Lord of the Flies
William Golding (1954)
“Written by a man who spent WWII killing people and then went back to teaching boys — who was convinced he knew exactly what those boys were capable of.”
At a Glance
A group of British schoolboys are evacuated during a nuclear war and stranded on a tropical island with no adults. Ralph is elected leader and establishes democratic order; Jack forms a rival tribe of hunters. As fear of a 'beast' consumes them, civilized norms collapse one by one. Simon is murdered during a ritual dance. Piggy is killed when Roger drops a boulder on him. Ralph is hunted like an animal. A naval officer arrives just in time — and the boys, confronting adult eyes, begin to weep.
Read full summary →Why This Book Matters
Published in 1954 to modest initial reception — Faber and Faber accepted it after 21 rejections, and early reviews were mixed. By the 1960s it was a standard school text in Britain and America. It is now one of the most widely read novels in the English-speaking world, assigned in middle schools, high schools, and universities — which creates the interesting situation of a novel about the failure of institutional authority being required reading by institutions.
Diction Profile
Formal British public-school English deteriorating chapter by chapter into fragmented, primal, chant-driven language
High, but differently distributed than Fitzgerald. Golding uses nature imagery for moral states: the island's beauty is deceptive, its darkness is moral. Simon's scenes are the most figuratively dense