I’ve been getting my book on with William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. I remember being assigned the novel in high school, and I didn’t read it (in the same way I didn’t read anything assigned to me in high school). Every now and then I like to look back on the books I skipped out on, read them, and see what I missed from tenth grade. I did this with John Knowles’ A Separate Peace, and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five a c0uple of years ago. I was blown away by how good each novel was, and by how much I missed by ignoring them. High school wasn’t entirely devoid of greatness.
Enter Lord of the Flies. The novel is a classic, and for good reason. It falls in the same vein as Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, exploring the nature of humanity in dire circumstance. Golding’s use of symbolism and metaphor is fantastic. The voices of his characters are audible, and their fall from order into chaos is heartbreaking. What many of the characters become is haunting. However, what is more haunting is Golding’s message that all of man has the potential to become selfish, unreasonable, and ultimately bestial. Although many of the characters give in to savagery, Golding is quick to remind us that in the end they are fragile, broken, and human.
The novel is dark and frightening enough to keep the high schooler that hates reading entertained. Its full enough of truth to keep us older folks in awe. Give it a read.
-Ellis
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