Lord of the Flies by William Golding Book Review

 

                In Lord of the Flies a group of boys crash land on a tropical island. The first thing they do is to find a conch and use that to gather them together at an assembly where they elect a chief, Ralph. As time passes Ralph begins to clash with another boy, named Jack, over priorities on the island, with Ralph wanting rescue and Jack wanting to hunt pigs on the island. Then, during a feast of pig, the group begins to imagine that a boy named Roger is a monster, and they kill him. Later in that evening Jack is so happy over the imaginary killing of the beast that he makes a bid for the chieftainship and after it fails Jack splits from the main group, taking about half of the older boys with him. Ralph is left on one side of the island and after about two days they decide to walk to the other side of the island to try to reason with Jack's crew.  Once there, an altercation ensues and Piggy, a member of Ralph's lot, is killed and the other two boys with Ralph, twins, are captured and forced to change allegiances. Ralph is left with no followers and Jack attempts to hunt and kill him, eventually setting fire to the entire island in an effort to do so. In the midst of the hunt a naval officer arrives on the island and rescues the boys, but not before the noticing the consequences of the boys actions on the island.

                Ralph is one of the most interesting people in the book, in the beginning he starts as a leader, approaching it with an air of fun and anticipation, but later on the decisions he has been forced to make begin to weigh on him. Ralph is forced to see both sides of the coin in life on the island, much earlier than the other boys. In the book he is described as a well built boy of about twelve, with the shoulders of a boxer but also a kind face. The other boys think of him as their leader, with Piggy saying "You're chief, Ralph. You remember everything." Jack, the other power on the island, does not like Ralph, because Ralph and Jack stand for very different things. Jack thinks in the short term, with the priorities of hunting and meat, while Ralph thinks for the long term, with the priorities of survival and rescue.

                In this book Ralph comes across as a paragon of democracy on the island, with the polarization of  Jack and Ralph becoming apparent in their moral differences in the latter part of the book. Ralph's cleanliness is a kind of metaphor for the morality of their collective actions, because as Ralph gets dirtier and dirtier the actions of the boys also get increasingly horrific. Later in the chapter even Ralph takes part in the quintessential activity of the Jacks lot, hunting, with Ralph beginning to become not just physically unclean, but morally unclean as well.

                In Lord of the Flies there is a theme of the savageness of humanity being just barely contained by civilization. To begin with, the time period of the book reinforces this, with a nuclear war in the background of the book showing how humanity would destroy itself given the chance. On the island the boys begin originally with grand intentions of democracy and prospering on the island, but as time wears on the thin veneer of civilization wears off., and in the world today people are a lot meaner when they think no one else is watching. The character of Roger is a bit of a sadist, and in one section of the book he tries to hit a "littlun", what they called the little kids on the island, with a rock but he still carries some of the rules of civilization so he never actually hits him. "Yet there was a space around Henry, perhaps six yards in diameter, into which he dare not throw. Here, invisible yet strong, was the taboo of the old life." In the end though the character of Simon sums up best how all the problems of the boys on the island were caused by themselves when he says this, "What I mean is… maybe it's only us."

                I enjoyed reading Lord of the Flies because it shows civilization in microcosm with all it's difficulties shown. It is a wonderful adventure story, with a gripping tale of survival, even though the problems faced are not from nature, but from the boys themselves. Lord of the Flies is a great book.

I got the book cover from here.
I got the other one from here.