Why You Should Read Lord of the Flies
- deetyasasikumar
- 50 minutes ago
- 2 min read
Imagine if you were stranded on a deserted island with a group of children. Now think about the chaos that would begin to break loose as everyone realized there were no rules to stop them, and no adults around to bring order. Would the children get hurt? Who would save all of you? This is exactly the premise of William Golding's novel, Lord of the Flies. Whether you're here for a school assignment, or for your own enjoyment, I hope you learn about the importance of this literary classic!
The novel will always be contextualized by the world events surrounding its creation. It looks into the evil within humanity, even in the supposedly innocent, such as children. This is actually how author William Golding got the idea to write the novel, as he had started to lose faith in humanity after being a combatant in World War ll. He wanted to explore the roots of human nature and evil.
The novel opens up with a group of boys coming out of a plane that crashed, and, although we the readers don't know what happened, we can infer that it resulted from a war in the sky through snippets of dialogue. All of them are unknown to each other, except for a group of boys known as "the choir," led by their leader, Jack. They are on a seemingly utopian island, with beautiful shores and plenty of food.
Even though the island seems perfect to sustain life, there seems to be a veil of darkness and evil over everything. The use of darkness is used to illustrate a separation between peace and chaos. Other symbols include the Lord of the Flies, a pig's head on a spike, teeming with flies. It appears to be a monster to the child who comes across it, speaking to him in his hallucinations. The start, gore image is representative of violence and suffering, and it symbolizes the devil as well as the innately evil aspects of human nature. A symbol of peace and authority in the novel is a conch that is used to create order during meetings.
When no adults are around, and it's only kids, things tend to get out of hand. William Golding takes this one step further when the boys on the island begin to become increasingly violent and savage. They start to kill the animals around them and hurt each other. Their original plans of rescue and safety have been forgotten, and two factions begin to form. One for peace, and one for evil and chaos. Eventually, the savagery overtakes the whole group.
Lord of the Flies is a story everyone should read at least once because themes such as unity, chaos, and civility are universal and can be applied in any period of time. It also investigates the capability of true evil within anybody, no matter how kind or naive.
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