Lord of the flies

Citation

Golding, William. Lord of the flies,

1959.

Annotation

Classic survival adventure novel by Nobel prize winner William Golding about a group of British school boys, who, after a plane crash create a tribal society on a remote Pacific island. Two of the surviving boys, Ralph and a boy nicknamed piggy find a conch shell and use it as a horn to summon the other survivors. This densely layered survival adventure tale is a parable or allegory or a myth that probes superficially the nature and origin of evil. It seems people in a state of nature quickly revert to the dark side. Even in the so called civilized state, people mask their evil beneath a veneer of order. While the boys on the island are sinking into anarchy and bloodlust, their civilised parents and teachers are waging nuclear war in the skies overhead.

The main symbol, the a rotting pigs head on a stick with flies buzzing around becomes known to the boys as the Lord of the Flies, a false god, a beast.

It becomes a symbol of anarchy and bloodlust in the very core of human nature. There is a bit of a glimmer of intelligence and reason with Ralph and the conch shell and Piggy and his glasses, and yet the power of evil overwhelms any opposition.

This tale of a group of British public school boys begins with their instilled sense of honor and civil behaviour, particularly Jack the choir leader, who then later becomes one the most barbaric of them all, turns into a bloodlust anarchist, tribalism, survival adventure.

Ralph and Piggy

I can’t help noticing the close resemblance to. Bloodlust : The unsavoury tale of Alexander Pearce, the convict cannibal, by Nick Bleszynski. 

Only this is the Adults’ bloodlust version. ‘Each involves a journey by representatives of one of the supposedly most civilised nations of the world into a darkness that lies at the very core of the human self.’