أول رواية للكاتب البريطاني ويليام جولدنج نُشرت عام 1954
يكتب جولدنج عن الطبيعة الانسانية بين الخير والشر
كيف يتحول البشر إلى العنف والهمجية والفوضى
وخاصة إذا توفرت الظروف والبيئة المناسبة
فكرة الرواية مزعجة لكنها ترمز إلى الواقع

★★★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.

Rating: 1* of five for clanking, clunking prose

It's a question of taste. I'm not fond of OverBlownAllegorical stories. There is no escaping this book's didacticism. Its parti pris is on display from page one. I was full up on that when I finished reading Orwell, who did it with more wit and humor than Golding does. Just not my kind of story is all.

n  n    “We did everything adults would do. What went wrong?”n  n

For me, this quote sums up the entire book. It’s a powerful exploration of humanity and the wrongness of our society and it also demonstrates the hypocrisy of war. Adults judge the behaviour of children, but are they really any better? I think not.

The scary thing about this book is how real it is. The Lord of the Flies bespeaks the brilliance of realistic dystopian fiction, it gives you a possible world scenario, a bunch of very human characters and then it shows you want might happen when they are thrown into a terrible situation: they act like monsters (or humans?) What Golding shows us is that we are not so far from our primal nature, from our so called killer instincts, and all it takes is a little push out of the standard world we live in for us to embrace our darker side.

The boys act in accordance with what they have seen in the world (though they don’t understand limits.) Power creates authority and violence is a way to achieve the peace you want. Sort of ironic isn’t it? They go to war amongst themselves and in doing so lose all sense of childhood innocence. They grow up. They learn what humans are capable of doing when pushed. They become ‘savages’ and reject civilisation and create their own sense of community, though in another display of irony this in itself becomes a mini-civilisation- just a one of their own accord without any rules and a nasty child tyrant enthroned as chief.

“What are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages?”

The novel is rich in allegory to the point where it has been interpreted in so many different ways over the years. Like all great literature, it could mean lots of things and nothing at all. It’s a very clever piece of writing and it got me thinking a great deal about children and how we protect them from the realities of the world. It sort of says something to me, a quiet acknowledgement about how messed up things can be given the right circumstances and these children are so very quick to embrace it with unflinching enthusiasm (at least, when one of them leads the way.)

It’s a good book with a lot of ideas though at times I found the prose a little hard to follow. The dialogue is confusing at times and many of the children fade into the background with only a small few developing distinct personalities. I found the first part of the story particularly difficult to read, so in terms of the actual execution I think it could have been done a little better. I found myself wanting to edit sections of the text, which is not a place a reader should ever be in especially with a novel this revered by so many enthusiastic readers, critics and students. Maybe I’m just a little picky with word placement.

Overall though, I’m glad I spent the time to revisit it. There are so many pop-culture references to this that a reminder was needed.

Thank god I'm done with this horrible book.

A plane full of British schoolboys crash lands on a deserted island with no adults. In the beginning, they try to be civilized and concentrate on being rescued, but the mind of Jack quickly (too quickly, I'd say) becomes twisted and warped into madness. The main protagonist is Ralph, the one who remained slightly sane throughout the book.
Ralph was really annoying at the start, but he grew as a character farther into the story.
I hated Jack. From the very start, he was a fucking terrible person, treating Piggy like dirt.
Piggy was my favorite character, along with Simon. And guess who dies? Both of the them. And for some reason, Jack doesn't.





I didn't think this story was realistic at all. I doubt a boy, or a group of boys, would go insane that soon. They were on the island for a few days, maybe a week. They had foot, water, shelter, but Jack kept going on about meat. He had to have his meat, pig meat. Why? I have no fucking clue. Apparently these boys couldn't live without meat for a few days and it screwed up their minds.



Okay then.

I don't get why this book is a required read in school. I get To Kill A Mockingbird and The Call of the Wild, those are beautiful books with real meaning in them.
But this?

It didn't 'teach' you anything. Honest to god, it was just the stupidest thing I've ever read. The only thing it told you was that a group of boys on a deserted island with no adults equals bad things will happen and they'll just start killing each other.

Granted, I'm looking at this from a more scholarly perspective, not just for an enjoyable read. But it was far from enjoyable considering how utterly ridiculous it was.

Might be for some, was not for me

DAMN!!
I think reading this book as an adult affects me more. You come to realize that things and circumstances can change drastically with no rules or repercussions.

I really loved Lord of the Flies and think everyone should read this one day. It's not a long book but it will make an impression on you.

It makes you think and dread what would happen if...
“Maybe there is a beast… maybe it's only us.”

The writing of William Golding was well done and detailed on the breakdown of humanity and sensibility.
With no rules to govern, you can easily see how a group will follow the stronger and more manipulative leader. Let it be a lesson to us all to always have a sense of morality and know when as a society we've crossed the line.

Recommended to everyone!!

n  n
How are dictators being made? Mein Kampf, Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare, The Last King of Scotland and Sandstorm: Libya in the Time of Revolution, won't answer this question perfectly. William Golding has the perfect answer to it through this allegory.

How can a novel about a bunch of stranded school kids teach us about dictators?

This is not just a novel about school boys. This is a novel about the intricate ways the human psyche performs when it is stretched to the paramount in abominable circumstances when liberty is abundant, and everyone is equal, without any prerogatives.

This parable hits the right chord to enlighten us regarding our leniency to entropy. This is exactly how dictators are made. The boys teach us a lot of lessons through the way they behave and the areas they remain silent.

n  n

n  What I learned from this book n
n  1) Who is the beast in the Lord of the flies? n
There is a chance that some people will try to read this novel superficially without thinking about its deeper meaning. It is the concept of the beast discussed by the author that they will ultimately get stuck after being confused. We can interpret the beast in many ways depending on our conscience.

The simplest explanation of the beast is that it is the basic instinct of savagery existing in the minds of human beings. You can interpret it in many complicated ways based on your thinking level.

“Maybe there is a beast… maybe it's only us.” n

n  2) Are human beings behaving in a civilized manner just because of the laws that he has to follow? n
This is a tricky question to answer. But it becomes an easy question if you have read this book and contemplated it for some time.

“Which is better--to have laws and agree, or to hunt and kill?”

"The rules!" shouted Ralph, "you're breaking the rules!"
"Who cares?"

n  3) What is the easiest way to know about the personality of a person? n
Golding metaphorically tells us the easiest way to understand the personality of a person.

It is said that personality is who we are and what we do when everybody is watching and character is what we are and what we do when nobody is watching.

The way a person talks to older people, his subordinates, and disabled people tells us a lot about their character. These are the groups of people who cannot stand up as equals for their rights.

We know that adversity builds and reveals character. We can see the author's brilliance by the way how he culminated all the above-mentioned ideas and brilliantly revealed them to us through the behavior of a few stranded children.

"He wanted to explain how people were never quite what you thought they were."

n  My favourite three lines from this book n

“The greatest ideas are the simplest.”

“What are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages?"

"I believe man suffers from an appalling ignorance of his own nature. I produce my own view in the belief that it may be something like the truth."

n  What could have been better?n
Some people may say this novel has extreme racist remarks and body shaming. There is also some content that some readers might find explicit.

This novel was published on 17 September 1954. It would be best if you kept this in the back of your mind while reading it. It is because some people are viewing this book through the current lens of political correctness they find it disturbing. That is one of the greatest injustices we can do to any literary creation.

n  Rating n
5/5 This novel is one among those few masterpieces that can be read in many ways depending on the reader's proclivity.

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Book 2⭐
Author 1 ⭐

I'm glad I can check this one off my list. I wish I had enjoyed it more. I was pretty bored after chapter two so I started to read online articles and other reviews. To find out the author confessed that he attempted to rape a girl named Nora (15) when he was 18 while home from his first year at Oxford made my skin crawl. He was sure the girl "wanted heavy sex". There are plenty of articles online with a simple search "William Golding+rape". Nobel Prize for Literature novelist, yea whatever.

Another Golding confession was when he was a teacher, he got schoolboys to fight among themselves. Maybe that's the origin of Lord of the Flies?

The audiobook on Libby/Overdrive read by the author was dreadful. I searched and found much superior narration on Youtube by Martin Jarvis. A disturbing story, more so because they were kids.

A February Readalong

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.

¡Mátala! ¡Degüéllala! ¡Desángrala!

¿Como en qué momento todo se puso tan terriblemente turbio y macabro? Empezó como una historia al estilo Mark Twain y terminó como algo salido de las pesadillas. Progresivamente se hizo más oscura hasta que todo se salió de control, y sigo sin poder procesar lo que leí. Es un librazo, de eso no tengo dudas.

Me reservo una opinión más detallada para la video-reseña que subiré a mi canal muy pronto, así que si gustan chusmear, los invito a hacerlo: https://www.youtube.com/coosburton

Is humanity inherently prone to savagery or civilisation? I guess the jury's still out on that one.

Golding, however, is convinced that we are all bloodthirsty savages at heart - and he has written this novel to prove it.

I don't know whether he's right or wrong; but who cares? This book's terrific.