Lord of the Flies by William Golding

Frankly, the book isn't as good as I recalled. I'd say it was ok, but a little heavy-handed. But then again, it's probably good to remember that it set the stage for other "thin veneer of civilization" books.

On the face of it, Lord of the Flies is about a group of English schoolboys whose plane crashes (shot down during the war?) into a deserted island, killing all the adults. The story then moves to how the boys (early teens and younger) will survive (if at all) until they're rescued (if at all). Originally the boys all vote Ralph into a leadership position and he decides that keeping a signal fire is the most important thing. Ralph is advised by the fat and bespectacled Piggy (who is always for keeping the old order of civilization) Jack is never at ease with Ralph being the chief but accepts being the leader of the hunters. Then things start to fall apart. The hunters let the fire go out, then the hunters break off into their own group, and finally the hunters take over and descend into abject savagery.

The descent into savagery is brought on by fear of "the beast." The smaller children (littluns) believe early on that there is a beast on the island who is out to get them all. This fear begins to prey on the older boys when, in searching the island for the beast, they find, in the twilight, a dead pilot suspended in a tree by his parachute. In the darkness, he looks very much to them like a winged beast. From there the fear ramps up and Jack's hunters, after killing a sow, leave its head on a spear as an offering to the beast. Simon, an older boy aligned with Jack and Piggy, was hiding in the jungle near the clearing where the hunters spiked the pig head. While watching the flies surround the pig head, Simon slips into a hallucination where the sow's head speaks to him as the "Lord of the Flies" (Satan). The Lord of the Flies tells Simon that there is no beast, but rather the beast (the Lord of the Flies) is within each of the boys; that fear and savagery is the beast. Simon is unable to tell this to the boys, as Jack's tribe is in a ritualistic dancing frenzy when Simon arrives and they mistake him for the beast.

So in all, the book tells that man, left to himself, will fall back to primitivism. Order and government are fragile (symbolized by the conch shell used by Ralph to maintain order in meetings) and that the seeds of evil are within all of us.

The book reminded me, in some ways, of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian which I read earlier this year. However, McCarthy is a much better writer than Golding. Lord of the Flies does make some important points, but it seems that it is indeed a book better read by an adolescent.