Review: Lord of the Flies

Lord of the Flies by William Golding
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Summary of my review
Inspired by 'The Coral Island', great use of symbolics and methapors, insightful and brutal, unlogical and unrealistic aspects

‘There aren’t any grown-ups. We shall have to look after ourselves.’

- Ralph

If you leave kids alone, stranded on an Island without any adult to supervise them, what do you think would happen?
That's what this book is about, perhaps not original as Lord of the Flies was inspired by a different story which was similar to this one here (‘The Coral Island’), but still a story which gained lots of popularity and a fan base.

When I finished the book I asked myself the question: Why or how is it so special from the other ones, if it wasn't the first?
I honestly can't answer the question as I never read 'The Coral Island' or a similar story, but I'm also not sure if it is really that special. I had a hard time to get used to the writing style of the author, as I felt for the pace to be rather slow for the first 8 chapters. At chapter 8 or 9 out of nowhere stuff actually happened. The book only has 12 chapters, so you can imagine how confused I was. I understand that the author used lots of symbolics, especially on the boys, but I wished for stuff that perhaps wasn't that important to be left out of the story. But back to the symbolics, I have a theory: Ralph was standing for democracy and fairness, while Jack was the opposite — dictatorship. Piggy stands for cleverness and Simon for wisdom as he was the only one who was aware of what was actually happening. I also think Roger is the symbol for people who go with the crowd or the person they see to be winning, not being loyal or consistent. Phil was the first who talked about 'the beast', perhaps symbolising a strong gut feeling. Also 'the beast' and some other stuff were methapors and not literally meant, which was for me at first a bit hard to understand until I remembered what this story is about.

Only thing I definitely didn't like and have nothing to 'balance' or 'justify' it is how the kids behaved. I mean, I like characters that aren't perfectly good or evil, but I couldn't bear them finding excuses for brutal acts instead of just facing the reality, especially as ALL of them reacted that way. We have so many characters and with different views, opinions and most importantly maturity, so why do they all act the same for this part? I also think William Golding wasn't aware that kids, no matter what age KNOW the difference between good and bad, no matter how brutal it is. I guess some prefer to deny the reality of their actions, but it's unrealistic that all of them act this way. The same goes for them not crying at all, especially the little ones and then out of nowhere for just some dramatic scenes they start crying 'cause ‘it's so sad and tragic’, like wasn't it that all the time? The characters had a few flaws which is a pity, as this story is focusing more on the characters and their development than on the plot.

I expected something different from this book, which could be my reason for disappointment, but I liked nevertheless the message it conveys and understand now better why people like this book. Not that much of a fan of the writing style (for some parts), but I liked how symbolics and metaphors were used, making the words more 'wrapped up' than straightforwarded.
To be honest I also believe that the result of no supervision and no social structure wouldn't end that fast in a disaster, as it was displayed in this book, since they never really got older, indicating that the timespan was about a few months only. I believe that it would take longer, but perhaps due to them being kids it turned out differently than by adults.

View all my reviews