Lord of the Flies~ William Golding

Lord of the Flies by William Golding is one of those books which I’ve been meaning to read forever and just haven’t. So to combat that, I added it to my list of required reading and acquired this slightly horrific looking copy from a nearby flea market.

I honestly thought I knew what the story of Lord of the Flies was until I started reading it, whilst the main premise was not different to what I thought, the way it plays out was slightly different.

I spent half the time reading this book thinking how they might have done things differently and questioning how things could get as they did. The stranded boys try to become their own tribe. They have all the pieces to thrive on the island, maybe not completely successfully, but enough to get them through to be rescued, however, unlike in The Maze Runner by James Dashner, they do not manage to create a working community. This was one of the things that annoyed me because they had the leader, the brain and the hunter and (in my mind) that would logically require a council-type leadership. Instead, it becomes a pissing contest rather than about surviving.

Farther into the book, the marooned boys split into two groups and the one led by the hunter, Jack, seemed to me, to have some sort of mob mentality. Their hunting game ends in the murder of another one of the boys and I question whether we could attribute this to mob mentality or the stupidity of pre-teen boys. I just would’ve thought that there were enough voices chiming up about the wrongness of the game for all of them to still be behind their leader. But I am in no way learned on the subject of mob mentality.

I did spend half this book confusing the boys that were not the core group, which I think I would’ve done had I been on that island too. Another thing I kept doing was picking apart the metaphors and themes of the book as if I was reading for an English class.

Overall, I thought the island description was beautiful and that despite me finding them nameless, the boys were individuals. The plot was slightly horrific and just a little bit stupid. I give Lord of the Flies by William Golding three stars. If I hadn’t spent most of my time reading picking apart the decisions of the characters, I think I would’ve enjoyed it a lot more

C🌙