Lord of the Flies

Rating

5/10 I didn’t enjoy this book. I suppose it is because I had my expectations too high. The foreword by the legend Stephen King primes you for the best book of your life… instead you get an okay story that’s maybe 33% description and only 66% actual plot. I had to push myself to even finish it; but the second half provided more action so if you get beyond page 100 the rest of the book will be more engaging.

The book is written from the perspective of a 12 year old boy and a lot of emphasis is put on the underdeveloped nature of his brain, how easily he gets distracted, and how hard it is to keep a coherent, adult-like train of thought. Although I understood the intention, it made the reading feel scattered and unengaging; especially the first part where the meat of the story is only hinted at.

Then there’s the status of this book. It’s considered a classic because of the daring juxtaposition to other similar stories and general portrayal of young boys in literature. This again is true, the climax of the story is very different in this regard, but because I started reading this with an expectation of the inevitable, my thrill was diminished. Maybe if I have read it without any priming, I would have enjoyed and rated the book more favorably.

Synopsis

A bunch of little English boys get stranded alone on a deserted island. At first they collaborate and devise a plan to get rescued by building a fire and shelter. But as time progresses they begin to argue and their group falls apart. A small subgroup of boys turns into savages who just want to have fun and hunt pigs. In their fun n’ games all hell breaks loose and their fooling around ends in killings of two boys. As they are hunting a third boy to kill him a navy ship arrives and rescues them out of their savagery.

Notes

• the general idea is that by nature boys are savages who are able to go as far as killing each other in the name of fun & games
  • it’s an interesting question: are we by nature social and innocent or tribal and savage? The book makes a claim we are the latter, but not in the name of survival, rather in the name of fun and carelessness; I found this a weird reason for our supposed underlying savagery