Review: 'Lord of the Flies'

Originally published in 1954, Lord of the Flies has become a critically acclaimed novel, on several ‘novels to read’ lists, as well as being noted as a modern classic. Lord of the Flies has been voted for numerous awards and classified as one of the best novels in the English language. The novel follows a group of boys stranded on an island. Golding proceeds to describe the journey the young boys take in their attempts to govern themselves and each other in their path to survival. The novel follows the school and choir boys as they abandon their once civilized selves and descend into savagery.

(Spoilers ahead)

Before reading the novel, I didn’t know anything about the story, only what was in the blurb, which I’ve found rare when reading classics. For a relatively short novel, I found myself swept up in the intensity of the story. At first, the reader is given the civilized appearance of the boys as they swim on the island and call their first meeting. Although continuing to call one of the boys ‘Piggy’ shows that they are still children, their attempt to civilize themselves and make a fire for a smoke signal shows how the adapted in their attempt to survive.

Throughout the novel, Golding presents a world where children are tested in their attempts to survive. They are tested by the fears of the dark and the conditions of the island. Golding provides the common childish fears of inanimate objects that the smaller children call a monster. The children’s panic when they realize that they are stranded on the island without any ‘grown-ups’ provides an innocence that Golding negates the madness that he creates later in the novel. He presents a childhood that adapts to their surroundings and, in turn, become savages of nature. Golding shows the politics of surviving whilst also presenting the different methods of survival, in hunting pigs of the island or surviving off fruit. He presents a division of society in the hunters and those who want to keep the fire alight, showing how the priorities of the children can become warped. Most of the children move to the side of the hunters, whilst those who stay behind maintain the priority of survival. An interesting element of the novel is the intensity Golding builds. whether the boys will, in fact, eat each other, which is especially prominent when the boys re-enact how they caught and slaughtered a pig, using one of the boys as a pig stand in. One of the most profound elements of the novel is Golding’s presentation of the boys regarding death. He shows how warped societies can become and how death is sometimes seen as trivial to people, whilst to others, it is easily forgotten.

Golding creates a theoretical example of how children would survive on an abandoned island and elaborates on these various scenarios. An example that causes you to question your own attitude in the boys’ situation, whilst also understanding that they are without moral judgment. Left to their own devices, the boys provide evidence to humanities reaction to nothingness, or at least Golding’s assumption.

Lord of the Flies provides twists and turns that no other classic I’ve read can provide. Reading it made me question every character and the plot provided a pace that aided the intensity of the novel although it is set over a longer period. Golding's writing is concise and yet descriptive enough that you can easily place yourself on the island with the boys. Overall, this presents a tale of the adaptability of children, as the ending shows how they react differently among each other and out of civilized society. A story that evidently transcends time.

4/5

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