yup, i have now ticked box where it says this book is one of the must read classics and i think that's the highlight of my reading experience that i have with this story.

there are many things that are hard to believe about this story, like why only teenagers got stranded on the island? other than few no one said anything about going home? violence among these kids is not such a big thing as this is a common occurrence nowadays. this book depicts how easily humans could turn violent, and their desire to rule fellow humans but i was also expecting another trait of human nature to come out and that was being stand united against oppression. Sadly, that did not happen.

definitely a disturbing read but not an outstanding story in today's world.

A hard book to rate as although its well written and is very thought provoking, the content gets unpleasantly graphic and some aspects are awkwardly dated (eg the assumption the British boys should be jolly good chaps - “we’re not savages, we’re English”).

Plot

It starts off as a conventional adventure: a mixed group of boys (some know each other; many who don’t) survive a plane crash on a desert island and struggle to survive. It is somewhat confused and confusing at first – perhaps to make the reader empathise with the boys’ confusion.

From the outset there are issues of priorities (Jack’s instant gratification of hunting or Ralph’s long term need for shelter and maintaining a fire signal) and leadership. It’s inevitable that standards of “civilization” will slip.

There is also an infectious fear of “the beast”, although whether one interprets it as animal, airman, hallucination, or symbolic may vary at different points in the story. Certainly the tone of the book changes after Simon’s first encounter with Lord of the Flies.


Image: Teaching Lord of the Flies, by The Jenkins Comic (Source)


Group Dynamics

Eventually the boys split into two groups: hunters who become ever more “savage” in appearance and behaviour, and the remainder who want to retain order, safety, common sense – and their lives. Why do the obedient and angelic choir turn to savagery - does the fact they have an identified leader, who isn't the overall leader once they're on the island, contribute? One also wonders how the story might be different if it was a mixed sex group, or even an all girl group. Very different, certainly, and I suppose it would provide a distraction to what Golding was trying to say about human (or just male?) nature.

It illustrates how petty bullying can be condoned and encouraged within groups (exacerbated by rituals, chanting, body markings etc) and how it can escalate to much worse. Nevertheless, one of the main victims, Piggy, is proud of his differences, demonstrates knowledge and intelligence and actually grows in confidence as his leader loses his.

Milgran, Zimbardo, Christianity...

It questions whether it is power or the environment that makes some of the boys so bad (echoes of Zimbardo’s prison experiments and Milgram’s obedience experiments - if a book can echo things which came after it was written).

In fact, Golding "experimented, while a teacher at a public school, with setting boys against one another in the manner of Lord of the Flies"! See HERE (thanks Matt).

The more Christian concept of original sin runs through it, which was probably Golding's intention (his editor made him make Simon less Jesus-like), along with other Christian analogies relating to snakes, devils (aka Lord of the Flies), self sacrifice, and redemption/rescue.

And then there are the conch and fire as symbols of order and god, respectively, in total contrast to the warpaint etc of the warriors.

Lots to think about, but more the stuff of nightmares than dreams.

Compared with The Hunger Games

It's interesting to compare this with The Hunger Games, which modern teens probably find much easier to relate to (see my review HERE). I think one problem Lord of the Flies has is that the period is tricky: too far from the present to seem "relevant" (though I think it is), but not long enough ago to be properly historical.

Compared with I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream

For another dysfunctional group trying to survive a very different ordeal, see Harlan Ellison's horrific short story about an evil supercomputer, which I reviewed HERE.

1/6/20
One of the worst books I have ever read. The experience was excruciating.

30/5/20
Giving this one another shot. Tried last year and the first 30 pages were so painful. Did a lot of research on this book (spoke to a couple of people as well) and I feel like if I don't get through it this time around, I probably never will.

24/3/19
I got this book at the De Slegte many years ago but never read it. However now, Rory Power is bringing out a book coming July called Wilder Girls, with I heard is a feminist retelling of this. I'm hoping to compare the two, so this might just be the push for me to finally read this one :)

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1.75

William Golding's classic Lord of the Flies is a terrifying dystopian novel about the savagery at the heart of the human experience and as such deserves comparison to Conrad's Heart of Darkness. However, rather than using a voyage motif as Conrad did, Golding uses a deserted Pacific island as a Petri dish where an unspecified number of British schoolkids are mysteriously stranded during WWII. The third-person narrator mostly follows the protagonist Ralph as he navigates the limits of his own sanity in being the most consistent and vocal advocate for keeping a smoke signal alive in order to signal their location to any passing ship for rescue and in assuming and fighting for leadership of the band of kids. He meets a rotund, spectacled boy who makes the mistake of revealing his fear of being called Piggy and who naturally is given this name in the story. Piggy finds a conch shell which becomes the pivotal object in the story as it is used to call meetings and designate the recognized speaker. At the first such meeting, Ralph is elected Chief against his primary antagonist, Jack. These three figures are at the heart of the story as it plays out and as the situation devolves into chaos slowly but surely.

The writing is very beautiful as Golding describes life on the island such as it is and the kids' early, fading fascination for it: "[Henry] squatted on his hams at the water's edge, bowed, with a shock of hair falling over his forehead and past his eyes, and the afternoon sun emptied down invisible arrows." (p. 61) In this scene, Henry is observed by the unstable Roger who is struggling against his social conditioning: "Roger gathered a handful of stones and began to throw them. Yet there was a space round Henry, perhaps six yards in diameter, into which he dare not throw. Here, invisible yet strong, was the taboo of the old life. (p. 62) Jack appears on the scene: "Jack was standing under a tree about ten yards away. When Roger opened his eyes and saw him, a darker shadow crept beneath the swarthiness of his skin; but Jack noticed nothing. He was eager, impatient, beckoning, so that Roger went to him. (p. 62)

There is a fracture in the group between those around Ralph who represent order and the grasping of hope for rescue, and the growing group around Jack, the hunters, that sought out and embraced chaos. Ralph struggles with this division and sees the forces inevitably turning against him - the forces of Jack's hunters but also the surrounding water: "Wave after wave, Ralph followed the rise and fall until something of the remoteness of the sea numbed his brain. Then gradually the almost infinite size of this water foced itself on his attention. This was the divider, the barrier." (p. 110)

The title of the book comes from the head of a wild pig that is killed resulting in the irreversible swing in power on the island from Ralph to Jack. The head is impaled on a stick and decomposes causing several - but especially the influencable Simon - to slowly lose their grip. "The pile of guts was a black blob of flies that buzzed like a saw. After a while these flies found Simon. Gorged, they alighted by his runnels of sweat and drank. They tickled under his nostrils and played leapfrog on his thighs. They were black and iridescent green and without number; and in front of Simon, the Lord of the Flies hung on his stick and grinned. At last Simon gave up and looked back; saw the white teeth and dim eyes, the blood - and his gaze was held by that ancient, inescapable recognition. In Simon's right temple, a pulse began to beat on the brain." (p. 138). This moment is truly the centerpiece of the book.

From here, civilization takes a dive and the boys descend into savagery and murder. The situation results in a hunt for Ralph who is saved only by the deus ex machine of a British cruiser which sees the feeble smoke on the horizon from a massive, accidental fire: "His voice rose under the black smoke before the burning wreckage of the island; and infected by that emotion, the other little boys began to shake and sob too. And in the middle of them, with filthy body, matted hair, and unwiped nose, Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart..." (p. 202)

Lord of the Flies is a masterpiece of dystopian fiction that leaves images of hellish savagery on the reader's mind long after the cover is closed. It has been an inspiration for countless movies and I daresay even more contemporary phenomena such as Lost or Survivor. A truly important and essential read. Would that the world had more Ralphs and less Jacks.

I would presume that swathes of humanity in the West (and millions elsewhere) already know the story of a civilian plane crash around (Second World) war-time in which groups of upper class English schoolboys find themselves marooned on a deserted island, where there is a limited wish to remain civilised and a rampant descendance into savagery!

This startlingly immense debut novel by William Golding is woke-ism at its best! What, I hear you say? Yes... Golding, got the idea of the book from the 'Christian' pro-colonialism The Coral Island, when he though that the idea of marooned English schoolboys remaining civilised whilst encountering external evil as preposterous; and indeed the concept of the civilising power of colonialism; the beauty of his inversion of the original source was his idea that the evil the boys would face would be from within! A true modern classic and one of the greatest debuts of al time! All the stars, a 10 out of 12, Five STAR READ.

2024 read
PS Although read at least three times as a child, this was my first reading in over four decades as an adult!

My second reading and still just 4 stars. Some people give it five stars for the classic that it is, but for me it is a good book, but does not blow me away.

I did the audio this time and I highly recommend it. It is read by the author and his forward and afterward are pretty funny.

As mentioned a couple of paragraphs above - it is a classic and should be read by all. It may not be some people's cup of tea, but for the time it came out it is unique and has led to almost any survival story that looks at how a group of people react to be referred to as Lord-of-the-Flies-esque.

Edit: A friend send me this article of a real situation where a group of kids were left stranded on an island for 15 months. Spoiler alert, the Lord of The Flies scenario never happened, the boys behaved and organized themselves wonderfully
https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...

.Maybe,” he said hesitantly, “maybe there is a beast.” “What I mean is . . . maybe it’s only us.”.

That quote sums up very well the idea of this modern classic. I ran away from this novel for years but it finally caught up with me or I tripped, who knows? It was a lot more interesting than I expected and it was worth my time but I would not say I loved it.

During some sort of war, a plane crashes on an island and the only survivors are a bunch of kids. Forced to stay alive without the guidance and surveillance of adults some start to behave crazy and cruel. I guess the morale is that people are civilized because there are rules that are reinforced and if the society gets rid of them some of use will return to our animal state or worse.

While I admit that the story is thought-provoking and a classic, a pioneer of the subject, I cannot say I enjoyed reading it too much. Not much happens for most of the book and when it does it feels rushed. Also, the author spent a lot more time describing the nature than the characters or their experience. I had problems distinguishing between the children and I did not manage to form a strong opinion either about the positive characters or the negative ones. Finally, I think it did not age well, it is hard to explain why I have this impression.

I both listened to and read Lord of The Flies. While listening I got lost in the descriptions (read bored) so I thought the written version was more suitable for this story.

Un roman despre o insulă pustie și o mînă de copii naufragiați. Cu siguranță o rescriere a lui Robinson Crusoe (1719) și a altor romane cu insule și eroi eșuați într-un ținut mai degrabă paradisiac (Insula de corali, Comoara din insulă, Insula misterioasă etc.).

Dar scopul lui William Golding a fost îndeosebi unul polemic. Romanul lui va dezminți sau / și va ilustra (pe o cale ocolită) postulatul lui Jean-Jacques Rousseau: „Omul este bun de la natură, dar societatea îl pervertește”. Observație: cînd ajung pe insulă, mulți dintre copiii lui Golding par deja pervertiți.

În Viața, staniile & uimitoarele aventuri ale lui Robinson Crusoe, marinar din York (1719), găsim un personaj foarte norocos (iresponsabil de norocos!), căruia totul îi iese din plin. Caprele se domesticesc singure și intră de bunăvoie în țarc, grîiul, orzul, cerealele cresc spontan din pămîntul fertil: „Mare mi-a fost mirarea cînd am văzut vreo 10 sau 12 spice de orz”. Cînd eroul e plictisit, un papagal inteligent îi ține de urît. Natura sare, așadar, în sprijinul nesăbuitului. Pentru ca fericirea să-i fie deplină era nevoie de Vineri. Și iată că bunul Vineri aleargă spre Salvatorul lui. Și i se supune.

Împăratul muștelor narează povestea pe dos. Copiii intră rapid în conflict, se fac două tabere, „cei buni” (din ce în ce mai puțini, rămîn la sfîrșit Ralph și Piggy, apoi numai Ralph) și „cei răi” (tot mai numeroși, în frunte cu Jack Merridew). Frica trezește în copii cruzimea. Încep să creadă că insula e bîntuită de o fiară malefică. Vor s-o găsească și s-o vîneze. Firește că n-o vor ucide, fiara e doar o fantasmă a minții lor delirante. Îl vor ucide, în schimb, pe Simon, un băiat epileptic, obsedat de prezența Ei. În realitate, Fiara e fiecare dintre ei și toți la un loc. Asta mi-a amintit de parabola despre Simorg, Regele păsărilor, rescrisă de Borges.

La sfîrșitul lecturii (menționez că puștanii sînt recuperați de pe insulă), mă întreb încă o dată: Omul este bun de la natură și numai societatea îl corupe? Sau: omul e rău / crud de la natură, iar societatea îl ajută (prin educație, religie, coerciție, dresaj, azil psihiatric etc.) să devină iubitor și milos? Nu îndrăznesc să propun un răspuns isteț. S-au făcut experimente (mă gîndesc la cel inițiat de Christina Maslach și Philip Zimbardo, în 1971, la Stanford University), s-au formulat ipoteze: psihologii mai au de lucru. Și totuși: am trăit cîndva o împrejurare, în care am văzut că pînă și cel mai puțin violent dintre muritori poate deveni (fără să vrea?) crud, nemilos, viclean. Răul poate fascina. Trezește plăceri...

P. S. Deși în cei 68 de ani care au trecut de la publicarea cărții, exegeții au identificat toate aluziile (și multe altele care n-au trecut niciodată prin mintea autorului), voi aminti că numele ebraic Belzebuth / Beelzebub / Baal-Zebub (zeul impostor din Ekron) se traduce prin „Împăratul muștelor”.

Arriva Thomas al tavolo. Schiaffa un fantastico foglio a A4 che titola “Stato di Natura”, sotto una spiegazione breve e concisa. Poi arriva Golding, gli ciula l’a4 e comincia a scriverci la sua storiella. Guarda caso calza tutto a pennello. Hobbes non s’incazza perché alla fine fila quasi tutto liscio secondo ciò che lui andava teorizzando. Vogliam metter poi il leggero contrasto, generato dall’inevitabile candore che la figura dell’infante si porta appresso, con la spietatezza di certe vicissitudini? E i bambini di 6 anni, fastidiosi e assolutamente “in mezzo ai coglioni”?
Il coinvolgimento, il gioco di ruolo, il desiderio e il senso d’appartenenza. Credo che nulla sia esagerato, neanche nei momenti più crudi.
Quasi riuscivo a cucirmi tutto su vecchi ricordi, come credo che ognuno di noi, dopo tanti anni, possa sentirsi in colpa per Piggy.
In qualche modo, se potesse, tornerebbe indietro di una manciata di anni per dargli un forte abbraccio e ascoltarlo un pochino di più.

Without what the author intended to do or probably has done, it would be a 3 star, but so 1 star is the only option.

Of course, it´s completely natural to become primitive again within the shortest amounts of time, and not an unintended dark comedy, self satirizing, biased, sexual predator of an author, who finally deus ex machinas out of this mess.

„In a private journal and in a memoir for his wife, Golding said he tried to rape a 15-year-old girl when he was 18 and on his first holiday from Oxford“
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William...

„He had met her when both were taking music lessons in Marlborough, Wiltshire, when he was about 16 and she was 13, but he tried to rape her two years later when he was home during his first year at Oxford.
Golding writes that they went for a walk to the common and he 'felt sure she wanted heavy sex, as this was visibly written on her pert, ripe and desirable mouth'.
Soon they were 'wrestling like enemies' as he 'tried unhandily to rape her'.
She resisted and Golding, years later, wrote that 'he had made such a bad hand at rape' before shaking her and shouting 'I’m not going to hurt you'.“
„A later girlfriend, Mollie, was also treated badly by Golding.
She was another local from Marlborough whom he later let down by breaking off their engagement because he had found her frigid.“
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...

„The attempted rape involved a Marlborough girl, named Dora, who had taken piano lessons with Golding. It happened when he was 18 and on holiday during his first year at Oxford. Carey quotes the memoir as partially excusing the attempted rape on the grounds that Dora was "depraved by nature" and, at 14, was "already sexy as an ape". It reveals that Golding told his wife he had been sure the girl "wanted heavy sex". She fought him off and ran away as he stood there shouting: "I'm not going to hurt you," the memoir said.“
https://www.writerswrite.com/sir-will...

„Golding, who won the Nobel Prize in 1983, three years after bagging the Booker for Rites Of Passage, admitted trying to rape a 15-year-old schoolgirl when he was an 18-year-old student at Oxford, according to a forthcoming biography by John Carey.
The schoolgirl put up a fierce resistance. But they had sex two years later, according to Golding, who nevertheless called her “depraved by nature” and “sexy as an ape” in his unpublished memoir, Men, Women & Now. He wrote it for Ann, his wife of 50 years, to explain his “monstrous” character.“
https://readiscovery.com/2009/08/18/w...

https://www.theguardian.com/books/boo...

Fringe philosophy
Downgrading and unintended satirizing of kids´ language from an adult´s perspective to seem capable of writing empathic and emotional, tragic-comic dialogues and characters is a cheap trick that fails epically, if not performed right. But it´s the logical consequence of making kids act as if they were stupid animals to integrate a biased, boring, and one sided plot. If you want real philosophy on an island, read:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...

More bad philosophy on an island, read:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...
This one has everything, racism, glorifying religious extremism, a true, clear picture of our past.

Back to the show, as it´s often the problem with monopolies, the ones in art lead to overrated, hyped, and simply not good wanna be philosophical constructions. I mean, symbolic, metaphysical, allegory metaphor overload for young people who want to be entertained? Honestly? „Don´t try to murder each other kids.“ What a lesson! Of course, kids are so stupid that they immediately establish cultic dictatorships if they are not supervised, what else should logically happen.

If this wouldn´t be a typical forced read to torture school kids and a kind of pre pop psychology Nobel Prize higher literature with meaning drivel, I would say it´s barely average, but because of its excessive misuse, it´s just unacceptable. Possibly the ever so clever bureaucrats of the boards of education all over the world ought think a second about removing all the trash of all the lauded, boring, outdated, obsolete,… literature each country tends to accumulate in a strange mixture of patriotism, cultural imperialism (our writers, literature, tradition) and think about including the great, amazing, wonderful worlds of literature kids and young adults want to read.

The worst classic I´ve ever read
One extra star up to 2 could have been given for incompetently trying to be deep, philosophical, and critical and failing to transport the important message about the evil lurking in naked apes. Nice try, William, but just an epic fail, and total bigotry regarding your alcohol and abuse problems you loved to drivel about in your strange diaries of a molester.
I was really searching for deeper meaning, any of all the arguments seen in positive reviews, but it´s just unrealistic, the ending is a bad joke, putting as much symbolism and innuendos in it to camouflage the immense flaws doesn´t really help, and it just fuels my opinion that, just as in real life, much of what is idealized and glorified is just bad and rotten. Look at the ratings of Golding´s other books, rated by people who like to read classics! Another achievement in inability.

I know, there are many getting real pleasure out of classic literature, that´s a question of taste and I don´t force them to read my trivial literature. That´s where the tolerance ends, because the problem is that the previously mentioned kids, teens, and young adults don´t deserve to be bored with what elder generations may really enjoy, but has absolutely no worth for them. I did once make the mistake of reading a few dozen classics and most were just average, some really bad, but definitively close to none great. It´s sad, avoidable, and just plain anachronistic to violently keep extremely outdated versions of descriptions of long away pasts in the curriculum and the main reason kids and teens hate to read.

Irony time, there would be old, classic, clever books that could really tell something about human nature, not using placative over the top violence, especially in the classic and new sci-fi and social-sci-fi genre that explore many questions regarding human nature, state, politics, sexuality, economics, faith, but, they would be too extreme, progressive, and subtle. Cause bigoted conservatives don´t want their kids to read really dangerous, meta context, social criticism, stuff, they want some characters far away from any real, imminent problems playing hide and seek with a freaking pigs´ head.

It truly left me speechless, just asking why, what´s wrong with you, humanities, literary critique, Nobel prize, quality literature, higher art, snobs, modern art, don´t you realize that you are satirizing yourself by praising so many works that many avid, lifelong readers, with k reading scores deem bad, arrogant, boring, and worthless? Reminiscences of a past when bigoted, unenlightened people celebrated any trash that could distract from their incredible cognitive biases. It at least also lets me imagine a purgatory library filled with this stuff and dark angels forcing me to read it until I become insane, repair my brain, and restart the process. Forever. Mwahahaha!

Trying to find an explanation, a combination of personal drivel with the biography of a disturbed mind
The author had issues, binge drinking and alcoholism were demons haunting him, and he did exactly write this one thing that made him famous and nothing else of importance. What makes one more disgusted is the fact that he, as mentioned, tried to rape a 15 year old girl when he was 18 (how often has he been successful and didn´t write about it, because he was so completely wasted and drunk that he wouldn´t even remember it?), a reason he should at least be retrospectively condemned, as retroactive, time travel castration isn´t really an option. That´s one of the crime areas where I distance myself from restorative justice and go full metal eye for an eye, archaic retributive justice, because I am of the opinion that sex offenders should be incarcerated under terrible conditions, life imprisonment without any chance to ever see the light of the day again (and this rehabilitation thing is complete, psychologic, psychiatric (2 other partly fringe science the humanities unleashed on humanity like a plague) nonsense. Nobody would try to „cure“ someone who is heterosexual, homosexual, or has a different gender identity than physical body, because that´s completely crazy. But hey, someone who is born (seen in babies) or made a pedophile, rapist, necrophile, etc. can of course be healed. And, another very important factor, it´s cheaper for the state to release serial sex killers to save some money and wait if it takes them weeks or months until the next victim is tortured, raped, and eaten. How is it possible that psychiatrists say that they are no danger anymore before and don´t get any problems for their little oopsies?). However, such a tortured, poor soul, someone who raped as bad as he wrote, could become a celebrated highlight of highbrow s*** literature, which makes him worthy of even more fringe Nobel prizes, maybe for voodoo economics.

Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...

n  My 50th read of 2023!n

Recently I scanned through a list of 'classic' books that most people seem to have read, and wrote down a few that I have not read. Lord of the Flies is one of those that made me feel like I had committed a book crime, so of course I had to set out to redeem my wrongs.

Everyone knows what Lord of the Flies is about.... what children would do if left in charge of themselves. A terrifying premise. And the promise of chaos in that concept is carried out through The Lord of the Flies. The philosophical question of 'What would we do without rules?" is explored through the lens of children who crash and somehow get to an island. There are no adults remaining.

This struck a great balance with the characters and ideas it was exploring, and was certainly a very powerful read. During the final act especially, I felt a knot of suspense that mounted and mounted to a visceral ending that was shocking, despite some things seeming obvious.

A classic for a reason!