de la psicología humana encontrarán mucho que ponderar en esta novela.

What a intense read, school boys on a desert island with no adults, first chapter pulls you right in to the drama of what is about to happen. I couldn't hardly put the book down, read it in two days trying to make the story longer. I recommend this book for young adults or older adults.

(I read THE LORD OF THE FLIES... en español!)

I watched the films when I was seven & had an existential drought thereafter, a hole in my soul--I thought that all the acts committed by the kids in a deserted island were so atrocious that there was NO God.

And the book. The book is a masterpiece undoubtedly, and probably one of the most horrifying allegories ever conceived. The greenness of the children, the naivete which is soon corrupted, almost as naturally as the green plants grow there, is the anchor that dares the reader to tread like the young explorers--cautiously & superaware of surroundings. "The Lord of the Flies" is the deus ex machina... the representation of something holy (or, in this case unholy), a dead parachuter, a cadaver brought back to earth to horrify the kids, but the monster is inside them.

My favorite detail is the horrific image of the little boy with the birthmark on his face (Hawthornian Goth here) who appears only at the beginning and disappears thereafter. Where did he go? Where does society arrive at when everything is dismantled and savages and anarchy rule?

I should've read this in high school.

I don't believe boys/men are like this; I don't believe people are like this. I never did. It was well written, but I wanted to take a hot shower afterwards.

I was tempted to give this five stars, since in so many ways it strikes me as the kind of masterpiece, like Heart of Darkness, that I imagine will retain its horror and readability for centuries. The prose veers (or as Golding would say it, "tends") from plain to painterly. The story is well known: a sort of allegorical morality play set in modern times -- fancy English boys left to their own devices don't so much as revert to darkness as discover primitive outlets for the darkness reflected in their greater society. This is what I love about Heart of Darkness: try as one might, Kurtz cannot be pigeonholed into good or evil. He is excellent at what he does, and what he does is evil. Kurtz is a true reflection of what excellence was to Colonial Europe, and in so far as Colonial Europe was good, cultivated, honorable, and esteemed, so is Kurtz. Kurtz isn't good or evil; he is true.

Golding's version is darker. It centers mostly around the corrupting power of urges to overwhelm social order. Freudian criticism abounds, but the parallel I kept coming back to was Rome. I found that Piggy, no matter how truly annoying he is (another brilliant stroke by Golding is to make Piggy strangely unsympathetic), recalled those numerous Republicans of the Early Empire who advocated in a shrill but useless manner for a return to Senate rule but were shunted aside and usually killed by deranged sociopaths who behaved quite like like Jack. But be it Freudian or historic, any framing of this book feels cheap and hollow because the story has such a complexity of primal urges that it feels almost biological.

Golding said he came up with the idea of book after reading his children "Treasure Island or Coral Island or some such Island" in the years of the hydrogen bomb and Stalin and asked his wife, "why don't I write a children's story about how people really are, about how people actually behave?" To me that's a chilling question and it reveals an architecture not based on rigid Freudian or historical or symbolic parallels. Its portrait of sadism could have been lifted out of the newspapers; its struggle for dominion over the weak is an almost sexual frenzy recalls everything I know about torture in the dungeons of Argentine or US military prisons. In this respect, I think the book, like Heart of Darkness, is timeless.

But I chose not to give it five stars because at the center of Golding's book is a kind of rigid Christian iconography, like that you find in the Poisonwood Bible, that offends me, perhaps because it reminds me of the way I wrote my Freshman year of college, or perhaps because that rigidity, that allegiance to a=b symbolic logic insults my intelligence. The martyrdom of Simon, I felt, demeaned the human quality of Simon. I liked him best because he struck me as the most shrewd and practical. Reducing him to an icon transforms him into a variable: Simon = Paul or Peter or whomever, but ergo facto Simon ≠ Simon. When he comes down to the beach mutting "something about a body on a hill" Simon ceases to be a reflection of human complexity, or biological completeness, and instead becomes a rehashed precedent from Sunday school.

I've often felt that Heart of Darkness' genius was that it somehow reflected the effect of Darwin and modern thinking on the antiquated ideas of Colonial Europe, ie Kurtz isn't good or evil because good and evil are artifices that wilt beneath analysis. When Golding adheres to this materialist perspective, the book is masterly. When he swears allegiance to worn out Christian parables, that complexity is reduced to slips of paper.

One of my favorite books...the underlying theme of which almost all problems in society can be traced back to. Have always wondered: would the story be different if it was a group of young girls instead of young boys? Something tells me there would be more cooperation if it was a group of young girls.

LORD OF THE REREADINGS

A couple of months ago, I picked up To Kill A Mockingbird, a book I last read in high school. What fascinated me about the exercise was how much I remembered and how much I didn’t, what I appreciated as a teen and what I do now.

After that, I began wondering how I would respond to the other books I had to read and analyze as a youth. Hence my rereading of Lord Of The Flies. It’s equally powerful – shocking, even by today’s standards. And it’s all very efficiently done.

Both books are deserved classics. I don’t regret a moment spent rereading either one.

So… perhaps this will become a series. What’s next: Catcher In The Rye? A Separate Peace? Anyhow, on with the review... and keep in mind that if you weren't forced to read this back in school, THERE BE SPOILERS AHEAD (or A-HEAD - if you'll excuse the pun).

What do I remember from my first reading?
• The set-up, of course. After a plane crashes, a group of English boys finds themselves stranded on an island and, with no adults to guide them, form a kind of society that quickly breaks down, resulting in madness and murder.
• The symbols, among them: the conch (for order and civilization, I suppose, since if one holds it one can speak in front of a group); the glasses (or “specs”), which help create fire and, since they belong to the nearsighted, brainy yet mercilessly bullied Piggy, might also represent intelligence.
• The idea of monsters, both real and imagined.
• I remember being entertained by the nickname Piggy – what a childish thing, but it is memorable and symbolic in its own way. What a smart move on author William Golding’s part to call him that.
• The ending. I knew a couple of children died, and that eventually the rest were rescued.

What don’t I remember from that reading?
• I’d forgotten that many of the book’s “hunters” were (back in civilian life) members of a choir!
• I’d totally forgotten about the young twins, Sam and Eric, whose names are blended by Golding into the very contemporary-sounding name Samneric.
• I should have, but didn’t, realize the book took place during some unspecified war.

What do I appreciate now?
• The economy and compactness of the book. There’s very little fat in it (besides the fat dripping from the roasted boar). And though there are lots of vivid descriptions of clouds, forests and sun glinting on sand, nothing feels gratuitous.
• How beautifully Golding captures children’s behaviour, especially in groups. This was Golding’s first novel, and he knew boys so well. (Perhaps he was raising sons at the time.)
• There are lots of characters with Anglo names that sound a lot alike (Ralph, Jack, Roger, Robert, Simon, Henry – something that instantly “dates” it, I suppose), but Golding gradually fills you in on them. It took a while for me to understand Roger’s sadistic nature, for instance.
• The theme of bullying, which is as relevant as ever. Is this a fact of nature? Does every species find someone/thing among them to tease and ridicule? Piggy is overweight, unathletic, myopic and has asthma (and another thing I didn’t notice: his speech places him in a slightly lower class than everyone else), but he’s also incredibly smart. He can see things that the charismatic, initial leader Ralph doesn’t, which is why they make a good pair. But the fact that everyone, from the oldest to the youngest, teases him, is very disturbing.
• The hallucinatory scenes with Simon (often thought of as the book’s most intuitive character) and the “beast,” which gives the novel its title. I wasn’t prepared for the sheer nightmarish horror of these episodes. No wonder Stephen King was so influenced by this book (he borrowed the novel's “Castle Rock” and uses it regularly as a setting).
• The political/social allegory at its centre. How do we make a society work? Is hunting (to feed us) more important than providing shelter or coming up with a way to be rescued? What happens when people don’t pull their weight?
• All of this is done so very subtly. There’s a moment when “chief” Ralph is gradually losing his power, and Piggy suggests he blow the conch to form an assembly. And Ralph knows that if he blows the conch and no one comes, it will be irrevocable. Brilliant observation.
• The idea of the “beast.” Is the idea of the “other” something intrinsic and primitive? Or do we create monsters as a mere projection of our own fears?
• The little visual details, like Ralph pushing the hair out of his face. It’s both a naturalistic detail and one that points out how all the boys are becoming savage (funnily enough, Piggy’s hair doesn’t grow)
• I had no idea how exciting the plot got in the last couple of chapters. Golding cranked up the tension to 11. Even though I knew how the book ended, I was still turning every page, heart thumping, hoping Ralph survived being pursued by Jack and his gang.

The few things that didn’t work this time around:
• The line “Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart…” in the penultimate paragraph of the book seems way too on the nose. I can imagine a million students underlining that with a big "Aha!"
• I forgot Piggy used the N-word. Really. It’s there.

***

I recalled a lot more of this book than Mockingbird. Once read, it has the power and heft of something that is so true and essential that it must have always been around. (I’ve felt this way about other literary works, like Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery,” for instance.)

But, and here’s the weird thing, I think this book is better appreciated as an adult. Younger people are so caught up in the immediacy of every complication. I remember studiously talking about themes before I fully understood them from life. Adults, because we’ve lived through decades, can recognize the patterns of behaviour, the archetypal figures looming behind bullies and visionaries, both in private and public life, that emerge so strikingly in this book.

Finally: why haven’t I read more William Golding?

A brilliant book! After a plane crash, a bunch of school boys are stranded on an island. It’s a tale of how with passage of time, the kids react to their circumstances; in some cases with shocking and disturbing consequences! It’s a harrowing and haunting story.
It’s fiction; it does not imply that if caught in this scenario kids or any one would necessarily react like that. But, it’s just a glimpse into what people are capable of doing when caught in most dire of the circumstances. The whole ensemble of characters can be considered a representation of a human or society at large. Each character can be thought to represent an aspect of the social construct or a characteristic of a person.
It’s an allegorical tale. There are many interpretations of various facets of it. But basically it’s a commentary on the inherent darkness within each human which can surface when the one goal that comes engineered in our DNA since inception, survival , is threatened!

Kids are evil. Don't you know?

I've just finished rereading this book for my book club but, to be honest, I've liked it ever since my class were made to read it in high school. Overall, Lord of the Flies doesn't seem to be very popular, but I've always liked the almost Hobbesian look at the state of nature and how humanity behaves when left alone without societal rules and structures. Make the characters all angel-faced kids with sadistic sides to their personality and what do you have? Just your average high school drama, but set on a desert island. With a bit more bloody murder. But not that much more.

In 1954, when this book was published, Britain was in the process of being forced to face some harsh realities that it had blissfully chosen to ignore beforehand - that it is not, in fact, the centre of the universe, and the British Empire was not a thing of national pride, but an embarrassing infringement on the freedom and rights of other human beings. Much of British colonialism had been justified as a self-righteous mission to educate and modernise foreign "savages". So when put into its historical context, alongside the decolonisation movements, this book could be said to be an interesting deconstruction of white, Western supremacy.

Of course, to a modern reader there's a lot of racism in this book. The racial aspect is a big factor. Golding establishes from the very first page that Ralph is a perfect white, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, private school boy. And Piggy even asks "Which is better - to be a pack of painted n*****s like you are or to be sensible like Ralph is?" I'm not going to argue with anyone's interpretation, but I think there is actually room to see this book as a criticism of racism. For me, I always saw it as Golding challenging the notion of savages being dark-skinned, uneducated people from rural areas. With this book, he says screw that, I'll show you savages! and proceeds to show us how these private school silver spoon little jewels of the empire are no better for their fancy education and gold-plated upbringing.

I think that seemed especially clear from the ending when the officer says n  "I should have thought that a pack of British boys - you're all British, aren't you? - would have been able to put up a better show than that."n Golding's way of saying that human nature is universal and no one can escape it.

Some readers say that you have to have quite a negative view of human nature already to appreciate this book, but I don't think that's true. I'm not sure I necessarily agree with all the implications running around in the novel - namely, the failure of democracy and the pro-authority stance - but it serves as an interesting look at the dark side of human nature and how no one is beyond its reach. Plus, anyone who had a bit of a rough time in high school will probably not find the events in this book a huge leap of the imagination.

The fascinating thing about Lord of the Flies is the way many historical parallels can be drawn from the messages it carries. You could choose to view the charismatic and manipulative Jack Merridew as a kind of Hitler (or other dictator) who takes advantage of a group of people at their weakest. Dictators and radicals often find it easy to slip in when a society is in chaos... we do not have to assume that Golding believed that everyone everywhere is evil, only that we all have the capacity for it when we find ourselves in unstable situations.

Still a fascinating book after all these years.

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This was a great read in my opinion. I enjoyed it from the first to the last page. The story explores group polarization as the stranded youths slowly regress into a primitive state. Frictions demonstrate the social pressure as division occurs and give rise to the psychological dilemma of 'the power of the situation'. The book also explores irrational fear and imagination as it relates to the group-think concept.

For some reason I thought the most powerful parts of the story were the use of the word 'mask'. The face paint and camouflage the 'hunters' use created a face mask.

The author writes how the boys hid behind their 'masks' and became different (or even stronger) boys:

"The mask compelled them", pg. 76

"He was safe from shame or self-consciousness behind the mask of his paint...", pg. 178

I enjoyed the simple delivery of the author's use of imagery, dialogue, and colorful descriptions used throughout the narrative. I would recommend this one to anyone. Thanks!

★★★½ /5
This was a really interesting book, sadly I wasn‘t really attached to the characters. But the plot and the ideas just carried the story really well.

The year 1954 saw the first publication of Golding’s masterwork, the point of which had (independently) bifurcated my personality in that same year - in a series of ironic inner game-changing events...

Piggy and his upper-class schoolmates are marooned on a remote wild island. But left without adults, they quickly descend, like some of our leaders, into draconian martial violence - the powerful and strong versus the poor and weak (shades of Animal Farm?).

And I myself nearly became a Piggy.

January, 1954 saw the personal event that changed that transition forever.

You see, for 69 years I have lived my life in a perpetual rerun of Bill Murray’s Groundhog Day. And my moral values - though, praise God, not my Political ones - are so utterly and ironically shared with those of that McCarthyist year, 1954.

I’m a Photographic Time Warp copy, in fact.

It all started on a crisp, clear January morning in 1954...

My colicky and irascible brother had come into the world ten months earlier - like me, he would have preferred to stay Close to my Mom forever, bless him. But - I had also around the time of his birth found my parents in an embarrassingly intimate act. I had been barely three.

And the day our car crashed on the Michigan Freeway when I was two was the origin...

That event had upset my psychological Apple Cart.

My Eden had vanished. And soon I was no longer the sole beneficiary of my parent's love. With the appearance of those twin sources of trauma, I became moody and withdrawn. And fell into entropy. Corporal punishment was administered, more and more frequently.

Yes, the Absurd split my life in two with those events - through no fault of. my parents - and a lifetime split resulted. Under that fractious stress, I retreated into the safe haven of Autism.

All because of my parents tried to love their children equally.

Kids can be so weird.

But by January 1954 my parents had seen enough of my inner ethical turmoil. They wanted to shore up my confidence. They bought me a popular 45 rpm record, whose flip side contained a ‘fun’ song about a “Number One Son” who must be taught to not his “Troubles tell, for Life is to Enjoy.”

Their unsparing love had been replaced by an Ideological Life Hack, that I took for my own, just as a drowning man will hang for dear life onto a Brass Ring on a ship’s hold. A four-year-old needs a foundation for his values in the absence of primary love.

Yes, you guessed it: it was a substitute; an ideal false self. But thankfully, it made my Christian faith possible, and that endured.

But that Brass Ring, which gave me a traumatically Impossible ideal to live up to in order to be a Number One Son in their eyes, was psychologically destructive...

And its inner violent duality was at the heart of my psychological collapse in 1970 - it was the Perfect Storm: autistic, sheltered 1950's kid meets his violently postmodern climacteric - coming of age!

BUT - its mature, adult worldview was always ALL that stood against me - and the moral entropy and outright violence of a Piggy, towards whose personality I had been drifting by the age of four.

So WHAT if it turned me into a slightly funny lifetime Aspie and hence victim of all the symptoms of bipolar disorder?

My utter MORAL collapse was averted.

I maintained my values intact.

And for that, in my view, my parents and siblings deserve ALL THE CREDIT.