Lord of the Flies

Lord of the Flies is another of those books that everyone else seems to have read at school. It is an extraordinarily powerful book, and I find it slightly depressing to have spent a whole academic year studying As You Like It, and to have studied Silas Marner TWICE...when we could have been reading Lord of the Flies. Ah well - I suppose I get to read it now with full enjoyment, rather than having to pick apart the symbolism in the pig's head on a stick, or the significance of the face paint!

A word of warning - as everyone apart from me seems to have read LOTF, I will be giving away some of the events and ending, so if you haven't read it and might, look away now.

The power of LOTF, I think, lies in the portrayal of the transition from an orderly "British" society to a savage society with its own set of rules and behaviours. When the group finds themselves stranded on the island, they initially attempt to create a culture which mirrors that they have seen at home - what would an adult do if they were here? Intentions are good - we will build shelters, keep a fire going, and one group will find food for the rest. However, intentions are not strong enough to keep the boys from doing, basically, whatever they like - the battle around the fire becomes a central theme of the book, and acts as a symbol of the decline of authority and ordered society.

I was really affected by the examination of tribal behaviour in this novel. There is evidence of it at the start, in that many of the boys in Jack's choir/hunting troupe never exist as individuals with names, but just as a group of boys in black caps, and the "littluns" are never numbered and named. As Jack develops into a more bloodthirsty character, and eventually achieves his first kill for food, he demonstrates that he has the power in this environment, where the ability to provide food has become more important than the ability to think, keep order, and address practicalities. Two separate "camps" emerge - boys are initially tempted across to Jack by the promise of meat and then, following the tribal dance where Simon is identified as the beast and beaten to death, Jack's leadership in violence and ruthlessness makes fear the deciding factor.

Although all of the hunting tribe are involved in the two murders, the nameless/faceless nature of most of them means that the sense of blame is attributed mainly to Jack and Roger, and this very much conflicts with the sense of personal responsibility for ones actions that is a core element of our society. Can the hunters be blamed for their actions? Of course - but when the mask of the facepaint has been applied, and darkness has fallen, the boys no longer operate as individual humans but as a pack of animals, and there is no sense of individual choice there at all.

Piggy is very much an anomaly in this society. His choice of name is significant, given that the only animals on the island which provide sustenance are pigs; as a reasoning voice who is physically unsuited to a life in the wilderness, Piggy is always doomed. He is gradually reduced to, symbolically, an animal to be hunted - severely short-sighted, first one lens of his spectacles is smashed and then the hunters make a midnight raid to steal them in order to light their fire. Piggy is then blind, unable to function - an animal, meaning that Roger is able to roll the rock down the mountain, giving Piggy no chance of escape. Piggy's death represents the final loss of reason, and from this moment Ralph becomes a hunted animal. Crazed by the idea that he needs to remove Ralph (in order to remove the accusation of wrongdoing?), Jack is determined to hunt Ralph down and the island is pretty much destroyed in doing so. Had this battle been followed to its conclusion, Ralph may have been hunted down and killed, but the tribe would also have destroyed their livelihood - the fruit trees and pig habitats were burning as Ralph emerged from the forest and found himself at the feet of a naval officer.

The irony, of course, is that it is Jack's attempt to burn Ralph out of the woods that has created a fire large enough for a ship to see. Suddenly, in front of an adult, they are small boys again, and the battle becomes a game, rather than a matter of life and death. The story ends here, with rescue in sight, leaving open all sorts of questions - how will they reintegrate into British society? Will Jack become a "normal" boy again? Will they ever be punished for the murders of two of their group (not to mention the disappearance of a littlun at the very beginning)?

Golding's pace of writing changes through the novel, changing from a "jolly japes on an island" tone to become ever more urgent, darker, and threatening. I'm sure I haven't written anything here that hasn't been said before - it has a great power to invoke feelings, sensations and moral musings. Spectacular book!