Name: Why should you read “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding? - Jill Dash
Uploaded: 2019-12-19T03:06:29.000Z
Duration: 4 min 48 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

William Golding was losing  his faith in humanity.

Serving aboard a British destroyer  in World War II,

the philosophy teacher turned Royal  Navy lieutenant was constantly confronted

And when he returned to England to  find Cold War superpowers

threatening one another with  nuclear annihilation,

he was forced to interrogate the  very roots of human nature.

These musings on the inevitability  of violence

would inspire his first and most  famous novel: "Lord of the Flies."

It takes its title from Beelzebub, a demon associated with pride and war—

two themes very much at the  heart of Golding's book.

The novel was a bleak satire of a classic  island adventure story,

a popular genre where young boys  get shipwrecked in exotic locations.

The protagonists in these stories  are able to master nature

while evading the dangers posed  by their new environments.

The genre also endorsed the  problematic colonialist narrative

in which the boys teach the island's  native inhabitants

Golding's satire even goes so far  as to explicitly use the setting

and character names from R.M.  Ballantyne's "Coral Island"—

one of the most beloved island  adventure novels.

But while Ballantyne's book  promised readers

"pleasure... profit... and unbounded  amusement,”

"Lord of the Flies" opens with the  boys already on the island,

but snippets of conversation hint  at their terrifying journey—

their plane had been shot down in  the midst of an unspecified nuclear war.

The boys, ranging in age from 6 to 13,  are strangers to each other.

All except for a choir, clad in black  uniforms and led by a boy named Jack.

the boy's new home appears  to be a paradise—

with fresh water, shelter,  and abundant food sources.

a macabre darkness hangs over  this seemingly tranquil situation.

The boys' shadows are compared  to “black, bat-like creatures”

“something dark... fumbling along”  the beach.

the boys are already trading terrifying  rumors of a vicious “beastie”

Golding's narrative reveals how  quickly cooperation unravels

without the presence of  an adult authority.

Initially, the survivors try to  establish some sense of order.

A boy named Ralph blows into a conch  shell to assemble the group,

But as Jack vies for  leadership with Ralph,

the group splinters and the boys  submit to their darker urges.

The mob of children soon forgets  their plans for rescue,

and blindly follows Jack to the edge  of the island, and the edge of sanity.

The novel's universal themes of  morality, civility, and society

satirizing both conventions of its  time and long held beliefs about humanity.

While island adventure stories  often support colonialism,

"Lord of the Flies" turns this  trope on its head.

Rather than cruelly casting native  populations as stereotypical savages,

Golding transforms his angelic British  schoolboys into savage caricatures.

And as the boys fight their  own battle on the island,

the far more destructive war that  brought them there continues off the page.

Even if the boys were to be rescued  from themselves,

what kind of world would  they be returning to?

With so few references to anchor the  characters in a specific place or period,

an examination of human nature  at its most bare.

And though not all readers may  agree with Golding's grim view,

to challenge even the most  determined optimist.