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William Golding: Lord Of The Flies

DATo said:
Well, we totally DO agree on this, regardless of our position on evolution...

"We have spent the last 50 years making excuses for people's behaviour." - Judge Judy
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And without any excuses :) what is left is personal responsibility :) an unpopular concept I'm sure as people may just have to accept that their actions have consequences.
 
Oh, I totally agree with you on the point of personal responsibility, but I also believe that we are motivated by primal urges which date back through our development (I do subscribe to the theory of evolution). This does not free us from our responsibility to act in accordance with the laws however. In other words I do not agree with an excuse which states "My genes made me do it!" anymore than I agree with an excuse which states "The Devil made me do it!" *L*
 
A few people have mentioned that they don't like Lord of the Flies because of it's... dark nature. I think I loved this book precisely because it was so unforgiving. It doesn't just paint a picture of the cruelty humans can have, it also shows how people have strong inclinations to side with those who have power/wealth.
The book is dripping with symbolism, and viewing the island on a broader scale, it also ends up making many (controversial?) comments about politics, society, and the nature of man.
If anything, it's good writing.
 
Dmitri Dmitriev said:
A few people have mentioned that they don't like Lord of the Flies because of it's... dark nature. I think I loved this book precisely because it was so unforgiving. It doesn't just paint a picture of the cruelty humans can have, it also shows how people have strong inclinations to side with those who have power/wealth.
The book is dripping with symbolism, and viewing the island on a broader scale, it also ends up making many (controversial?) comments about politics, society, and the nature of man.
If anything, it's good writing.
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Actually I dislike the book, and others like it because it offers no hope. I have a smallish collection of books that fall into the category and this is one of them. I simply refuse to take such a bleak view of life and humanity.
 
Lokeo13 said:
Lord of the Flies

I have to read Lord of the Flies over the summer for my class. I may not be giving it a fair chance, but i cannot get through it. Is it really a good book? I heard it was a classic, but i don't know why.
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Glad I spotted this, it's in my pile and I've never read it.
Now to go and update my profile.
 
Lord of the Flies is one of the few books I've abandoned. I got to chapter six when I decided I should stop. I found the story to be dull and the characters uninteresting. I still have the chapter bookmarked in case I decided I want to finish the book someday.
 
Millicent Beauchamp said:
Lord of the Flies is one of the few books I've abandoned. I got to chapter six when I decided I should stop. I found the story to be dull and the characters uninteresting. I still have the chapter bookmarked in case I decided I want to finish the book someday.
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I can understand that, it is a very male orientated book.
 
Răspunsul said:
Perversley I am going to read it now once I have finished Sabatini.
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Despite its dark tone, I think LOTF is an important book to read. It shows how quickly man (civilized society) can devolve to our most basic survivalist instincts - and often this means might makes right. I view it as much a cautionary tale as one which simply shows the dark side of human nature.

It reminds me somewhat of Blindness by Saramago where most of society devolves quickly into chaos and a dog eat dog mentality, but there is a small core of people who try to maintain dignity, love and caring despite it all.

I guess my point is that we can't ignore the negative aspects of human nature. Just because a book presents a bleak picture of the world, it doesn't mean that we as readers can't also hold a positive outlook. There is a ying and yang to all things. As the song goes, you can't have one without the other.
 
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Roxbrough said:
I can understand that, it is a very male orientated book.
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I suppose so, but it's my belief that females are, in the end, the same difference.
Being female, and attending an all female school (yuck), believe me. It's true. :)


Ell said:
Despite its dark tone, I think LOTF is an important book to read. It shows how quickly man (civilized society) can devolve to our most basic survivalist instincts - and often this means might makes right. I view it as much a cautionary tale as one which simply shows the dark side of human nature.

It reminds me somewhat of Blindness by Saramago where most of society devolves quickly into chaos and a dog eat dog mentality, but there is a small core of people who try to maintain dignity, love and caring despite it all.

I guess my point is that we can't ignore the negative aspects of human nature. Just because a book presents a bleak picture of the world, it doesn't mean that we as readers can't also hold a positive outlook. There is a ying and yang to all things. As the song goes, you can't have one without the other.
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I agree. Even though I read it way back in high school, and remember very little of it.....the impression it made was deep.

I started Blindness...couldn't get into it. Not on account of the lack of punctuation, that makes no difference to me. I'm not sure why.
 
Ell said:
Despite its dark tone, I think LOTF is an important book to read. It shows how quickly man (civilized society) can devolve to our most basic survivalist instincts - and often this means might makes right. I view it as much a
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I thought it was about kids?
 
Răspunsul said:
I thought it was about kids?
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The characters of the book are kids. Only one living adult appears at the very end of the book; however, the children in the book represent the whole of humanity. They, and how they dispose themselves is a metaphorical representation of mankind in general.
 
DATo said:
The characters of the book are kids. Only one living adult appears at the very end of the book; however, the children in the book represent the whole of humanity. They, and how they dispose themselves is a metaphorical representation of mankind in general.
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Is this explained by Golding?
 
Răspunsul said:
Is this explained by Golding?
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If you mean: 'Does [He] explain this?' within the context of the story, the answer is 'yes', but it is done metaphorically, or symbolically by comparing the behavior of the children on the island to the adult-created world from which they have come.

When the story opens the children have been evacuated from their home country because a war has begun. We will assume this is a nuclear war, or a war of such consequence that the population of urban centers are at great risk. The plane they are on goes down but not before ejecting a capsule which we will further assume has been designed for such an eventuality. The capsule, perhaps by parachute, safely lands the children on a tropical island. We can grant Golding a few liberties with the practicality of this plan ... the point is he is trying to create a setting which isolates the children from adult supervision.

Golding is careful to illustrate that these boys are not just typical boys chosen at random, but boys from a British public (American translation = private) school. This is a nice stroke of craftsmanship on Golding's part. The British public school system has traditionally been the educational system of choice for children from "Upper Crust" families. These schools were meant to produce the future leaders of the British government, industry and military. Golding is trying to push the case that these boys are not rowdies but are part of a class that is being processed to be "gentlemen". Another stroke of genius, in my opinion, is that Golding chose children to illustrate his point. As I mentioned in an earlier post we equate children with innocence. Children, we assume, do not yet have enough exposure to life experience to be tainted by that which we would call "evil".

What Golding is saying, loudly and clearly in this story is that even the most innocent people, when separated from the trappings of civilized society for any length of time, can revert to the primal and instinctive behavior which has been inculcated into their psyche over countless millennia of evolutionary attrition. My Grandmother used to quote an old saying from Italy: "Children are the purest for they are the last to arrive from the hand of God." But as we get older (stray farther from the hand of God) we become corrupted by the world. In this book, as time passes, children who at first draw upon their training to organize themselves by setting up a makeshift parliamentary government and a plan of action which includes a signal fire to aid their rescue, quickly begin to revert to what we would expect of primitive cultures including the premise that "might makes right", to the invention of superstitious beliefs (the Beast in the jungle), sacrifice to evil gods to appease them (the pig head on the spike) and even to murder if considered necessary.

At the end of the book adult life appears. The adult is a British naval officer and he thinks the children have been playing a game. He is totally unaware when he finds the children that they are pursuing one of the other boys with the intention of killing him. Thus, Golding is illustrating that the "innocent" boys have reverted to, and are in fact engaged in, the same behavior as the people in the world from which the naval officer has just arrived - a world of violence and war.

If you read the book with this in mind it will be much easier for you to follow how Golding gradually strips these specially educated boys of the training they have received and the trappings of civilized life. He is making the case that our instinctive, banal propensities to revert to primitive and animal behavior lurk just beneath the surface of what appears to be our otherwise civilized psyches.
 
Dato you should read 'All Fools Day' if you enjoyed Lord of the Flies. I've started it and it has some interesting parallels with Golding's novel.
 
Răspunsul said:
Dato you should read 'All Fools Day' if you enjoyed Lord of the Flies. I've started it and it has some interesting parallels with Golding's novel.
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It seems both you and Roxbrough like this book and that's good enough for me. I will begin looking for it post haste, and thank you.
 
DATo said:
At the end of the book adult life appears. The adult is a British naval officer and he thinks the children have been playing a game. He is totally unaware when he finds the children that they are pursuing one of the other boys with the intention of killing him. Thus, Golding is illustrating that the "innocent" boys have reverted to, and are in fact engaged in, the same behavior as the people in the world from which the naval officer has just arrived - a world of violence and war.
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I love this ending.
 
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