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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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.

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.

Over the years I must have read this book five or six times. Last night I was reading it on a train with a highlighter in my hand, because I decided to teach it this year again. Teachers wreck books, of course. We all know that. On the other hand, whatever you have to study-read, you tend to carry a bit of it with you. You don't forget that book, at least. Although I must add, that it's quite risky introducing to a Scottish classroom a book with the memorable words: "The English are best at everything...."

I wasn't sure how much it would have dated. I must have read it for the first time 30 years ago. Published in 1954, the phrasing would have been pretty modern then. Even now, most of it has work well. The phrase that jumped at me -- and it only appeared once -- was when Piggy (I think) compared the boys detrimentally to 'niggers', instead of just 'savages'. Ouch. Mental note to make them look hard at this bit. After all this is such a horrible little group of boys. As complacently white as can be, one group of them from a choir school (or a public school with a choir), no less. And Ralph, the 'hero', son of a naval officer.

Golding, as a teacher in an upmarket school, presumably knew those sort of boys all too well. The boys being prepared to carry the empire forward.

Except the setting suggests the empire may not be going forward. Somebody somewhere is fighting a war that is evidently nuclear. It's never quite clear what is going on or how the officer turns up cool as cucumber on a naval cutter at the end.

Most of the young people in my class this year have (sigh) seen the film, so they know what happens. The group of boys marooned on an idyllic Pacific Island first start off having a sort of cheery adventure. There are references to Coral Island, Swallows and Amazons and Treasure Island too. They want to have fun, and one of their number -- Jack -- talks a great deal about 'fun', though his idea of fun is killing pigs.

They arrive a fairly civilised little group but they gradually degenerate. Golding's moral message is about the "darkness of man's heart" and it's a good moral companion to Heart of Darkness now I come to think about it. The boys natural fears escalate and the younger children create a mythical 'beast', which then seems to materialise as a fact when the body of a dead airman, killed a war fought in the skies overhead, floats down to the island in a parachute.

But the real beast is their own desire for control and domination, as well as an interesting bloodlust -- the word 'lust' is used of this, and the killing of the first pig is certainly described with unmistakable sexual resonance. One of the boys pushes a sharpened stick "up her ass". There are no girls in the group -- what a different novel it would have to have been if there were! -- but the pig they kill is a sow, and they interrupt her in suckling a brood of piglets. What a strange, strange thing to put into your novel. Not just the killing, but the slaughtering of a mother pig and a kind of sexual frenzy. Yuk!

But hey -- he's intending to shock. He's intending to show that this blood lust thing isn't far away from human kind, or male human kind at least, and that it doesn't take much to call it out. Even Ralph, the Aryan protagonist, feels himself getting caught up in it. Paint your face, start whooping and chanting and you can do, it seems, almost anything.

The kind, poetic, imaginative Simon gets butchered (teeth and nails at this point -- not spears). PIggy is despatched by Roger, the executioner. The whole of their little society is clearly turning into a Stalinist regime, with each boy taking his place, as prescribed by Golding, which is what you get to do when you write an allegory.

It's a powerful read, though more repetitive, in linguistic terms, than I remembered - almost as repetitive as D H Lawrence in places. At the highpoint, towards the end, when Ralph is completely isolated and being hunted down, the word 'ululation' is done to death. But at least you can't read this book without learning what it means!

What I both like and don't like about it is the way it makes me want to argue. The whole thing is completely manipulated. Is this what would happen? Would the darkness of man's heart take over?

I have not much doubt that man's heart is dark, I guess, but when I got off the train I left my very lovely reddy-orangy furry scarf, and the chap who was sitting opposite me (I didn't speak to him during the journey) ran after me with it. It brightened my day. Perhaps he was a 'Simon' and would quickly get trampled if our civilisation were to decline.

But look Golding, my lad -- that bit where you allow the man in the parachute to get dumped, dead, on the island, scaring the boys out of their wits -- if that hadn't happened -- your choice plot element -- well, the three boys Jack, Roger and Ralph, would have established Absence of Beast. It might all have turned out very differently.

If Piggy hadn't been wearing glasses, there would have been no fire....

If it had started raining sooner....

If Ralph had been a bit more intelligent....

If the pigs had been a bit better at getting away....

On an island, living on fruit and getting scratched and cut, one or two of them would have developed fatal infections and their main enemy would probably have been illness and death, which would have drawn them together a bit. Even the biting insects would probably have driven them potty. One or two of them, it's my bet, would have descended into depression and just dwindled away.

It wouldn't have been like The Coral Island, but it wouldn't have been the inevitable collapse of civilisation either.

Steven King likes this book. It fits beautifully with his love of dramatic thriller, increasing isolation of central brave character, and underlying opposition between good and evil. Here evil wins, though.

Ralph is about to be exterminated when the officer arrives, so the deus ex machina is just there as an ironic way to end the book. That bastard is even 'embarrassed' when Ralph bursts into tears. That's British stiff upper lippery for you.

I don't believe, in the boys' behaviour. I don't believe that Jack, the killer (I nearly said Jack the Giant-Killer), is there just below the surface, although I do believe that wars bring out the worst in us. I don't believe that Roger -- just a little boy -- is the natural henchman, with a desire to execute his peers running just below his veneer of civilisation.

But then perhaps I do. I've seen it, haven't I? Seen nasty young people doing nasty young things nastily. Conditioned into that, in their turn, by not very delightful adults, damaged adults.

Oh bloody Golding -- go away! I put my money on man's intelligence. You gotta use your head to survive, whichever allegory you seem to be inhabiting. And sometimes you do survive and sometimes you don't, but the 'darkness of man's heart' is offset by the light, which always returns.

The trouble is, the dark heart goes for power - doesn't it? And the desire for power and control over others can be wielded quickly and wrongly by just a few people. It's what's happening all over the world at this minute.

And yet -- the majority are good-hearted souls, who will pick up your scarf on a train and return it to you. There are more good guys than bad ones. Some of them are quietly and happily reading books at this minute. Otherwise, what would be the point?

Lord of the Flies is a parable of the human nature…

His mind was crowded with memories; memories of the knowledge that had come to them when they closed in on the struggling pig, knowledge that they had outwitted a living thing, imposed their will upon it, taken away its life like a long satisfying drink.

Ever since primordial times man is ruled by two opposite forces: a wish to create and a wish to destroy… And to destroy is much easier than to create…

There was the brilliant world of hunting, tactics, fierce exhilaration, skill; and there was the world of longing and baffled commonsense.

And since primordial times man is ruled by fear… And the greatest fear is the fear of the unknown… To make the unknown less cruel and dangerous man tries to placate it offering the unknown sacrifices and worshiping…

“We’ll kill a pig and give a feast.” He paused and went on more slowly. “And about the beast. When we kill we’ll leave some of the kill for it. Then it won’t bother us, maybe.”

Millenniums pass but the primordial instincts remain and they make man look for an enemy and fight.

This book shocked me. Not so much because of the content, I will come onto that, but because my gentle, kind, mother recommended it to me. My mum who mutes the TV when a swear word is coming up and who can't stand any type of violence recommended a book that involves children killing each other. Perhaps in her case familiarity has rendered the content less offensive--she studied it in high school and it had her childish scrawls all the way through, also entertaining! That said, there was a lot to this book. I can see why it has become a classic. I guess, I was just taken aback having started the story and expecting it to continue in a Peter Pan type "lost boys" style...when it took a violent turn in a "no going back" direction.

A group of boys are abandoned on an uninhabited island. Ralph takes the lead and formulates a rescue plan. But it isn't long before the group are embroiled in internal conflict as they battle for supremacy and status. What is really needed is for them to band together and for everyone to do their part to keep the group alive and alert any ships that happen to be passing. But they cannot even get that right--those meant to be tending the fire are off hunting pigs when the first vessel draws near. The divisions widen over time as some of the children begin to adopt savage-like behaviour resulting in tragedy.

It is not a Christian book but there are a great number of spiritual analogies and lessons worthy of comment. The book reminds us that children do not learn sin from their parents. They are born sinful and if not disciplined, given appropriate boundaries and taught right from wrong, they will choose sin as it is predetermined due to the fall--"born in sin and shapen in iniquity." The book also reminds us that man is not basically good or innocent but the opposite.

There is also a lesson about the pack mentality. How much easier is it to fall into sin or temptation in a group than it is alone? When young people goad, dare and egg each other on they can be capable of great evil--peer pressure is a powerful force. We see it in the media when a group loses control and in a violent frenzy attacks a person in the street. But we will not ultimately stand before God in a group but by ourselves to account for our behaviour. It is why the Bible warns us about the company we keep and who we choose to be our friends.

I was also reminded of the damage that can be done to children who spend too much time playing video computer games. They become lost in their own worlds of darkness where theft, violence and killing are normalised and those who murder are heroes not criminals. Lord of the Flies made me realise how easy it was for these children to begin playing a very dangerous game with life and death when they became immersed in their own world and had lost touch with reality. Maybe it will make some parents think about what their children are filling their minds with alone in their bedrooms. We shouldn't be surprised when the same children translate their video game world into a murderous rampage on our streets. That is what they have been taught to do!

The last chapter of the book was for me the most impactive as the sequence of events was unexpected. The narrative is chilling in places but definitely held my interest and I wanted to know what happened to the children in the end. There are a few swear words in the book but nothing major. There is no sexual content. There is some graphic violence and animal slaughter. This book is not really suitable for younger children but may hold lessons for older teens.

I would recommend the book for Christians for the spiritual lessons that can be learned but it is not particularly uplifting!

Read back in high school and I hated. Read while back and still hated. Let me tell you why: This books just feels like a projection of the author's nihilism towards human nature. The characters are ideas not characters.

Also, I learned earlier this year that there was a group of Anglo and Tongan school boys who were shipwrecked way back in the 1960s AND THEY NEVER TURNED VIOLENT AGAINST EACH OTHER!

The books pushes the rhetoric that humans are inherently evil and that children, especially boys (especially spoiled ones, some truth there), can turn vicious almost by nature. Spare me. I know humanity has done bad things, but I don't think we're as inherently bad as William Golding thinks.

In the words of my philosophy professor: "Point to Rousseau, a loss for Hobbes." (Somewhat generalized but you get my point)

Might be for some, was not for me

This tends to me among the top five books I recommend to anyone who cares to ask.

Questioning and undermining Rousseau's 'noble savage' was one of its essential goals (as Alan mentions below), hence the positioning of a classic dystopia in an idyllic setting and the choice of 'boy-scout' perfect protagonists. It is as good a dystopic novel as they come. And essential because most dystopic novels were set in urban settings, giving the illusion that extreme control leads to dystopia. Golding shows that extreme freedom can too.

It is a great work because it speaks so truly of the human tendency away from organized civilization. To me, the one fault is the ending -- the time scale given to the thought experiment was too narrow, allowing only one swing of the societal pendulum.

In William Golding's Lord of the Flies, the dark side of human nature goes unchecked. This leads to the devolution we see among the boys who are stranded on an uninhabited island. Whether or not you agree with Golding's central idea here, it is a well written and interesting novel. I'm not sure what my thoughts were at the time, but I remember having read the story sometime in junior high school. I'm perhaps a bit more cynical of this breakdown in society now (or perhaps not)! I saw parallels to JG Ballard's work, but, even if it is simply a high-rise apartment, Ballard's take on society seems more complete.

Golding's unrelenting attack on reason (and how easily it can be displaced) begins on the opening pages and continues until the boys are rescued. For me, that played not quite successfully against an engaging story. 3.25 stars

UPDATE: I was very saddened to read this Guardian article about Golding's manipulation of the classroom as a means to inform this work. Here is the dichotomy between contextual analysis and the reading of a book in isolation. It's of no consequence to anyone but me that my previous rating is reduced to no stars, but a writer searching for plot events or people on which to base characters has a moral obligation, particularly when dealing with children, not to indulge in the seductive siren call to experience an authenticity in life with the intent of reproducing it on the page. It's one thing to write a book on previous experiences garnered as the unconscious evolution and transition from state of naivete to worldliness, it's another, and entirely reprehensible, to create situations for the purpose of observation and recording and insertion in a novel, without the consent and knowledge of the subjects forming the experiment. Worse, Golding's work has been lauded as commentary on the nature of political and social structures, as I mentioned in my review proper. That he used school children, innocent of and incapable of denying his intent, constitutes no less of an emotional dishonesty than that to which I have ascribed other authors, indeed the one to whose work I have compared his.

The original review appears at www.abookwithaview.com

¡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