Book Review : Lord of the Flies : William Golding

GOLDING’S monumental novel details the story of a group of boys of different backgrounds who are stranded on an unknown island when their plane crashes. As the boys try to formulate a plan to get rescued, they begin to separate, and a band of savage tribal hunters are formed. Eventually the boys almost entirely shake off the civilization of the world they once knew. When all the confusion of behavior leads them to a manhunt the reader realizes the sudden decay of law and order and loss of civilization when adults aren`t among them which also brings out the underlying savage side existent in all humans. The survivors being young boys from Great Britain are split between the older children who are called “The Biguns” and the younger males, “The Littluns”. The novel opens with two boys struggling to make sense of their new surroundings, an isolated island. A socially awkward but rational, chubby and bespectacled boy who cannot seem to escape his nickname Piggy and Ralph a fair-haired boy become the central focus. Finding a conch shell, Piggy suggests Ralph use it to call the first assembly of the boys on the island. This conch shell becomes a symbol for organized government and social order. They quickly deduce they should appoint a leader. Using a democratic vote, the boys of the island choose Ralph over an opposing dominant figure, Jack Merridew. Jack Merridew is a bony, freckled, redhead in charge of a choir group Ralph decides to appoint as hunters. The most iconic scene associated with the Lord of the Flies or the movie adaptations of the book that has become wildly successful literature text worldwide in the head of a dead pig mounted on an upright stick as it is on the books cover and the presence of a beast on the island. The “littluns” begin to believe that the island is inhabited by “the beast”. Ralph convenes them to refute the beast’s existence, but the meeting turns riotous. Jack gains control of the discussion by boldly promising to kill the beastSimon, a part of Ralph’s tribe, finds the head of the hunters’ dead pig on a stick, left as an offering to the beast. Simon envisions the pig head, swarming with scavenging flies, as the “Lord of the Flies” and believes that it is talking to him. Simon hears the pig identifying itself as the real “Beast” and disclosing the truth about itself—that the boys themselves “created” the beast, and that the real beast was inside them all. Simon eventually arrives at the peak of a tribal ritual at Jack’s tribe, a ritual in which Ralph’s tribe is taking part as guests. Simon attempts to explain the truth about the beast. However, the other boys, still reeling in blood lust from their most recent kill, blindly attack and murder Simon, whom they mistake for the beast. The highly acclaimed book which contributed to Golding’s winning of the Nobel Prize for Literature is a startling, brutal portrait of human nature and labeled a parable, an allegory, a myth, a morality tale, a parody, a political treatise, even a vision of the apocalypse, but it still Lord of the Flies has established itself as a true classic. Ends

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Book Review : Lord of the Flies : William Golding