The Kids Are Totally Not Alright...

Lord of the Flies

by William Golding

p. 1954

When I mentioned my latest literary venture, several people remarked how shocking it was that I had not read William Golding’s quintessential young adult novel years ago, and I agree. It’s rather unbelievable that this book skirted by my required reading lists for so long, so I finally gave it a go, so as to dispel any incorrect notions I may have gathered about it over the years.

I would garner that few people are unaware of the basic premise of Lord of the Flies. Most people, myself among them, are aware that it centers on a group of boys stranded on an island who go a little... savage without adult supervision. However, I think there is a tendency to describe it as an adventure novel or a story of survival and at its heart that is just not what Lord of the Flies is about. Rather, it is a story of the loss of childhood innocence, the corruptibility of mankind, and the total breakdown of ethics in the absence of culture... and I would wager that it is actually inappropriate for most grade school children as reading material, despite focusing on a group of characters under the age of 13. Lord of the Flies may star kids, but it is not really about kids, per se.

Ralph is the protagonist of the book, one of the oldest kids on the island at twelve, but still the embodiment of childlike innocence at story’s start. I thought him a bit bratty at first, refusing to call portly, asthmatic ‘Piggy’ by his real name and allowing the cruel nickname to become the standard among the other boys (and even to the reader, to whom the bespectacled Piggy’s true name is never revealed). But watching Ralph struggle with the responsibilities that are bestowed upon him and the unchaperoned quick flight into adulthood that is forced on him makes his earlier faults disappear. Whoever the boys were before they landed on the uninhabited island, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is who they choose to be going forward, and if there’s one thing that Lord of the Flies teaches us, it’s that there is no going back.

I found Piggy and Simon much more interesting characters, but especially poor Simon. Whereas Piggy represented the logic and rationale of adulthood, it was little Simon alone who possessed a true understanding of their situation, even if he didn’t know it, first suggesting that the ‘beast’ they all feared and hunted was perhaps only themselves, and later prophesying that Ralph would make it off the island, subtly suggesting that he would not be there with him. Ironically, Simon, though he is the least ‘beastlike’ of the group and the only one who never gives in to his id, is ripped to shreds by the savage boys when he is mistaken for the beast. He is also the one who confronts the “lord of the flies” himself, a severed sow head that ‘talks’ to him, but if it can be surmised that this encounter was all in Simon’s head, then those insightful words came from the boy as well.

It’s easy to see why the other boys didn’t take to Piggy when he attempted to be heard. As a child, Piggy stands out in every way possible, and it’s easy to pick on those who are weaker and separate from the herd. As an adult reader, it was frustrating to watch Piggy and later Ralph display all the traits of a sensible adult determined to go home and be completely ignored by the mob. While it was frustrating though, Piggy and Simon's demises are not surprising, as they represent logic and innocence and those are some of the first things to go when society falls apart.

The more thought I give to Lord of the Flies, the more I respect it, and the more I am intrigued by it, but I can’t say I loved it or that it will have a place of honor among my collections, because while it is a curious allegory for humanity and societal breakdown (and occasionally religion, if Simon's Christlike qualities are to be acknowledged), it is altogether not a very positive outlook on humanity. I guess how you choose to read Lord of the Flies says more about the reader and their place on the optimist spectrum than it does about the way society really is. As I’d like to believe that people tend toward ‘good,’ I’d hate to imagine a group of boys descending into savagery like those on the island... but then, maybe that’s just my adherence to the existing society butting in. If all the constraints of society were removed and I had no other context to structure my life, perhaps even I might give in to ‘the beast.’

My only technical complaint about this book is that it was damn near impossible to determine who was talking at any given time, as not everyone in the book is named, dialogue isn’t consistently assigned to a speaker, and the boys generally tend towards chaos in their meetings anyhow. As I said before, I would not market this book towards grade-schoolers. Middle-schoolers might be able to comprehend it, and certainly high-schoolers, but readers below a certain age would, I feel, have a hard time coming to terms with the complex themes. It is an awfully dark and twisted story, after all. I could go on about the themes and wisdom behind this book, but I wouldn’t be saying anything an English teacher hasn’t said a million times over, so I’ll leave it there.