A classic everyone read in high school, except me. I read it this month.

Introduction:

I like to enter into a book without any expectations. I will typically ask for book recommendations and without reading the synopsis or sometimes even knowing the genre, I’ll dive right in. If someone thinks it is good, that’s good enough for me. Lord of the Flies was not a book I could go into blind. I knew the basic premise. I knew it was about boys going feral and killing each other. I knew everyone was forced to read it in high school and hated it. What I didn’t know were the details, the subtlety to the well told story surrounding the out of context snippets. The feeling and the flow.

Honestly, I loved it. Not in a ‘I’m going to recommend this to everyone’ type of way, more in a ‘the author had a purpose, and he executed it very well’ kind of way. It has heart.

If you haven’t read the book, put it on a list. It’s a classic for a reason. It makes you think. Or at the very least feel something. It sits with you, forces you to ponder.

I love books that do that.

Language (3 of 5):

I might be giving this one a harsh score due to the age of the book. The writing style was far from poetry on the page. There was very little play with the words. The dialogue was stunted, for good reason, with the boys being young.

However, scenes were described cleanly. Events flowed without long lapses and the process of narrative was respected. I didn’t stumble over the cadence, though Golding’s style didn’t grab me. Taken in chunks at a time, it was palpable to my diet. I don’t know if I could read it straight out. All in all, it felt a smidge dry.

Idea (3 of 5):

Nothing spectacular. A group of boys crash on an island and have to go tribal. There is a rising conflict and they take the route of hunters and savages opposed to their upbringing within the realms of civilized men. Their decisions have deadly consequences and exhibit the shadow within the heart of every man.

Do I think it’s a realistic story? Yes. It could very well happen. Do I think it’s unique or fresh? For the time it was written, I would say yes. The idea of dystopia has spawned a whole subculture of writing. This book is that feeling in a nutshell. Order be gone. Let the strong survive and let him with the spear prey on the weak.

Characters (5 of 5):

Here’s where I will gush with praise and love for this work of fiction. The characters.

At twelve, the boys were miraculously complex. Ralph, our protagonist, was neither good nor bad. He was a boy. He begins by teasing Piggy without sense or justice, simply out of plain malice. Yet he has a conscience, has some form of right and wrong. He’s the leader who knows he’s the best option but doesn’t know how to lead. He’s stubborn. Vain. Selfish. Fearful. Reactive. A kid.

Piggy has my sympathies and my ire. He is so annoying and self-defeating, yet the smartest kid on the island. If he had half the courage as Ralph they could have stood up together to their bully. But he cannot, and does not, to his own demise. He wraps his weaknesses, his asthma and his glasses, around him like a cloak, using it to ward off others, using it to conceal his own greater flaws, His own fear of life.

Jack Merridew to me has no redeeming qualities. He is driven by emotion through and through. Without him, they could have built a working society. Or at least one less broken. With him, the wedge at every turn, there was nothing but chaos. He is strong, but his strength comes from beating others down. The beast taken form.

Simon I wish I had more of. He seemed fragile in heart and body and placed to be sacrificed. The other boys, Samneric (love how they’re twins yet one), Rodger, Johnny, Percival, and the others were placed as followers for the biguns. The littluns were amazing flavor to the group’s absurdity. Six-year-olds without number, digging in the sand, playing because that was all they knew. They followed and they didn’t follow. They mattered but mattered not.

Beginning (4.5 of 5):

The character introductions were done well. Ralph and Piggy finding the conch. The two of them bestowing meaning and power upon an object that meant nothing until they made it their physical representation of power. The other boys marching in, quickly pinning who is who right away and the chaos of the innumerable bunch. The first interactions between Ralph and Piggy set the tone, then Jack shifting the tone as his presence is envied, his presence is dismissed, his presence creating a power struggle. How Ralph has to choose right at the start who he sides with knowing next to nothing beyond what he sees. Jack and his strength? Or Piggy and his mind? The boys relish the joy found in the freedom away from parents, which transforms into a struggle to limit their unexpected freedom for their own good.

The atmosphere and environment were also set up well. The reef, the pool, the terrace and the palms, the ocean and the beach, the sun and the heat, the jungle and its difficulty in traversing, the mountain. The rocks.

The opening chapter with the boy’s ignorance and stupidity setting part of the island on fire and killing one of their own could not have been better plotted out. Boys getting an idea in their head and doing stupid thing after stupid thing and are forced to witness their consequences in real time. They don’t know better because they’re too young to have experience. They live in the moment. For better or worse.  

Then, the realities of life, building shelters, gathering food, organizing and trying to trust each other only to have it eventually shatter because, again, it’s too much of a lift. They try their best but are too small to do as much as their heads and hands want to do. Laziness and play win out, emotions and sleep override their best interests. Ralph and Jack morph into two opposing forces, strong and confident each yet too unalike to trust each other where they must.

Middle (4 of 5):

After the fire goes out on the top of the mountain, after the ship is lost, after Jack is publicly shamed and Ralph has no reproductions to offer to his frustrations, life breaks down. Power is only powerful if the followers follow. Ralph tries to get everyone to lean into hope, even the hopeless hope of rescue. Jack leans into the might of the kill and savagery. Being a provider has a power of its own. Who needs a conch? Jack alone can keep the beast at bay. Jack alone can keep the fear and the darkness and the despair at bay.

We don’t hope. We take action.

I did not care for the dead paratrooper. He felt dropped into the plot, the monkey that messes with the group for no reason but for the sake of the plot. An embodiment beast given corporeal legs and a little irony and foreshadowing as death descends on the island.

The power struggle of fear and pride and shame and honor with Ralph and Jack on the other hand, is beautiful. School yard boys vying for their pecking order, the one who lies the loudest and hits the hardest wins. Ralph pulls his punches. Jack does not. Ralph wants to fit in, wants to stand out, doesn’t know what he wants. Jack does. He wants power and control beyond all else. He uses his emotions and whips the others into a frenzy, a blood frenzy with lightning and thunder, rain and death. No one knows what they’re doing until it’s too late. Murder binds. Murder destroys.

The scene with Simon and the Lord of the Flies was odd. I wasn’t sure if Simon was sick, or dehydrated, or simply that was how he was. The imagery and exposition feel unique in an otherwise straight forward book, and we don’t come back to that style of thought again. The boar head watches overall, sees all, is death and the symbol of the savagery of their fractured tribe.

End (4.5 of 5):

The stakes only rise for Ralph and Piggy. Jack takes all he can, takes the tribe, takes Piggy’s spectacles, takes the seat of power. Ralph goes from one bad decision to a worse one; he tries to reason with a tyrant. Then, an accident causes Piggy to die. An accident that no one asked for but was not unwanted. And once innocent blood is split again, the one who would utter his name and remind them all of their shame must be snuffed out too. The boys must kill and kill until they can no longer be opposed. Ralph is clever enough to run and hide after reason doesn’t work, again. Why does he keep trying to reason with Jack? He finally runs. The island is set on fire. It feels like retribution is at hand against those against Ralph. They’ll be their own unmaking.

At first when Ralph stumbles out of the jungle and onto the beach, the flames licking at his heels, Jack’s hunters just ahead of those, the abruptness of salvation feels wrong. A sailor is there. They are rescued. The expected ending is subverted. At first I disliked them being saved. Where were the consequences for Jack? Where was the hard-fought victory for Ralph? 

The only ones who suffered the two biguns war were the littuns. How many were lost to the final fire? How many suffered and died without name or thought?

As I let the ending settle for a day or two it grew on me. It was the right ending. These two warring sides, Jack and his hunters, the outcast Ralph… they were simply boys. Golding evolved them into personalities larger than themselves and with the sailor’s arrival, reality returns. It’s all a game. They don’t have to make any of the hard decisions anymore. No more life and death choices, simply… play.

Except… this experience on the island has shaped them, changed them, forevermore. I can only begin to imagine the knots of emotional pain, tidepools of terror over the beast, the unnamed fear, and PTSD they will carry into their teenage years, adulthood. They are simply boys. Even when Jack washes off his face paint, the marks left will continue to linger.

Summary (4.5 of 5):

As a whole, The Lord of the Flies stands strong as a classic. A book to be read to make you think. One that will stick in your mind, the characters, the emotion, the feeling of trying to grip onto something you know you should be able to, order, safety, and every time you struggle towards it, it moves farther and farther away. Of how little decisions turn into impossible problems, how you can’t go back. How we’re all simply doing our best and sometimes even with our best, we fail. The hunters want our heads. And we’re all simply little boys at heart, playing a deadly game called life.