David's Reviews > Lord of the Flies
Lord of the Flies
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I just don't buy it.
This book is famous for unmasking what brutes we are, just under the surface, but, well, for all the hype, it just isn't convincing. People--even teenage boys--just aren't as savage as Golding seems to want us to believe, and nothing in this book persuades me otherwise.
Perhaps if I'd gone to English boarding school I'd feel differently--but then that's the real irony of this book, that the brutality from which the British Empire was supposed to save so many people and cultures was in fact the Brits projecting their own savagery onto others.
But the rest of us, no, we aren't monsters underneath. A little messed up, maybe, a little more raw, but nowhere near the kind of brutes that Golding wants us to believe.
This book is famous for unmasking what brutes we are, just under the surface, but, well, for all the hype, it just isn't convincing. People--even teenage boys--just aren't as savage as Golding seems to want us to believe, and nothing in this book persuades me otherwise.
Perhaps if I'd gone to English boarding school I'd feel differently--but then that's the real irony of this book, that the brutality from which the British Empire was supposed to save so many people and cultures was in fact the Brits projecting their own savagery onto others.
But the rest of us, no, we aren't monsters underneath. A little messed up, maybe, a little more raw, but nowhere near the kind of brutes that Golding wants us to believe.
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January 1, 1983
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July 24, 2007
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Oct 25, 2009 02:53AM

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Archon wrote: ""But the rest of us, no, we aren't monsters underneath."
"

The phenomenon does seem to be age-related - generally speaking, the kids who were monsters at 13 turned out reasonably well-adjusted by 17 (the same wasn't necessarily true for their victims, unfortunately). Golding's portrayal seems entirely accurate for the age group in the story. Whether it should be taken as allegorical for human nature generally is, as you suggest, debatable.



Now, I'm not saying that something like the events of Lord of the Flies _couldn't_ happen. But Golding really doesn't make it convincing. You see children descend into horrendous brutality, but you don't see any of the thought processes that make it happen--except for a bizarre excursion into idolatry that is only marginally more convincing than the violence.

A novel that is able to strike up debates about human traits and characteristics is something that should be praised; whether or not you agree with the views put across in the novel? I just think, by giving it 1 star, you are letting your contrasting views to Golding's cloud you better judgement.
It's a wonderful book, and it sure made me and a lot of other think about human nature, and I really do think we all have a bit of Jack and Ralph in us. We are all capable of great evil and great good.

Unfortunately, my experience on 欧宝娱乐 seems to indicate (albeit with limited data) that this sort of long discussion arises primarily from one-star reviews.
Of course, the discussion wouldn't happen if there weren't people who also loved this book. But still, the fact that someone else likes a book doesn't necessarily make it good or mean that I should review it more favorably. I'm sure if you looked, you could find similar discussions surrounding Twilight or The Da Vinci Code, neither of which I am interested in taking the time to read.
Taking this line of reasoning to its extreme, books like Mein Kampf and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion have led not only to debate but to war and mass murder. But the controversy doesn't make them good. From what I've read about it, The Protocols was cheesy, derivative, and largely plagiarized. But it spoke to what people wanted to think, and it inflamed their existing prejudices.
Still, I appreciate your taking a reasoned tack in this discussion, and I'm glad you found some insight, even if it was from a book I didn't care for. Thank you for raising the level of this discussion.

However, I see what you mean. Controversy doesn't always = good.

It's been my impression that the reviews on 欧宝娱乐 are supposed to be subjective. I mean, every review is subjective to some degree, but when I read the instructions (a few years back, now) I gathered that the ratings were supposed to be how much I liked the book, rather than how important I thought it was.
Appreciating that a book is well written, even if you don't like it--that's an interesting can of worms. I try to be cautious about describing a book as objectively good or bad, but I know what it's like to be impressed by the craftsmanship on something I don't personally care for.

On the other hand. You're right, I guess we should rate a book on how much we enjoy it, not on how well it's crafted.
No book is objectively good or bad. However, you can tell when a book is well written or well thought out. I guess that's something that should be praised.

Try being a child trapped on a desert island. only when you have done that are you qualified to say this.


Try being a child trapped on a desert island. only when you have done that are you qualified to say this."
Kenyon--unless you've been trapped on an island yourself, then you're no more qualified than I am to discuss this.

Oh just watch the news, trust me, it will persuade you.

From what I've read, even the reports of looting after Hurricane Katrina were largely cases of individuals or small groups being vilified for trying to access food and drinkable water.
Since writing this review, I've heard one account that Golding wasn't so much commenting on society as a whole as he was responding to other books of the Swiss Family Robinson type, which show people acting together in a crisis. Apparently, Golding, a schoolteacher, thought, "That's not how my kids would behave." Which, I suppose, would make Lord of the Flies a spectacularly unfunny parody.
If that is the case, then, well, I really can't speak for the kids in the class that William Golding taught. I think it's plausible that events like the ones in this book might happen in one case out of twenty, or one out of a hundred. But still, every commentary on the book seems to talk about how it unmasks the monsters we are underneath, and I don't buy it. And nothing anyone has said here has convinced me otherwise.
With regard to David's last comment, I think being trapped on an island with a shed load of other boys is pretty extreme.
If you leave boys alone in a room without anything to do for a few hours they become monstrous. I can't imagine how the boys I work with would react if left alone on an island faced with real responsibilities such as finding food and making fires etc.
However, this book is fiction. It was scary and desperate and I loved it.
If you leave boys alone in a room without anything to do for a few hours they become monstrous. I can't imagine how the boys I work with would react if left alone on an island faced with real responsibilities such as finding food and making fires etc.
However, this book is fiction. It was scary and desperate and I loved it.



That whole theory is so easily refuted yet taught in School as somehow being science, it's utterly ridiculous.



Anyway, I think that civilisation is about benefiting people in terms of the bigger picture. I do suspect that people are essentially selfish but unselfishness, morals, law and order can benefit you and your loved ones in the longer term, so I think that's what civilisation is about.. so I don't think Golding is even necessarily wrong if he does indeed think that people are monsters deep down. I guess it's just a disagreement here. :)




The symbol of "The Dance" is one of the darkest and most twisted allusions to the novel, and I like to associate it with a lot of modern-day applications.
Also, I love how Ralph and Piggy, the voices of reason up until this point, lose all sense in their divulgence of The Dance. They, who have exemplified persistent and constant adversity to Jack's counterpart regime, take part in the dance and lose their morality in the false bliss that Jack's Dance generates.
Lastly, I idolize this scene a lot because it represents a LOT of different concepts that are applicable in the situation. i.e. The Great Unknown, L'appel Du Vide, Freudian Psychoanalysis of the Human Psyche, The Third Wave, Conformity and Authoritarianism, and of course, the core Element Of Surprise.
Honestly I just really like this book, because of how much of an unchangeable precedent it is in the subject of both psychology and literature.


And it's not like Ralph is some god-like creature; He teases Piggy for being fat and at first gets along with Jack. It's only later he becomes more sensible.

That..."
People like to stick together. Jack's tribe is still a society, just a screwed up one. I think the people how formed "society" as you mean were adults and beyond teasing people for being fat, throwing stones at little kids, and deciding that they're better than everyone else because they can sing a high C sharp.


The idea was for the characters to be stereotypical to emphasise the different parts of the human psyche and different parts of society; Ralph the law-and-order man, Piggy the scientific and innovating one, Jack the ordered and power-hungry evil and Roger the disordered bloodthirsty savage, or in Freudian terms, for Piggy to be the super ego, Jack the id, and Ralph the ego. And when was Piggy insecure? He was simply annoyed at the fact that he couldn't get them to listen to him, as the voice of reason, and that Ralph told them his nickname. Throughout the rest of the book we never find out his real name - he is only referred to by his size.

Golding would disagree. His experience comes from the war, where perfectly reasonable and caring men and women would become cruel and unforgiving, including he himself, when he had to make several tough decisions. You must think you're a good person; after all, you couldn't do anything otherwise. All the people in Germany in WW2 who killed countless innocents? They thought they were good people too. They were moved by a fear for the survival for them and those they loved, along with a large amount of misinformation. The boys are no different, and Jack exploits that fear of the beast to control them and make them cruel, by making it almost a religion, and proclaiming knowledge of the beast to legitimise his (direct and indirect) actions. Of course Jack is badder than the rest of them, but we can see that all the other boys also do terrible things encouraged by him and his breaking of the rules and testing of the boundaries, all under the name of hunting and killing the beast.

That..."
Society was formed by the mutual advantages and chances for survival it presented man with. As they say, two heads are better than one. The lust for survival is still there, however, now man hides that under a mask of friendship, because, after all, the more friends you have, the more favours you get. Everything man does can be traced to some sort of advantage to his survival.

He wasn't discussing it, he was just pointing out that you can't be sure that your point is true.

Jack wielded overreaching authority, and authority was never absent. Ralph was chief from the get-go, and the conch was a symbol of authority. And the Stanford Prison evil was caused by the lack of any moral restraint, and the seeming social acceptability of their actions.

Golding was commenting on society as a whole, and also believed that that's what his kids would do.

"
This page concerns itself entirely with situations in which people still had hope. In the aftermath of the earthquake, people knew they would be rescued. In the Blitz, the propaganda lifted the spirits of the people. In Lord of the Flies, the boys get more an more savage as time goes on and they lose all hope of rescue. Ralph finds it harder and harder to remember why they're keeping a fire going, and eventually loses the ability to make eloquent speeches to lift the spirits of the others. Jack and his hunters eventually only want fire to cook. After they kill their first pig, the hunters seem to forget that rescue is more important than food, and think Ralph should apologise for getting worked up about it.

The phenomenon does seem to be age-related - generally speaking, the kids who were monsters at 13 turned out reasonably well-adjusted by 17 (the same wasn't necessarily true for their victims, unfortunately). Golding's portrayal seems entirely accurate for the age group in the story. Whether it should be taken as allegorical for human nature generally is, as you suggest, debatable.
"
That's slightly generalising, isn't it? I'm sorry about those horrific sounding experiences you had, but I'm pretty sure that 11 to 14 year-old boys are not all monsters. Some may be, but people generally believe that they are doing the right thing. Any adult could be the same, if it was safe enough to be.

Thats one of the problems I think. If you look at psychology, there are stages of moral development as well ..."
The only reason he used boys was because of the other young-british-boys-go-on-a-dashing-adventure island stories. Golding based the book on his experiences in the war of what adults did to each other, so his point is still valid. Look at things like ISIS. These people are doing horrifying things, because they believe it is the right thing to do. Ask yourself, are their morals any less developed than yours?



Now for the claim that you 'just don't buy it'. What aren't you willing to concede if you yourself gave a perfect example of how people can be brutish in the way that Golding has portrayed? The expansion of the British Empire was a great way of comparing the savagery of Jack and his group.
And if you want further proof that people can be as cruel as the dictatorship of wild (psychologically malleable) children then --and I'm sorry for being so extreme -- look at Hitler and the atrocious things he and his followers did. Just as Hitler brought about a fear of Jews, so to did Jack cultivate a fear: a fear of the Beast.
I think it can be said that humans are more than capable of going mad and allowing deaths to be justified.

If I remember right, it was less than a day and automatically that one kid was like, "I have to hunt a pig, I have to hunt a pig." I just don't see it happening that fast in such a situation especially with six year old kids



