While Nobel laureate William Golding wrote several other novels in his life, including the Booker-Prize winning novel Rites of Passage in 1980, it is surely on the strength of his 1954 debut novel Lord of the Flies that his reputation chiefly rests. Although reviews were generally positive when the novel came out, it struggled to sell out its original printing of 3000 copies. But no less a reviewer than E.M. Forster chose Lord of the Flies as “outstanding novel of the year,” and the fact that the novel’s characters were all adolescent boys made it a potentially appealing YA text, and it began to be assigned in schools. In the U.S., it would have been virtually impossible to graduate from high school in the late 50’s 60s, or 70’s without having been required somewhere along the line to read Lord of the Flies, and it continues to fascinate readers to this day, so that by 2015 Golding’s debut novel had sold ten million copies worldwide, and Golding was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983.
Lord of the Flies has since been ranked as number 41 on the Modern Library’s list of the greatest novels of the 20thcentury, and appears as well on Time’s list of the 100 greatest novels in English since 1923, and The Guardian’s list of the 100 bet novels in English. It appears, as well, on The Observer’s list of the 100 greatest novels of all time, in any language. It came in at number 93 on the BBC list of the “100 Greatest British Novels,” and in 2008, the London Timesranked William Golding third on its list of the “50 Greatest British Writers” since World War II. For me, Lord of the Fliescomes in at number 39 (alphabetically) on my own list of the “100 Most Lovable Novels in the English Language.”
The novel is set in the near future, during what the text hints is a nuclear war. The plot, as most of you will recall, involves a group of boys from an unnamed British public school who, en route by air to a place of safety, are victims of a plane crash that has killed all the adults on their plane and left them stranded on a remote and uninhabited island. The inspiration for the story came from a young adult adventure novel called The Coral Island, which was popular in Golding’s youth. It was a Robinson Crusoe-esque story by the Scotsman R.M. Ballantyne first published in 1857, in which three boys are shipwrecked on a remote island, where they deal with hardships and evil but emerge victorious, it is implied, because of the civilizing effects of Christianity and British colonialism. Golding considered the book completely unrealistic, and, having been a teacher himself, asked his wife if perhaps he shouldn’t write a novel about how a group of tween-age boys would really act in such a situation. And so he did.
Lord of the Flies is a complete reductio ad absurdum of the themes of The Coral Island, while at the same time building on the Cold War neuroses that plagued readers’ minds in the early 1950s. Golding, who’d been a lieutenant in the Royal Navy in the Second World War, knew war at first hand, having commanded a landing craft on D-Day. When the war ended, he returned to a nation living under the new threat of nuclear annihilation, and he had little faith in the innate goodness of the human race. He set out to debunk such notions.
The novel opens with Ralph, a fair-haired and somewhat charismatic boy, meeting up with Piggy, a fat boy with glasses, and as they wonder whether many others have survived the plane crash, they find a large conch shell. Ralph blows into the conch and all the surviving boys respond to the sound and come to a meeting. Ralph, a natural leader, is elected chief of the boys, and immediately establishes some guidelines for the community. The conch shell becomes the symbol of authority, and at meetings whoever holds the conch is to have the floor and be listened to. Ralph pronounces the first order of business to be the building of shelters. Most importantly, a fire must be lit and kept lit as a signal to any passing ships in order to effect the boys’ rescue.
Ralph begins as a popular leader and is supported strongly by Piggy, who as the intellectual of the group is of course belittled by most of the others. It is his glasses, however, that are needed to start the signal fire. Another staunch supporter of Ralph is Simon, a spiritual, even mystical, boy who tends toward introversion and often goes into the woods alone. Ralph’s chief rival is the red-haired boy Jack, who as leader of the group that had been the boys’ choir feels that he should have been made leader. He proposes to lead his choirboys in the task of providing meat for the boys to eat, and forms a group of hunters.
After this promising start, suggesting that even without the oversight of adults, boys well-trained at a British boys’ school will, in the trying circumstances of life on a deserted island, create an ordered society—like The Coral Island all over again. But Golding had seen war and knew the barbarity to which men could descend: this was a war in which Jews and others were victims of an attempted genocide, and he was aware of the universal fear of nuclear holocaust in the post-war world (he knew just two atomic bombs dropped on Japan at the end of the war had annihilated more than 100,000 souls). He had no real faith in the innate goodness of human nature. And before long the society of the island begins to break down. The boys begin to forget or ignore the rules that have been set up to keep order. As Jack becomes more popular, and talks many boys into hunting the island’s wild pigs, even boys who had been assigned to watch the fire are charmed away by the prospect of killing animals. When the fire goes out, failing to attract the attention of a passing ship, Ralph chastises Jack and considers quitting as chief, though Piggy talks him out of it.
Despite the arguments of Ralph and Piggy, a general paranoia runs through the boys concerning an imaginary Beast they believe is on the island. After Jack and his hunters kill a particularly large boar, they impale its head on a stick and leave it in the forest as a gift to appease the Beast. When Simon comes across the head, it is swarming with flies—Golding refers to it as the “Lord of the Flies, ”a literal translation of the Biblical “Beelzebub,” the name of the devil. Simon, who may be having an epileptic seizure, hallucinates that the head is speaking to him:
Simon’s head was tilted slightly up. His eyes could not break away and the Lord of the Flies hung in space before him.
“What are you doing out here all alone? Aren’t you afraid of me?” Simon shook.
“There isn’t anyone to help you. Only me. And I’m the Beast.” Simon’s mouth labored, brought forth audible words.
“Pig’s head on a stick.”
“Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill!” said the head. For a moment or two the forest and all the other dimly appreciated places echoed with the parody of laughter. “You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you? Close, close, close! I’m the reason why it’s no go? Why things are what they are?”
The laughter shivered again.
…
Simon found he was looking into a vast mouth. There was blackness within, a blackness that spread…. Simon was inside the mouth. He fell down and lost consciousness.
The Beast, the Devil, the Lord of the Flies, as this passage makes clear, is not something exterior to human beings. “I’m a part of you,” says the repulsive head. The Beast is inborn in human nature. And it isn’t simply present in boys lacking adult supervision. The setting of the novel—a war in which each side will use everything in their power to annihilate the other—makes it clear that the Beast is there among the adults as well, under the most convincingly civilized veneer. The novel also deals with idea of leadership: Ralph embodying a leader solely devoted to the welfare of those he leads; and Jack the kind of leader, still easily recognized in our own day, only interested in power—he plays on popular fears to get power, and uses violence and force to keep power.
Though I’m fairly certain most of you have read this novel, I won’t spoil the ending if you are the one who hasn’t. If you are a writer, it may be satisfying for you to learn that Golding’s book was rejected by numerous publishers before finally being accepted by Faber and Faber. The book was “absurd” one editor said. It was “rubbish and dull.” Even after it was accepted, the book went through a major revision insisted on by the publisher. Among other things, Golding had to jettison the entire first section of the book, which described the evacuation of the boys because of the war. And the title—originally “Strangers from Within,” was revised to Lord of the Flies. Most readers would probably disagree with the “absurd,” “rubbish,” and “dull” assessment, but more likely would admit that the revised novel is far stronger than the earlier draft.
There are two English film versions of the novel: one directed by Peter Brook from 1963, and one by Harry Hook from 1990. lt is generally conceded that the 1963 version is more faithful to Golding’s novel. But don’t just watch the movie. Be sure you read the novel first. I recently went back to the book and read it for the first time since high school, more than half a century ago, and for me the book still holds up, and is as powerful—and relevant—today as it was then. I encourage you to do the same.