From the Bookshelf of Reading List Completists…

Lord of the Flies

William Golding

Start date: May 1, 2016

Finish date: May 31, 2016

Discussion: Group Reads

Why we're reading this: Co-Winner of the April 2016 Short Read Poll - so we will read it in May
[close] Co-Winner of the April 2016 Short Read Poll - so we will read it in May

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Oct 02, 2016 Michael Finocchiaro rated it it was amazing

Shelves: classics, fiction, english-20th-c, nobel-lit, novels

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 san 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. ...more

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Mar 31, 2017 ~☆~Autumn rated it it was ok · review of another edition

My mother had a fit about this book which she said was sadistic and evil. When it came on TV she tried to prevent us from watching it. I did have to read it and identified with the one who had asthma whoever he was. I don't remember it now. I think boys can be especially sadistic to small animals and to each other. Mom used to go out and read the riot act to the neighborhood monsters who were killing horny toads in Fort Worth. I was very glad she was so brave and she put FEAR into them. ...more

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