From the Bookshelf of Never too Late to Read Classics…

Lord of the Flies

William Golding

Start date: September 18, 2016

Finish date: October 18, 2016

Discussion: Children's Classics Buddy Reads

Discussion leader: Rosemarie

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Sep 04, 2014 Suzan (Suus Leest) rated it liked it · review of another edition

Originally posted on my blog

A plane crashes on an island. Only children survive. For them, this first appears a utopia: no adult supervision, Ultimate freedom. This changes quickly. Fights about who is to lead. The youngest children scared for a 'monster'. The perfect world collapses into a nightmare.
While I was aware of the horrifying turn the novel would make later on, the beginning of the novel felt like an adventure story. Perhaps I had understood other people wrongly, maybe this was not su Originally posted on my blog

A plane crashes on an island. Only children survive. For them, this first appears a utopia: no adult supervision, Ultimate freedom. This changes quickly. Fights about who is to lead. The youngest children scared for a 'monster'. The perfect world collapses into a nightmare.
While I was aware of the horrifying turn the novel would make later on, the beginning of the novel felt like an adventure story. Perhaps I had understood other people wrongly, maybe this was not such a haunting story. Obviously, I was too naive, and the tone of the story changed quickly.
In the very beginning, already, there is the notion of power, of leadership. Who is to lead the group? Even when we've only been introduced to two characters, there is already a clear 'superior'. When more children come together, this battle becomes even more intense. Without authority, the children immediately decided some structure was needed, tasks also are divided. However, this results in multiple quarrels. Reading the novel critically, the novel never starts out as an excitin adventure, it's already a dramatic horror story to begin with.
The structure they impose on themselves may delude the reader into thinking the children have it all together. Alright, there is a struggle on whom is to do what, but there's no real harm in that. Quickly, though, the children turn into savages, and the slight order they had is turned around. They split up into two camps who fight eachother brutally and this is when any reader will be disgusted and terrified.
A few things bothered me about this novel, probably all related to the fact that it is a children's book. The writing style was, to me, uncompelling, and resulted in me having a hard time reading the novel quickly as I was unable to concentrate for too long. I cannot truly remember what it was about the style, but I feel like it is likely a result of Golding's eyed audience. This is also the case in terms of morals: they are too obvious which annoyed me.
However, Golding makes up for this by writing no single sentence without allusions. Any sentence can be analysed, and on each page one can write a three thousand word essay. This is interesting and extremely entertaining, but only to a certain extend. I could not be bothered to actually look into each word in great depth, as that would slow down my reading so much, and honestly, I can only bring myself to doing that for some of my favourite novels, and this one is not one.
I do feel everyone should have read it. It is a classic, and it is rightly so. ...more

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Aug 10, 2010 Aurelie rated it really liked it

Shelves: classics

Lord of the Flies is a great book, but I can't say I enjoyed it. Reading it even made me sick, to be honest. It was really disturbing and horrifying.
The story begins with a plane crashing on an isolated island. The adults (pilots and probably teachers) are killed, and the only survivors are school boys below the age of 13. The kids are at first really happy to be left alone on their own, without grown ups, but some of them soon realise that this isn't a game and try to keep a signal fire to att ...more

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May 10, 2021 Tim rated it it was amazing

Shelves: water100a, guardian50, virgin-30, big-read-200, 99-for-99, 1001-to-read-before-you-die-2006, 30before30, wbn100, 1001-to-read-before-you-die-2008, horror-the-100-best-books

This ticks off a book from quite a few of my lists, as it is often cited on "best ofs".

This book is great, i stayed up late to finish it and then couldnt sleep.

A group of English schoolboys get stranded on an island with no adults and slowly descend into anarchy. The book is so ingrained into popular culture now and you can see why.

It is absolutely marvellous that's why and rightly takes its place amongst the foremost post war british literature. ...more

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Dec 25, 2015 Sarah rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: classics

Everyone told me this book was weird. I had no idea that the weirdness would start by page 10 and that it would turn downright disturbing by the end. I think that was the point of the book. But that doesn't mean it was my cup of tea. ...more

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