complete recording of a tedious novel

books:


	• Lord of the Flies (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century) William Golding Penguin (Non-Classics), 1999 - 192 pages average customer review:based on 1270 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The Nature of Us

One of the greatest novels ever written, Lord of the Flies brings into question the very nature of humanity itself. It brings in debate of some of history's most influential philosophers, Rosseau against Hobbes, concerning whether or not humanity is naturally good, or naturally evil. Golding's response and his analysis guarantees to shock the reader.

In a WWII backdrop, a group of British boys are stranded on an island after their plane crashes on a beautiful island. Realizing that they would be there for a long time, Ralph, one of the boys, takes charge and attempts to lead the boys during their stay on the island. The story deviates as three perspectives take center stage and rival for humanity's attention. Piggy, the dorky intellectual, is the sole boy trapped on the island that understands the necessities for survival. He is the civilization the boys once knew, and the one that Golding holds with pride. A complete foil of Piggy's ideologies is presented through Jack. Jack is aggressive, cruel, and hungry for power, as he will use any savagery necessary to rise to power. In the middle of this dilemma is the story's protagonist, Ralph. Ralph is torn between using Piggy's wisdom and the allure of Jack's savagery. Through the eyes of Ralph, Golding forces the reader to decide which world humanity is capable of living in.

The story is absolutely brilliant and promises to shock to the very last word. It is the perfect response to the total trash represented in the book's "inspiration," Coral Island. Lord of the Flies brought back the much needed realism of humanity and its behavior that hadn't been truthfully and meticulously analyzed since Mark Twain. The language is painfully blunt, the images are horrifying, and the ending will leave you questioning even more of what you thought of society.

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Great Literature

I also read this book in high school and saw the movie afterwards. I reread it recently since I remember enjoying it the first time. I was not disappointed this time either. The author spins an intriguing yarn about a group of boys deserted on an island during an supposed nuclear holocaust. It describes how many of the boys revert back to their `primal instincts' and take on savage characteristics, eventually hunting one of their on down and killing others. Well written if not disturbing look at how man can discard his humanity in the face of apparent catastrophe.

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complete recording of a tedious novel

Listening to this novel doesn't improve it. You get the added bonus track of Golding groaning on and on and on about how he got the inspiration for this overly simplistic morality tale. With so much good literature out in the world, if the house catches fire, leave this one behind. Sucks to my as-mar.

Descent into Maelstrom

// SPOILER BELOW //

Let's start from the end. The rescuing naval officer averts his gaze and gives the boys a few minutes to regroup their emotions and sense of becoming, their understanding in what it is they're doing, and what does he do? He "wait(s), allowing his eyes to rest on the trim cruiser in the distance." And that's the final sentence in the book. After all the madness that's taken place on the island we're left with a "trim" cruiser, a symbol of modern man, modern achievement and modern man's very propensity to conflict; we witness the complex machinery, that ship, used to deter and keep it in check. (for I see the ship as generally good) But how does that ship come about? Throughout the book the boys try to build better things, things like TVs and radios, futile endeavors on an island. The accomplishments to which they strive are inextricably connected with history, with accomplishments that have come before us, with a fire passed down generation to generation. We inherit, we do not continually reinvent the wheel.

But what if we had none of that? What if there were no streets beneath our feet and no maps delineating mankind's established purpose and order? -- Here begins Lord of the Flies.

Lord of the Flies is a fast paced narrative written with an exacting eye for detail and natural images. The book is filled with a rich symbolic system that does not distract but adds to the pleasure of the read. The characters are depicted vividly and uniquely. And the entire plot and progress of the book runs with a profound momentum that carries you along, barrels out of control and splinters into a multitude of meanings and interpretations and a grand sense of experience.

The book exists both on the level of character struggle - especially between Jack and Ralph - and on the level of a continuum of events that lead to situations that offer statements about our true or original nature. Effectively, Jack is subsumed by the island and its primitiveness. He paints his face to resemble another of its brutal and amoral powers. He draws others towards him, first with his charisma then with a more diabolical magnetism, where as Simoneneric say to Ralph as he pleads for their reason: "It's a tribe" and "Never mind what's sense. That's gone." Justice and truth has become ceremony and worship of the chief.

When the conch is smashed into a thousand pieces we ask, what is it that exactly has been lost? Something precious and past down through the ages, some force of light for man in the universe's surrounding darkness. Some point of cohesion among men. A reason, a simple reason for we as the human race. Then Ralph panics and runs through thickets and woods and eventually stumbles into a clearing and finds himself face to face with the Lord of the Flies, the bleached skull of a pig - white where before the conch had gleamed white; it's sick face deriding his attempts at escape, a cavity filled with a new amorality that fuels the primitive maw that swallows up these kids until, like Percival Wemys Madison, they forget even their provenances, even their names.

One further piece of symbolism. As the fire roars and the savages cry in their chase, it is "as though the forest itself were angry with him, a somber noise across which the ululations were scribbled excruciatingly as on slate." On slate? Are these boys creating a new schoolroom, one of fear and brutal reckonings? Developing a new rite of initiation, but something unmastered and unbequeathed, unlike any of the schoolrooms from which they were snatched.

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Criticism Project opens my eyes

I am currently in High School and I was forced to read Lord of the Flies. At first i wasn't impressed but as i progressed through the book i realized how complex and interesting it could be. Key word being could. My best friend read the book a week before i did, we have different teachers, and the only thing she got from the novel was a cute adventure story of boys trapped on an island who go crazy. I couldn't believe she didn't see the significance. I was most interested is Golding characters like Simon who has Epilipsy and is almost a mystical, godly, all knowing character. Ralph represents democracy while Jack represents communism or totaltaliarism. I love how the characters could be fit into Golding's time. My teacher assigned us to write a criticism research paper of Lord of the Flies. The more research i find the more i love Lord of the Flies.

If you haven't read the novel try to see the deeper meaning. And if you have, reread it because i bet you can discover something you missed.

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, page 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19

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