A group of boys are stranded on a remote and deserted island. How will these boys fare away from grownups, away from society, away from rules?

Written in 1954, The Lord of the Flies, written by William Golding is considered a classic. The symbolism in this book is unreal especially if you consider the colors mentioned in the book (pink was mentioned 40 times). Like most people, I read this in high school, and I got a lot more out of it as an adult. At the very end, I now ponder if that actually happened or if Ralph was just imagining it (trying to avoid any spoilers here). The author who is deceased now has stated that the book can mean whatever you want it to mean so clearly everything in this review is absolutely true. If you want to check out more of my thoughts and questions raised for this book, please check out the Readalong. Thank you to everyone who participated and made this reading so much better than my first!

Although this book goes down as a classic, it is rather bleak—there is very little hope or anything that can be considered uplifting. There were too many boring descriptions of the scar (more than 20+ times) and sand (more than 70+ times). As for the audiobook through Audible, William Golding, the author, is reading the book. He sounds extremely bored. I do not recommend the Audible version.

Overall, I wish that I hadn’t read this as a child. It traumatized me, and I wasn’t ready for it. There is too much violence and ill will in this. Every time I would pick up a book, I would think about Piggy and feel darkness. However, as an adult, perhaps I was more prepared knowing the ending, but I also developed the sophistication to appreciation the subtleties of this book.

This book is listed as one of the 100 Books to Read According to the BBC:
https://www.listchallenges.com/bbcs-t...

2025 Reading Schedule
JantA Town Like Alice
FebtBirdsong
MartCaptain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Berniere
AprtWar and Peace
MaytThe Woman in White
JuntAtonement
JultThe Shadow of the Wind
AugtJude the Obscure
SeptUlysses
OcttVanity Fair
NovtA Fine Balance
DectGerminal

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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.

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.

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!

El libro es un gran clásico pero no me ha convencido. Me ha resultado bastante aburrido y lo único que se salva es que se desarrolla en una isla desierta y es de aventuras.

La trama es sencilla. Un grupo de niños queda varado en una isla deshabitada y necesitan descubrir cómo sobrevivir. En cambio, se desmoronan y se comportan violentamente por diferencias de prioridades y problemas de liderazgo.

El autor Golding nos ofrece una visión sombría de la humanidad. Entiendo que por mucho que esperemos que los humanos siempre se comporten de manera humana, nuestra especie muy a menudo no lo logra pero yo sigo creyendo que hay que intentarlo.

Es un gran clásico y me hizo pensar.  Pero al final, no estoy de acuerdo con la visión de Golding sobre la humanidad y tampoco me pareció entretenido.

 Pinchazo gordo, me esperaba otra cosa y me he encontrado con una mezcla de la serie Perdidos con Los Goonies de protagonistas.

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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لا أظن أحدا درس الإنجليزية ولم يسمع على الأقل بهذه الرواية
كنتُ في عامي الرابع وقت دراستها
ومن أول وهلة جذبتني
وبينما كان زملائي يهتمون بما سيأتي منها في الامتحان
كنت أنا ألتهمها التهاما‏


لن أنسى ما حييت شعوري وأنا أقرأ الحوار ما بين سيد الذباب وسايمون
ثم مقتله بعدها

المرة الأولى كنت بجوار دكتور المادة أمام الجميع
أقرأ هذا الجزء على زملائي -ولم أكن قد وصلت له بعد في قراءتي المنزلية
ولكن بما أنه المشهد الأهم-ويحمل لغز اسم الرواية الغريب- ‏
فقد ارتأى الدكتور قرائنا له ومن ثم مناقشته بتمعن

أذكر يومها أنني اهتز صوتي للمفاجئة التي حلت علي
استطعت السيطرة على نفسي حينها وتخبئة ارتعاشة يدي
ثم تناسيت الأمر مع الصديقات عند انتهاء المحاضرة
وعندما عدت لمنزلي انخرطت في بكاء مرير
رائية لحال سايمون المسكين -شخصيتي المفضلة ‏
والذي لم أكن أتوقع له هذا المصير

أذكر أنني نظرت بسذاجة إلى أمي(رحمها الله) المندهشة نائحة:
سايمون ماااااااات عااااا
‏:‏D
...



أثر في حديث رأس الخنزير مع سايمون كثيرا
كنت وقتها في العشرين ولا أظنني قرأت حوارات كهذه من قبل
‏ كنت أرى المشهد أمامي متجسدا
ولا أعلم الآن هل ذلك بسبب براعة الكاتب أم شدة تأثري‏
ذلك أنني لم أعد قراءتها مجددا

-----------

تحدث فرويد قبل وفاته بقليل عن الغريزة التدميرية في البشر
‏ عن حب الإنسان للقتل والعنف والدمار‏
والرواية صورة مصغرة لذلك المجتمع البشري
الذي يترنح‏ ما بين الفطرية والبدائية، والتمدن والتحضر

يجد أطفال ما بين الثامنة والثانية عشر أنفسهم في الطبيعة‏
بمعزل تام عن قوانين الكبار
وبالطبع يكون همهم الأول هو البقاء على قيد الحياة

راح المؤلف يستخرج خبايا النفس البشرية بإظهار وحشيتها وقابليتها للشر
متناولا صراع الانسان الأبدي بين الغريزة والسلوكيات المدنية المكتسبة ‏


‏(لقد شارك جولدنغ نفسه في الحرب العالمية الثانية كضابط في البحرية البريطانية
واشترك في معركة إغراق أقوى بارجة ألمانية -بسمارك )‏

يفترض جولدنج اندلاع حرب تتعرض فيه انجلترا لضربة نووية
ويفترض وجود طائرة انجليزية قامت بإجلاء مجموعة من الفتية إلى خارج ‏البلاد
(بهدف لإنقاذ حياتهم والحفاظ على النسل الانجليزي من الاندثار‎)

وعندما تسقط تلك الطائرة فوق جزيرة نائية
ينجو الأطفال فقط
ويقتل الطيار اثناء محاولته النجاة بالمظلة



يبدأ هؤلاء الصبية ببناء مجتمعهم الجديد (المصغر) ‏
ويدور الصراع بين السلطة المدنية المتمثلة في رالف‏
والمعارضة المسلحة (السلطة العسكرية) المتمثلة في جاك‏
‏ ‏
‏-وفوق كل ذلك فنحن لسنا همجيين، لأننا إنجليز، والإنجليز هم أفضل الناس في جميع ‏

دائما ما تنقلب تلك النظرة الاستعلائية الشوفينية على أصحابها في كل زمان ومكان
‏ لقد تحول الأطفال إلى مسوخ همجية تستلذ القتل والعنف‏
ينقلب مجتمعهم الصغير إلى مجتمع وحشي همجي ‏

رالف هو الشخصية المحورية في الرواية
تعطيه وسامته سمة استعلاء ‏
وكعادة الرفاق يسخر من بيجي بسذاجته الطيبة
رالف يبدو مثالي المظهر لكنه يعوزه الذكاء ‏
هذا الذكاء يعوضه بيجي (وهو إسم تدليل يعني الخنزير الصغير)‏

بيجي هو ذلك الطفل السمين الطيب الظريف ‏
‏-شخصيتي المفضلة رقم 2- ‏
الذكي برغم سذاجته في تعامله مع رفاقه ‏
بالإضافة إلى إصابته بالربو وقصر النظر الحاد

وبنباهته يقترح على رالف استخدام الصدفة (بدلالاتها الرمزية) وتحويلها إلى بوق بصفيره يستطيع ‏عقد الاجتماعات
ومن ثم اعتبرها الجميع رمز السيطرة والحكم_ ومن يحملها هو فقط من يستطيع التحدث
كما أن بيجي هو من استخدام نظارته- بإيعاز من رالف الساخر- لتكثيف أشعة الشمس وذلك لإشعال ‏النار ‏
‎
بيجي هو صوت العقلانية المكروه من الغالبية ‏
ويعتبره البعض رمزا لطبقة المفكرين والمثقفين ‏
الذين لا تستمع إليهم الدول المستبدة ‏
بل تحاول بشراسة القضاء عليهم

جاك يتسم بالدموية والوحشية من البداية
وهو يؤمن بالقوة ويتلذذ بالدماء
الأحداث تتسارع في الصراع ما بين قوة المنطق ومنطق القوة
وجاك يقوم بانقلاب عسكري يطيح به برالف وتصير له الغلبة
‏(ربما أراد جولدينج أن يشير إلى أن الهيمنة واليد العليا دوما تكون ‏للاأخلاقيين والدمويين)‏‎

حتى ذلك اليوم الذي يرى فيه الأطفال من بعيد جثة الطيار مع مظلته على أحد الجبال فيظن الجميع ‏أنه وحش الغابة
فيصطاد جاك خنزيرا بريا يقطع رأسه وينصبه على رمح في أعلى قمة الجبل كرمز لقوة فريقه
ويبدأ الاحتفال بهذه المناسبة بشعائر كطقوس للصيد ‏
يطلي الأطفال وجوههم بدم الخنزير المذبوح متحولين إلى برابرة‏

وفي ظل هذا الجو المشبع خوفا وقهرا وعويل بربري يضل سايمون طريقه‏
فيجد نفسه أمام رأس الخنزير المعلق الحائم من كان حوله الذباب (سيد الذباب) ‏
وهنا يبدأ سايمون في الهذيان (أفضل وأقسى مشاهد الرواية)‏
ليدور الحديث بينه وبين سيد الذباب الذي يسخر منه ومن أمله في الخلاص وفي صلاح الأحوال‏

وعندما يعود سايمون شبه مترنح وجريح إلى الجمع
يهجم عليه الجميع قاتلين إياه ظنا منهم أنه ‏الوحش بصراخه غير المفهوم وتغير هيئته ‏‎
‎ ...

وهكذا لم يأت الشر بفعل الوحوش ‏
بل من البشر أنفسهم


-----------
الرواية تستحق القراءة بكل تأكيد
كما ان هناك أكثر من فيلم يحكي قصتها
وإن لم أشاهد اي منهم حتى الآن

ولكنها حالة مختلفة لن أستطيع نسيانها

I only know that Lord of the Flies is an extremely popular classic book but I have zero idea on what it’s about and I must say, this is completely unexpected and until now I’m not sure if that’s in a good way or bad. ^^ The premise is without a doubt ingenious- a group of kids castaway in an island? Sounds like a partaayy! Tom Hanks would have loved to jump in if only he weren’t an adult.^^



And party it was at the greater half of the book which mostly consisted of:

1. Purposeless assemblies
2. A lot of giggling
3. Pig chase re-enactments
4. Touch the conch game.^^
5. Laughing fits mostly at the expense of Piggy. (Poor, Piggy) *sniffs*

But the party suddenly turns into savagery (See this is why you can’t join in, Mr. Hanks) and eep! enter the gloomy themes and deeper darker messages of the novel that allegedly gave inspiration to the phenomenal dystopian trilogy that is the Hunger Games and undoubtedly several other dystopian novels that capitalize on brutality and murdering children. (Kidding.^^)

For a proper, more eloquent, far more meaningful review that will tackle the themes, the writing and other important elements of the novel that I shamelessly neglected, do read my beautiful friend’s,  (Ate) Sabah’s review. Also, it’s her birthday today! HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Ate Sabah! I hope you have a wonderful day with loads of love and surprises! I couldn't find a paperback copy of Jane Eyre. I hope this'll do. <3

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?

I just don't buy it.

This book is famous for unmasking what brutes we are, just under the surface, but, well, for all the hype, it just isn't convincing. People--even teenage boys--just aren't as savage as Golding seems to want us to believe, and nothing in this book persuades me otherwise.

Perhaps if I'd gone to English boarding school I'd feel differently--but then that's the real irony of this book, that the brutality from which the British Empire was supposed to save so many people and cultures was in fact the Brits projecting their own savagery onto others.

But the rest of us, no, we aren't monsters underneath. A little messed up, maybe, a little more raw, but nowhere near the kind of brutes that Golding wants us to believe.

Ένα αεροπλάνο πέφτει σε κάποιο άγνωστο νησί, και κατά ένα πολύ περίεργο και ανεξήγητο τρόπο επιβιώνουν μόνο μικρά παιδάκια και δη αγόρια. Ο συγγραφέας δεν δίνει κανένα στοιχείο για τα αίτια του δυστυχήματος, για τους επιβάτες και γενικά η ιστορία ξεκινάει κάπως απότομα έτσι ώστε να εστιάσει ο αναγνώστης στο κεντρικό θέμα του βιβλίου, που δεν είναι άλλο από την φύση του ανθρώπου…
Ο Γκολντινγκ εστιάζει πολύ εύστοχα σε 2 παραμέτρους. Την λογική και το ένστικτο. Η λογική καλλιεργείται και διαμορφώνεται ενώ το ένστικτο ακολουθεί τον γενότυπο μας εδώ και εκατοντάδες χιλιάδες χρόνια. Οπότε τι θα καθορίσει την κατεύθυνση μιας πρωτόλειας κοινωνίας, η οποία απαρτίζεται από μικρούς ανθρώπους που δεν είναι ολοκληρωμένες προσωπικότητες αλλά προέρχονται από μια κοινωνία με κανόνες;
Ο Ρίτσαρντ Ντόκινς γράφει πως το μιμίδιο είναι πιο ισχυρό από το γονίδιο. Αυτό που βλέπουμε, που γνωρίζουμε, που καταλαβαίνουμε μπορεί να υπερνικήσει την άγρια φύση μας; Ο ίδιος όμως πάντα βάζει πάνω από όλα το εγωιστικό γονίδιο, ή με πιο απλά λόγια το εγώ. Καλές οι κοινωνίες και οι ομάδες αλλά ο εγωισμός μας είναι αυτός που μας χαρακτηρίζει σαν νοήμονα όντα!

Στο βιβλίο καθένας από τους βασικούς χαρακτήρες συμβολίζει μια πλευρά της ανθρώπινης φύσης. Ο Τζακ την άγρια φύση μας, ο Ραλφ το πολιτισμένο Homo Sapiens, ο Πίγκυ την λογική και πάει λέγοντας. Έτσι όσο πλησιάζει το τέλος, μια φαινομενικά απλή ιστορία μετατρέπεται σε μια σπουδή για την ανθρώπινη φύση. Τα τελευταία κεφάλαια είναι συναρπαστικά και διαβάζονται με κομμένη την ανάσα.

Όμως το συμπέρασμα σχεδόν βγαίνει αβιάστα. Η ευφυής ζωή και η ικανότητα επεξεργασίας πληροφορίας μόλις υπάρξει, δεν μπορεί ποτέ να πεθάνει…

Εξαιρετικό βιβλίο και υπέροχη γραφή από έναν σπουδαίο Άγγλο συγγραφέα.
5/5*

n  n    Book Reviewn  n
3 out of 5 stars to Lord of the Flies, a coming-of-age novel written in 1954 by William Golding, who was a Nobel Prize winner. Most people have either read this book during middle/high school (in America or Great Britain), or have heard of it because of its supposed cannibalism story line. But wait... it wasn't cannibalism -- huge exaggeration to set straight, right from the beginning. But let's back up... At a time of war, a group of pre-teen boys are in a plane that crashed onto an isolated and jungle-like island. They are forced to grow up quickly when they have no food, water or shelter easily at their disposal, e.g. in the kitchen cabinet. It's a story about how to take care of yourself in the jungle when you have nothing but raw supplies. The novel is full of themes from loss of innocence to the differences between savagery and civilization. It asks the question what type of a person are you -- a leader or a follower? The story charts the actions of the boys as they grow up, hunt for food, build shelter and learn how to work together. They divide into opposing teams, trying to see how is the best leader. They learn to help each other and watch others die.

I read the book once and tried a second several years ago, but what I realized is that the world today is a very different place. While I appreciate the themes and characters being brought to life in this novel, it didn't have as strong an impact on me as it has for others. I think it may be the kind of novel that is best read when you are a teenager, as it helps with understanding things are the same today as they were 75 years ago, in terms of growing up and learning how to work together. When you've got a classic like this one paired up against something like The Hunger Games, it's a tough choice. They deal with the same sort of context in terms of "survival of the fittest," but one is a dangerous game and another is an accident. I like them both, but I'd choose The Hunger Games, even tho it's less well-written. "Teen/Childhood" angst, lessons to be learned, education versus playtime, all great concepts both books addressed, but the difference is when a book almost goes out of the way to try to teach me something versus it naturally happening. I still believe it's a good book, and it should be read, but if it were written today, I don't think it would be as popular.

n  n    About Men  n
For those new to me or my reviews... here's the scoop: I read A LOT. I write A LOT. And now I blog A LOT. First the book review goes on Goodreads, and then I send it on over to my WordPress blog at https://thisismytruthnow.com, where you'll also find TV & Film reviews, the revealing and introspective 365 Daily Challenge and lots of blogging about places I've visited all over the world. And you can find all my social media profiles to get the details on the who/what/when/where and my pictures. Leave a comment and let me know what you think. Vote in the poll and ratings. Thanks for stopping by.