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Lord of the Flies
The original UK Lord of the Flies book cover
AuthorWilliam Golding
Cover artistPentagram
LanguageEnglish
GenreAllegorical novel
PublisherFaber & Faber
Publication date1954
Publication placeUnited Kingdom
Media typePrint (Paperback & Hardback)
Pages248 pp (first edition, paperback)
ISBNISBN 0-571-05686-5 (first edition, paperback) Parameter error in {{ISBNT}}: invalid character
Followed byThe Inheritors (William Golding) 

Lord of the Flies is an allegorical novel by Nobel Prize-winning author William Golding. It discusses how civility created by man fails and how man shall always turn to savagery, using the allegory of a group of school-boys trapped on a desert island who attempt to govern themselves and fail disastrously. Its stances on the already controversial subjects of human nature and individual welfare versus the common good earned it position 70 on the American Library Association's list of the 100 most frequently challenged Books of 1990–2000. The novel was chosen by TIME Magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to the present.

Published in 1954, Lord of the Flies was Golding's first novel, and although it was not a great success at the time — selling fewer than three thousand copies in the United States during 1955 before going out of print — it soon went on to become a bestseller, and by the early 1960s was required reading in many schools and colleges. It was adapted to film in 1963 by Peter Brook, and again in 1990 by Harry Hook.

The title is said to be a reference to a line from King Lear - "As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods, — They kill us for their sport". (King Lear Act IV, Scene 1) It may also be a reference to the Hebrew name Beelzebub (בעל זבוב, Baal-zvuv, "god of the fly", "host of the fly" or literally "Lord of Lies"), a name sometimes used as a synonym for Satan.

Plot summary

The story begins with a large number of young boys, ages 6 to 12, being stranded on a tropical island. They were being evacuated from a war and their plane had been shot down. The first two characters introduced are Ralph, an athletic and charismatic boy with fair hair, and "Piggy," a fat boy with glasses who also suffers from asthma. The two boys obtain a conch shell and use it to call the other boys from across the island. The boys begin to discuss who should be their leader. Ralph is chosen by vote, but one other potential leader arises — Jack Merridew. Jack was a choir leader and still acts as leader of all the other castaway members of his choir. Ralph is elected as leader but because Ralph senses the threat, he elects Jack to be the leader of the hunters (his choir). Piggy is the least popular of the boys but is intelligent and becomes Ralph's "lieutenant," having civilized values but no way to carry them out. However, it is evident that Jack covets the leadership position. Then, Ralph takes Jack and Simon to explore the island. During their exploration they find a trapped piglet. Jack pulls out a knife but hesitates to kill the piglet, and it escapes. Jack vows never to hesitate again. Early on, the boys are full of optimism and expect the island to be fun, despite the fact that many of the boys are scared of a "Beast" — allegedly some kind of dangerous wild animal on the island seen by one of the younger boys with a birthmark on his face.

The boys then make their first attempt at being rescued by starting a signal fire, lit by Piggy's glasses. The fire burns without control and scorches a good portion of the island. The boy with a birthmark on his face who saw the Beast goes missing during the fire and is never seen again.

The major characters Jack and Ralph have conflicting aims for the island; life on the island begins to deteriorate and becomes more and more disorganized. The island's descent into chaos starts, ironically, with the potential for rescue by a passing ship. Jack had led a group off hunting and took with him the boys who were tending to the signal fire,so the fire died out, resulting in the the ship sailing past without knowing of the boys on the island. An intense argument ensues in which one lens of Piggy's glasses is broken. Although the signal fire is maintained along with a false sense of security, the order among the boys quickly deteriorates as Jack and Ralph continue to struggle for power. Jack has a way to tell people what they want to hear, and Ralph soon loses control over his friends.

As the novel takes place during a war, a dogfight between two planes occurs over the island. One of the pilots parachutes out of his plane but dies upon or before landing. Sam and Eric assume that the pilot is the Beast when they see him in the dark, causing mass panic. An expedition to investigate leads to Ralph, Jack, and Roger ascending the mountain, but they eventually run away from what they believe is the Beast. Jack denounces Ralph as a coward and calls for another election for chief but does not receive a single vote. He leaves the group to create a new tribe. Most of the older boys eventually leave Ralph's tribe to join Jack's tribe. Jack's becomes a tyrant on "Castle Rock" with his followers, whom Ralph thinks of as "the savages."

The new tribe hunts down and slaughters a pig, and Jack decides to host a feast. Before that, they sever the pig's head and place it on a stick as an "offering" to the Beast. Flies swarm around the head of the pig. Simon comes across it, only to have a hallucination. He hears the dead pig speaking to him and telling him to do things. Discovering that the "beast" is the dead pilot, he runs down from the mountain to break the news. However, when he arrives, it is raining terribly, and while the little ones are screaming and running around, the other boys, who were worked up in their war dance, mistake Simon for the beast and tear, bite, and claw him to death.

Ralph's tribe dwindles in number. Jack's larger, less civilized tribe, however, needs to steal from them to maintain their existence. They steal Piggy's glasses to light a fire. Piggy demands his glasses back but is killed by a boulder Roger launches at Ralph, which crushes him and the conch shell and sends him off a cliff. Jack's tribe captures Sam and Eric and force them to join their tribe. Jack tries and fails to kill Ralph, and the next day, his tribe tries to hunt him down. In doing this, they set a forest fire, which is seen by a passing naval vessel, and one of the ship's officers comes ashore in a boat and rescues Ralph and the boys. Ralph declares to the captain of the ship that it is he who is the leader of the children and for the first time on the island, Ralph cries. The marine officer turns his face away from Ralph and all the weeping children and stares at the horizon of the sea, where his naval vessel shines in grey and silver.

Allusions/references to other works

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The Coral Island

In 1857, R.M. Ballantyne wrote a book called The Coral Island. It portrayed three boys: Ralph, Peterkin and Jack (two of these names are transferred to Golding's book; Peterkin is altered to Simon, which is an allusion to the Bible "Simon called Peter") landing on an island, much like that in Lord of the Flies. They have great adventures, typical of much children's fiction written during the period of the British Empire. It was very successful.

Golding read The Coral Island as he was growing up, and thought of Ballantyne as racist, since the book teaches that evil is associated with black skin and is external. It is somewhat ironic then, that in Chapter 11 of Lord of the Flies, Piggy calls Jack's tribe "a pack of painted niggers." The term was not viewed as offensive in 1950s British society as it is today, being seen as a descriptive (rather than abusive) term for people of dark skin. (For instance, the word "nigger" played a prominent role in the 1954 British film The Dam Busters). In any case, the word was changed to "savages" in some editions and "Indians" in the mass media publication.

A number of references to The Coral Island are made in Lord of the Flies. To a certain extent, it can be said that Golding wrote this book as a response to The Coral Island, to show what boys would truly do if left alone on an island and to compare two different versions of boys' activities when left on their own. In Chapter 2, the boys speculate about what will happen, saying it will be "like in a book", mentioning "Treasure Island", "Swallows and Amazons" and "Coral Island". When the officer is on the island at the end he says "like the Coral Island".

Heart of Darkness and Pincher Martin

After Simon finishes talking with the Lord of the Flies, he imagines he is looking into a vast mouth. "There was blackness within, a blackness that spread… Simon was inside the mouth. He fell down and lost consciousness."

The mouth also seems to be a reference to Conrad's Heart of Darkness: "I saw (the dying Kurtz) open his mouth wide—it gave him a—voracious aspect, as though he wanted to swallow all the air, all the earth all the men before him".

E.L. Epstein wrote, in a critical note regarding the Lord of the Flies which appears at the end of certain editions, that this mouth "seems to represent a ravenous, unreasoning and eternally insatiable nature. This appears again in Golding's novel Pincher Martin, in which the development of the theme of Nature inimical to the conscious personality of man is developed in a stunning fashion."

Literary significance and criticism

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Many people have interpreted Lord of the Flies as a work on moral philosophy. The environment of the island, a paradise with food, water, and other natural resources, is a metaphor for the Garden of Eden. The first appearance of the beast (to a littlun in a nightmare) is in a form reminiscent of a serpent, which represents evil in the Book of Genesis. One of the major themes of the book, on the nature of evil, is brought to a head in a scene in which Simon converses with the head of the pig, which is known as the "Lord of the Flies" (a literal translation of the Hebrew name of Ba'alzevuv, or Beelzebub) which is a powerful demon in hell, sometimes believed to be the devil himself. The conversation held also points to Simon as the character representing religion and good will in the novel, which is reminiscent of the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. Some Christian readers allude the British Naval officers' rescue of the boys, as the second coming of Christ (Bible story in Revelation). However the Naval Officer can also be seen as the "beast from water" (feared previously by the boys), as he comes in a "trim cruiser" from conflict in the second world war. This reminds us of Golding's view that "darkness" is within all men's hearts. The "Lord of the Flies" reveals that evil and the terror of the beast is not an external threat, but an inborn evil within the boys themselves.

Others have looked at the novel as a work on political philosophy. The stranding of the boys, without any adult supervision, represents a clean slate upon which they have the power to build a small society without reference to any past authorities (past governments, religion, etc.). The abundance of resources for sustaining life sets the stage for a utopia, or a perfect society. The actions of the boys demonstrate the spectrum of governments, with Ralph and Piggy representing democratic ideals while Jack represents more authoritarian systems, such as an absolute monarchy.

File:LordoftheFlies1990.png
Lord of the Flies (1990) DVD cover

There have been two film adaptations.

Lord of the Flies in popular culture

Writers and film directors have also borrowed plot elements from Lord of the Flies. Robert A. Heinlein's Tunnel in the Sky, published in 1955, can be seen as a rebuttal to Lord of the Flies as it concerns a group of teenagers stranded on an alien world who do manage to create a functional tribal society. Stephen King has stated that the Castle Rock in Lord of the Flies was the inspiration for the town of the same name that has appeared in a number of his novels. The book itself also appears prominently in his novels Hearts in Atlantis and Cujo. King's fictional town in turn inspired the name of Rob Reiner's production company, Castle Rock Entertainment.

Lord of the Flies has also served a source of plot themes for subsequent films. For instance, according to film critic Benjamin Urrutia, the main sequence of Apocalypto – the lone hero being chased through the tropical jungle by fierce spear-wielding hunters, ending with an encounter on the beach by men from the outside world – mirrors the scene from the Lord of the Flies. In addition, a film adaptation of the book was one of the main inspirations for the reality TV show Survivor, according to host Jeff Probst.

Lord of the Flies is referenced several times (often jokingly) in the TV drama Lost which is also set on a deserted island where the characters feel they are constantly under the threat of turning wild.

Editions

  • ISBN 0-606-00196-4 (prebound, 1954)
  • ISBN 0-571-08483-4 (paperback, 1958)
  • ISBN 0-399-50148-7 (paperback, 1959)
  • ISBN 0-571-05686-5 (paperback - educational, 1962)
  • ISBN 0-571-06950-9 (hardcover, 1962)
  • ISBN 0-8072-3176-2 (audio cassette with paperback, 1977, unabridged)
  • ISBN 1-55651-525-1 (paperback, 1988)
  • ISBN 0-02-635121-8 (hardcover, 1990)
  • ISBN 0-571-16056-5 (paperback, 1996)
  • ISBN 1-57322-612-2 (paperback, 1997)
  • ISBN 1-56137-384-2 (hardcover, 1998)
  • ISBN 1-56137-383-4 (hardcover, 1999)
  • ISBN 0-7910-4777-6 (hardcover, 1999)
  • ISBN 0-7641-0821-2 (paperback, 1999)
  • ISBN 0-14-028333-1 (paperback, 1999)
  • ISBN 0-571-20053-2 (paperback, 1999)
  • ISBN 0-399-52901-2 (paperback, 2002)
  • ISBN 0-8072-0954-6 (audio cassette, 2002, unabridged)
  • ISBN 0-399-52920-9 (hardcover, 2003, Anniversary Edition)
  • ISBN 1-58663-355-4 (paperback, 2003)
  • ISBN 0-88411-695-6 (hardcover)
  • ISBN 0-8072-1364-0 (paperback)
  • ISBN 0-571-22767-8 (paperback, 2005)

References

  1. "The 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–2000". American Library Association. 2007. Retrieved 2007-03-27.
  2. "The Complete List: TIME Magazine – ALL-TIME 100 Novels". TIME. 2005. Retrieved 2007-05-12.
  3. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02388c.htm Catholic Encyclopedia entry on Beelzebub]
  4. Wagner, Thomas M. (2006). "Robert A. Heinlin: Tunnel in the Sky". SF Reviews.net. Retrieved 2007-03-27.
  5. "Stephen King (1947-)". Authors' Calendar. 2003. Retrieved 2007-03-27.
  6. Urrutia, Benjamin (2007). "Film Review: Charlotte's Web". The Peaceable Table. 4 (1). Retrieved 2007-03-27. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

External links

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