Lord of the Flies is a 1954 novel by Nobel Prize-winning British author William Golding. The book focuses on a group of British boys stranded on an uninhabited island and their disastrous attempt to govern themselves. Themes include the tension between groupthink and individuality, between rational and emotional reactions, and between morality and immorality.
About Lord of the Flies in brief
Lord of the Flies is a 1954 novel by Nobel Prize-winning British author William Golding. The book focuses on a group of British boys stranded on an uninhabited island and their disastrous attempt to govern themselves. Themes include the tension between groupthink and individuality, between rational and emotional reactions, and between morality and immorality. The novel has been adapted to film twice in English, in 1963 by Peter Brook and 1990 by Harry Hook, and once in Filipino by Lupita A. Concio. It was named in the Modern Library 100 Best Novels, reaching number 41 on the editor’s list, and 25 on the reader’s list. In 2003 it was listed at number 70 on the BBC’s The Big Read poll, and in 2005 Time magazine named it as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005. A 2016 UK poll saw Lord of the flies ranked third in the nation’s favourite books from school. It has been described as a counterpoint to R. M. Ballantyne’s youth novel The Coral Island, and included specific references to it, such as the rescuing naval officer’s description of the boys’ initial attempts at civilised cooperation as \”a jolly good show, like the Coral Island\”. The book portrays their descent into savagery; left to themselves on a paradisiacal island, far from modern civilization, the well-educated boys regress to a primitive state. Some of the marooned characters are ordinary students, while others arrive as a musical choir under an established leader.
The boys establish a form of democracy by declaring that whoever holds the conch shall also be able to speak at their formal gatherings and receive the attentive silence of the larger group. Ralph, Jack, and a quiet, dreamy boy named Simon soon form a loose triumvirate of leaders with Ralph as the ultimate authority. Ralph is optimistic, believing that grownups will come to rescue them but Piggy realises the need to organise. Because Ralph appears responsible for bringing all the survivors together, he immediately commands some authority over the other boys and is quickly elected their chief. Although he is quickly outcast by his fellow boys, Piggy is quickly made into an outcast and becomes the butt of jokes. The central paranoia refers to a supposed monster they call the ‘beast’, which they all slowly begin to believe exists on the island, but Ralph insists that no such beast exists. Jack organises his choir into a hunting party responsible for discovering a food source. The three determine that it has fruit and wild pigs for food, The boys also use Piggy’s glasses to create a fire. Although they give little aid in building shelters, they begin to develop paranoias about the island and begin to spend their time having fun and develop their own sense of self-preservation. Ralph has started a power struggle with Jack, who started a struggle with Ralph, who gains a power over him.
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This page is based on the article Lord of the Flies published in Wikipedia (as of Jan. 04, 2021) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
