Lord of the Flies (1954)
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Lord of the Flies Review
Lord of the Flies is a 1954 allegorical novel written by William Golding. It’s a famous, respected book for many great reasons, especially thematically speaking.
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“We did everything adults would do.
What went wrong?“
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It follows a bunch of boys who, after a plane crash leaves all adults dead, are left to care for themselves on a distant, uninhabited island. They eventually organize themselves into civilized unions, but the war quickly erupts with a couple of sacrifices as a result. Yes, the book’s themes are the best aspect of it. It explores so well how humans, and even innocent children, revert to beastly, disorderly behavior when they’re isolated.
It showcases so truthfully the inherent darkness, lack of morals, sadism and violence that lurks beneath all of us and how humans are beasts within, but civilization has made all humans learn empathy, order and morals. I respected so much Golding’s stance on that uncomfortable to admit, but definitely truthful darkness in humans and thus how important civilization truly is to humanity.
However, Lord of the Flies is just a good and unfortunately rarely great novel despite its amazing, still relevant, timeless themes. That’s because the storytelling isn’t great. The film’s first and last third are absolutely phenomenal, but the second part left me bored as it’s obviously not great, at least to me.
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I loved the innocence of the first couple of chapters, how we met the boys and how they organized themselves. That was so well written. But the war at the end is very memorable and honestly horrible in a good way as it left me disturbed in some passages. The ending is particularly effective as the most memorable part of the novel with the adults arriving to rescue the boys just before Ralph is to be killed. And the irony of the man’s criticism of their savagery while coming on a war ship is priceless.
But those middle chapters are quite problematic as the whole beast motif is unsuccessful in my opinion and most of the action that happens there is unexciting and boring. Another problem the book has is the character development which is better than in most allegorical works obviously, but still very much lacking.
Ralph is fine, albeit overly heroic. Piggy is the highlight as the intellectual, calmer and clumsy type. He was the most relatable one to me personally. Sadistic Jack serves as a great villain and obviously Simon serves as a solid Christ-like figure. These are some solid characters, but still not enough is learned about them or their past owing to the book’s frustrating lack of flashbacks and they are mostly overly simplistic. The interactions between them are excellent, but individually they suffer.
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Lord of the Flies is solidly written with William Golding’s style of writing being very strong in both dialogue and descriptions. He is great at conveying immediacy, darkness and action, but even though his intention was to convey coldness, the book itself shouldn’t have been this cold as it thoroughly lacked heart and soul.
Some of the imagery is very memorable, the setting of the island is well utilized and the action is solid. I liked the dialogue quite a bit, but I also liked the motifs of the fire and especially the glasses of Piggy’s, though admittedly the conch itself was overused. The book is pretty short, but unfortunately the bad pacing prevented it from being constantly engaging.
In the end, Lord of the Flies is a major work when it comes to the themes of humans’ inherent darkness, violence and lack of order and morals when isolated. It’s also very well written with strong dialogue, a highly memorable ending and fine imagery. I just wish that the pacing was better and that the characterization was stronger.
