Old Books, New Readers discussion
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APRIL 2020 BOTM - Lord of the Flies
I'm excited to start reading this book! I read it when I was 14, and I remember being a little traumatized, due to the heaviness of the story.Let's see the impact it has on me now, being older and probably more capable of understanding its meaning.
Also I read it in Portuguese, and this time I'll try the E-book in English, which might be better since it's the original version!
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I have somehow never read this book! I’m going to be listening to the audiobook, narrated by the author.
I have read this book at LEAST 10 times, great story, never gets old and so timeless. Love the Simpsons episode based on this.
I have read this book several times before, the first time at some point in high school. I am always disturbed for a few days after finishing it- I am interested to find out what it’s impact will be on me this time around.
I also have somehow never read this one! Looking forward to starting it, and also curious to hear from those who read it in high school and will not be reading as an adult.
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As you're reading, let's draw parallels between this book and our current situation.
It doesn't have to be an essay question. If something hits you that's relevant, then write it quickly in the thread and read on.
I read it many years ago, but I know I was older than 14. Nevertheless, it made a profound impact on me—quite disturbing.Now that I have a lot more experiences with life, I wonder how it will impact me now. I am more worldly than I was then and that is sure to alter how I think about the book.
I am glad that this is the book that was selected and I am anxious to get started on it.
I read this novel at 12, I felt angry. Years later, I read it as a requirement of my study but caught my attention and started teaching it to my students. I think reading it during this time will be nice experience.
Lots of you seem to have read this in school. Somehow I have got to 40 and never read it! About to dive in today! (thanks for the pdf by the way, very helpful).
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Well that’s a good relatable comparison for today!
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In the few pages I've read, I noticed how quickly and how well Golding developed the characters. Ralph is arrogant, egocentric and narcissistic, and Golding also gives him the physical characteristics people admire like his 'golden skin.' He is cruel, as well, and immediately uses "Piggy's" nickname to demean, belittle and insult him. "Piggy" is developed as a sheltered, weak, pampered and indulged character. He has been so disempowered by his upbringing that he craves being controlled and is too weak to abandon Ralph when he is treated badly.
In a subtle way, Golding also uses his description of nature to re-emphasize the plot and where it is headed. The trees are either upright or have fallen (the strong and the weak), BUT even the trees which are upright do not grow very high, only 20 feet. The island itself parallels the darkness of the human characters of the book: the beach, in the sunshine, is a narrow band of sand while the island is thickly covered, dark, hazardous and shrouded in potential dangers--and Ralph leads Piggy further into the darkness.
I read this book many years ago but did not see the totality of its incredible power and artistry until now.
How is everyone doing with this read. This is my first reading of this classic. I was not sure this was a book I would enjoy, and am being proven wrong.l have decided to read it one chapter a day to allow time to reflect.
Paul I can definitely see how he uses nature to reinforce his messages. The making of the fire in chapter two and the unforeseen consequences are another example. To me it symbolizes the boys jumping on any direction, letting others think for them, and the inevitable chaos which follows.
Daniel the fire scene reminds me of how people are desperate for leadership and following any Facebook suggestion. Then you have the little ones running hither and yon being driven by their stomachs.
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The narrator is William Golding, and he does an impeccable job with everything. The prose is beautiful by itself but hearing it read aloud in an English accent helps you appreciate the pacing of his descriptions, especially about the island itself. Paul made some excellent connections, as he always does. His insight proves a point: This book has enough symbolism to merit a second read.
Connie's comment made me think of another connection. The younger boys ignoring their responsibilities are like the spring breakers partying at the beach. Piggy represents the older people freaking out, reminding them of the situation at hand. I live in Florida so this observation is very Florida, haha.
https://www.william-golding.co.uk/lor...I won’t be joining you on this read but I’ve studied the novel for my degree. The reason for Golding writing the novel is interesting and good background information. XX
I'm reading the audio, and I was pleasantly surprised when it was William Golding reading his book. I also love the little note he puts in the beginning as to why he chose little boys instead of little girls. So far I've read 1 chapter and a bit. I found it interesting how they all first chose a leader before doing anything else. And when they climb the mountain and find they are on a deserted island it made me think of the isolation most of us are facing during lockdown periods in our separate countries.
I have not seen that, what was the reason he chose little boys instead of little girls?
He said that you could break little boys down into the basest of forms which would show social constructs better. Little girls are too complex. :)
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I won’t be joining you on this read but I’ve studied the novel for my degree. The reason for Golding writing the novel is interesting and ..."
This is fascinating stuff, and I'm truly grateful you shared it. Now I want to read Coral Island while Lord of the Flies is fresh in my head. Coral Island seems more like a utopian vision compared to the disharmony in Golding's novel.
Warning - Lengthy Post: I'm a high school English teacher, and I have taught this book many times. My first (naive) year of teaching, I introduced this book to my 9th graders (ages 13-14) with the following activity that I found online. I wrote the following instructions on the board before class:
1. Put yourselves into groups.
2. There must be at least one female and one male in each group.
3. Each group will turn in one piece of paper with signatures from all members. The signatures indicate willingness to be in the group.
4. Groups will remain in the same group for the entire unit of study.
5. All members of the group will receive the same grade on all group assignments for this unit.
6. You have exactly 5 minutes to complete this assignment for your first group grade.
When the bell rang to start class, I pointed to the board. For the first several minutes of class, I silently took role while the students read the board. I set a timer for 5 minutes and then simply walked out of the room, closing the door behind me. I did not say a single word. (I stood just outside of the door and was able to hear everything that took place inside the room. ) I took notes for a future discussion.
The room was quiet for a minute as kids were confused about the situation: teacher walked out, what do we do, is she coming back, etc. Then buzz/murmur of voice , then loud voices are heard barking instructions, then desks moving around, then sounds of chaos and confusion.
I set my watch so at 5 minutes I walked back into the room. Some groups were finished, some were in process of getting signatures, some students were not in a group at all. Once I got the kids to settle down and be quiet, I had all of them take out a piece of paper and journal their experience. What were their thoughts, actions, who in the room made decisions, who were followers, who resisted, and who were the quiet members who shied away from the activity? Journal entries and group signature pages were turned in.
Then I introduced the novel and gave a little bit of background. I connected the activity to the plot. After we finished the book and the unit, I returned the journal entries to the students and we had a class discussion about the opening activity and the Lord of the Flies. They were amazing discussions.
Bad news - the second year that I did this, I had a parent complain. The parent had an issue with the activity, but the biggest problem was with the fact the student would be getting a grade based on the group, not individual work. I conferenced with the parent about the grading, but then the activity itself became the focus and I was asked to discontinue the activity.
I changed schools after five years, but was nervous about doing this activity again, even though I taught the book many more times.
I'm curious what members think? What are your reactions? What would you think if your 13- or 14-year old child participated in this activity as an introduction to this novel? I still have mixed feelings.
Ooh wow, I think that’s a great exercise. What a good idea and a way to make the story more relevant to them and make them think for themselves.
I guess you'd have to be careful not to make it end up with similar consequences to The Third Wave. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thi...
https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2...
https://timeline.com/this-1967-classr...
actually I don't know whether it was a coincidence or a planned thing, but in 1954 when Lord of the Flies was published, so was the monumental paper called "Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation: The Robbers Cave Experiment". The experiment was done on groups of kids too, and was very much like LOTF. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2...
I read about this experiment in Haidt's book "The Righteous Mind". Very interesting.
Ooi wrote: "actually I don't know whether it was a coincidence or a planned thing, but in 1954 when Lord of the Flies was published, so was the monumental paper called "Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation: The..."The paper can be found here:
http://livros01.livrosgratis.com.br/p...
Have a read. It's very interesting.
Thanks for all the links people.I have just finished this book! I'd sum it up as grim but good in a totally depressing way. 4/5 (technically 4.5/5 but rounded down).
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You're giving your age away there Ian! haha!I thought the writing was great, sure it's a little dated at times, but I loved the descriptiveness of it, you can picture the scene. I was thinking as I read it how he made it easy for someone to make it into a film as he explained how it should look and the feel of the places within the island.
I made a note of a specific bit of text I enjoyed, it was quite near the beginning when he was setting the scene. The way he described the trees and in particular the leaves was brilliant...
“The shore was fledged with palm trees. These stood or leaned or reclined against the light and their green feathers were a hundred feet up in the air.”
And also another quote, which I put at the end of my review, for those who haven't read it..Poor Percival!
“Percival was mouse coloured and had not been very attractive even to his mother” what a description!
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Poor Percival!
“Percival was mouse coloured and had not been very attractive even to his mother” what..."
I remember wincing a bit when I heard this line. I think it sounds harsher with Golding's accent.
It made me wince but also smile a bit too. It was funny in the way it was totally unnecessary and harsh. Just really cruel to a fictional character, and it brought nothing to the story, so why? Perhaps he knew someone called Percival and was being mean to/about a real person?
FANTASTIC teaching method. Bravo to you. Absolutely brilliant. Lucky kids.
I'm on chapter 4 and I'm beginning to see the disintegration of society, very interesting.
Hello everyone, I found it curious that Daniel suggested we made comparisons between the book and our current reality, because I had started doing it since the first page of this book.
When Quarantine first started, I was overwhelmed by the fact that I'd have to stay at home for God-knows how long, since I'm a pretty active person, and I'm not used to not going out for this long.
However, reading Lord of the Flies really put things in perspective for me -- I much rather be in my house, with my family, my books, lot of food and a bed to sleep on, than stuck on a Island not knowing when I'll be rescued (I'll tell you: If I was a 12-year-old boy on an Island with other kids, possibily crazy ones, I'd be scared to death!).
Overall, I think this book is improving my mental health because it just makes me glad I don't have to be in Ralph or Piggy's place.
On to the story itself, I feel sorry for Piggy, he seems to have been bullied all his life, and I don't like the way the other boys treat him (eventhough he is in fact a bit annoying and spoiled).As in real life, the devil is in the details, and there were a few references that stood with me from the first chapter:
When Ralph tell's Piggy it's a matter of time til they get rescued, because "they" will tell Ralph's dad at the airport, to which Piggy replies “Not them. Didn’t you hear what the pilot said? About the atom bomb? They’re all dead.” -- I don't remember if this is ever explained, further in the book, but I'm a big fan of dystopias and this passage caught my eye.
The other reference is "the man with the megaphone". Who is he and why did the children obey him? Are these children related in someway? Or did they just happen to be on the same plane that crashed?
There's probably not an answer to my questions, but if anyone thought about this I'd love to hear your thoughts (or maybe Goulding clarified this and I'm not aware of it).
Also, Slyvia, I think your experience was highly appropriate, and if I was a parent to 13 or 14 year-old I wouldn't be displeased by it. I can see how it captured the students' attention.
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I found it curious that Daniel suggested we made comparisons between the book and our current reality, because I had started doing it since the first page of this book.
When Quaran..."
Vera, I am glad you brought this up, which is the message I hoped would come across during this read. We must glimpse into another world of isolation to make our own isolation feel better.
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The character of Piggy hits home for many people. It doesn't feel nice to be made fun of at work, school, or anywhere for that matter. In fact, some of us may prefer this isolation because it shields them from the cruelty of the world. At what point in the story did the character of Piggy resonate the most with you?
For me, this quote sticks out: "Piggy saw the smile and misinterpreted it as friendliness."
I'm very trusting, and I used to think people stored all their honesty in their face. As I get older, I see a lot of benevolent faces do horrible things. The charm and the smile only go so far.
That is such a good question. I don’t have a quote. But you are right, I did relate to him. I think it is the general need/want to be noticed, appreciated, (dare I say loved). We all want to be a part of something don’t we? Whatever it is, to feel like people notice us, unlike the poor kid with the birthmark who no one noticed was missing until piggy pointed it out!
Just finished chapter 5 so at the halfway mark. This chapter was by far my favourite yet.Daniel you are right and the Piggy character hits almost too close to home for me. When he stands outside the triangle at first as a way of sending a message of disapproval. I have done this at meetings, but more as a defense mechanism. But staying on the sidelines is difficult.
I have also found myself being a Ralph, where I was the appointed leader but at a certain point just want to throw in the towel and let Jack, the bully of the group have his or her way.
I don't know about others but I can think of many meetings I have been part of which had a Ralph, Jack, Piggy, and a Simon. I can see myself assigning these names to people displaying corresponding characteristics in the future.
I suspect many of us reading this book have read it once before, either in college or high school as an assigned reading. That is where I first encountered it and I have to say that it has stayed with me more vividly than just about any other book I read in those days.I want to comment on what I am learning from this experience as a RE-reading experience.
Because I do so vividly recall my first reading of the novel, I am more focused on the quality of the writing, the way the author puts the story together. Knowing the outcome helps me see what he did to achieve the impact the ending will have.
When I give ratings to books, I usually rate as an English professor would—more on quality of writing than on engagement of the plot. If the plot hadn’t sounded interesting, I wouldn’t have read it in the first place, so a good plot should be a ‘given’ in rating books.
As a re-read, this book re-enforces my idea of ratings based on quality. In Lord of the Flies, Golding develops characters through their actions and words rather than the words of the author to describe the character. As the book progresses, the behaviors of the individuals become more predictable because Golding has done such a superb job of drawing their characters. Beyond the development of character, Golding allows the developing plot to become the foundation of what is to come.
Jack’s failures at hunting, for example, parallel the idea that violence and bloodshed were imaginary things for the characters early in the books. The characters would have become very different very early in the book had they been capable of spilling blood early on. Ralph’s cruelty and duplicity are evident from the start when he betrays Piggy’s secret immediately upon learning it, and in that betrayal, established the basis of his power.
In admiring the quality of writing leading to these perceptions as I now can, could not have been done in my first time through the book.
I have also come to admire the pre-planning stages the author had to have gone through to bring this story to life.
When interviewed, many writers talk about “finding a character” and then following the character to see where he leads. In doing this, the story is created. Golding cannot have done that. The writing is too precise, the character development too consistent, the observations too detailed to even imagine he didn’t have a very detailed framework for the book before he added enough words to turn it into a story.
In this book, he achieved in a couple hundred pages what a recent book I read (1Q84 by Haruki Murakami) did not achieve in 1300. In this book, Golding takes no side-trips, adds no extraneous details, wastes no time on back-stories while Murakami did all of those.
Re-reading this once again re-enforces something I had already learned: the really good books are even better when read a second time and improve even more upon further readings.
I am very glad our brilliant moderator, Danny, has led us to this book and has continued to do such a fine job of reading people’s comments and following up with his own.
I have not responded to some of the questions he posed, but those, too, reflect insight and excellent curating of the readings.
Sylvia wrote: "I'm a high school English teacher, and I have taught this book many times...."The group project where all the members of the group receive the same grade is a tried-and-true assignment that teaches team work in addition to whatever the academic subject is. I even use it my college courses. I generally put the assignment in the context of students’ future careers since most people at some point will have to work with others.
I think your Lord of the Flies group lesson is especially good because it teaches about teamwork on two levels: it is both the subject of the book and a real world lesson. Thirteen year olds are not too young to learn that they don’t live and work in a vacuum. How well they fare in the game of life is not solely dependent on their own efforts.
What I particularly like about the lesson is what it reveals about the various individual temperaments of the students: the leaders, the followers, the loners, etc. (Not to mention the ones who go crying to mommy.)
I think you should continue to use the lesson. I do know that even one complaint can make you second guess an assignment that has been successful in the past. I think a complaint warrants an objective re-assessment of the lesson to see if there is anything wrong with it, but if after re-assessment you determine that the lesson is a good one, you keep the lesson and deal with any possible future complaints on a case-by-case basis.
Usually the main complaint with group work comes from students who are afraid they will receive a lower grade as a member of a group than as an individual. But this is part of the challenge of the group assignment. And I say this to my students. I put it in the context of problem-solving: “One person can bring the whole group down. How do you deal with that?”
I finished Chapter 6 last night, and I have to agree with Connie, chapter 5 was my favourite so far. A sort of aliance between Ralph, Simon and Piggy starts to show, and their differences when compared to Jack also do. I really liked the final part of the chapter, when it is clear that caos is installed, and the boys aren't even able to keep the fire lit.As to the question about Piggy, I think I started feeling sorry for him as soon as Ralph revealed his "nickname", and it just got worse in the Assemblies.
P.S: "Johnny, yawning still, burst into noisy tears and was slapped by Bill till he choked on them" - Goulding has some intense sentences ahah
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Below is a link to the PDF
Lord of the Flies