Lord of the Flies

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For the 1963 film adaptation, see Lord of the Flies (1963 film). For the 1990 film adaptation, see Lord of
the Flies (1990 film). For other uses, see Lord of the Flies (disambiguation).

Lord of the Flies

The original UK Lord of the Flies book cover

Author William Golding

Cover artist Anthony Gross[1]

CountryUnited Kingdom

Genre Allegorical novel

Publisher Faber and Faber

Publication date 17 September 1954

Pages 224[2]

ISBN 0-571-05686-5 (first edition, paperback)

OCLC 47677622

Lord of the Flies is a 1954 novel by the Nobel laureate British author William Golding. The plot concerns
a group of British boys who are stranded on an uninhabited island and their disastrous attempts to
govern themselves. Themes include the tension between groupthink and individuality, between rational
and emotional reactions, and between morality and immorality.

The novel, which was Golding's debut, was generally well received. 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 published between 1923 and 2005, and included it in its list of the 100
Best Young-Adult Books of All Time. Popular reading in schools, especially in the English-speaking world,
Lord of the Flies was ranked third in the nation's favourite books from school in a 2016 UK poll.

Background

Publication history

Published in 1954, Lord of the Flies was Golding's first novel. The concept arose after Golding read what
he deemed to be an unrealistic portrayal of stranded children in the youth novel The Coral Island: a Tale
of the Pacific Ocean (1857) by R. M. Ballantyne, which includes themes of the civilising effect of
Christianity and the importance of hierarchy and leadership. Golding asked his wife, Ann, if it would "be
a good idea if I wrote a book about children on an island, children who behave in the way children really
would behave?"[3] As a result, the novel contains various references to The Coral Island, 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."[4] Golding's three central characters (Ralph, Piggy, and Jack) have also been
interpreted as caricatures of Ballantyne's Coral Island protagonists.[5]

The manuscript was rejected by many publishers before finally being accepted by London-based Faber &
Faber; an initial rejection by the professional reader, Miss Perkins, at Faber labelled the book an "absurd
and uninteresting fantasy about the explosion of an atomic bomb on the colonies and a group of
children who land in the jungle near New Guinea. Rubbish & dull. Pointless".[6] However, Charles
Monteith decided to take on the manuscript[7] and worked with Golding to complete several fairly
major edits, including the removal of the entire first section of the novel, which had previously described
an evacuation from nuclear war.[6] The character of Simon was heavily redacted by Monteith, removing
his interaction with a mysterious lone figure who is never identified but implied to be God.[8] Monteith
himself was concerned about these changes, completing "tentative emendations", and warning against
"turning Simon into a prig".[6] Ultimately, Golding made all of Monteith's recommended edits and wrote
back in his final letter to his editor that "I've lost any kind of objectivity I ever had over this novel and can
hardly bear to look at it."[9] These manuscripts and typescripts are now available from the Special
Collections Archives at the University of Exeter library for further study and research.[10] The collection
includes the original 1952 "Manuscript Notebook" (originally a Bishop Wordsworth's School notebook)
containing copious edits and strikethroughs.
After the changes made by Monteith, and slow sales of the three thousand copy first printing, the book
went on to become a best-seller, with more than ten million copies sold as of 2015.[7] It 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 (1975).

Setting

The book never states the location of the unnamed island, although it is implied to be located
somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. The book begins with the boys' arrival on the island after their plane
has been shot down during what seems to be part of a nuclear World War III.[11]

The setting is important for the novel's narrative progression. Because the boys should lack the authority
from which they are removed, they need to be preadults who attempt to establish order among
themselves to survive within their hostile environment.[12]

The setting also symbolizes the development of human civilization, society and government as the boys
try to form a community with themselves and eventually elect a "chief" to lead them. It then goes on to
symbolize the aspects of war and chaos, as the setting itself is placed during a global war and has been
occurring even before the boys arrive on the island.[13]

Plot

In the midst of a wartime evacuation, a British aeroplane crashes on or near an isolated island in a
remote region of the Pacific Ocean. The only survivors are boys in their middle childhood or
preadolescence. A fair-haired boy named Ralph and a fat boy nicknamed "Piggy" find a conch, which
Ralph uses as a horn to convene the survivors to one area. Ralph immediately commands authority over
the other boys using the conch, and is elected their "chief". He establishes three primary policies: to
have fun, to survive, and to constantly maintain a smoke signal that could alert passing ships of their
presence. Ralph joins a red-haired boy named Jack and a quiet boy named Simon in using Piggy's glasses
to create a signal fire.

The semblance of order deteriorates as the majority of the boys turn idle, and ignore Ralph's efforts
towards improving life on the island. They develop paranoia around an imaginary monster they call the
"beast", which they all come to believe exists on the island. Ralph fails to convince the boys that no
beast exists, while Jack gains popularity by declaring that he will personally hunt and kill the monster. At
one point, Jack summons many of the boys to hunt down a wild pig, drawing away those assigned to
maintain the signal fire. The smoke signal goes out, failing to attract a ship that was passing by the
island. Ralph angrily confronts Jack about his failure to maintain the signal, but he is rebuffed by the
other boys. Disillusioned with his role as leader, Ralph considers relinquishing his job, but is persuaded
not to do so by Piggy.
One night, an aerial battle occurs near the island while the boys sleep, during which a fighter pilot ejects
from his plane and dies in the descent. His body drifts down to the island in his parachute and gets
tangled in a tree. Twin boys Sam and Eric see the corpse of the pilot and mistake it for the beast. When
Ralph, Jack, and a gloomy boy named Roger later investigate the corpse, they flee, incorrectly believing
the beast is real. Jack calls an assembly and tries to turn the others against Ralph, but initially receives
no support; he storms off alone to form his own tribe, with most of the other boys gradually joining him.

Simon often ventures out into the island's forest to be alone. One day while he is there, Jack and his
followers erect an offering to the beast nearby: a pig's head, mounted on a sharpened stick and
swarming with flies. Simon conducts an imaginary dialogue with the head, which he dubs the "Lord of
the Flies". The head tells Simon that there is no beast on the island, and predicts that the other boys will
turn on him. That night, Ralph and Piggy visit Jack's tribe, learning that they have begun painting their
faces and engaging in primitive ritual dances. Simon discovers that the "beast" is the dead pilot, and
rushes down to tell Jack's tribe. The frenzied boys, including Ralph and Piggy, mistake Simon for the
beast and beat him to death.

Jack and his rebel band decide to steal Piggy's glasses, the only means the boys have of starting a fire.
They raid Ralph's camp, take the glasses, and return to their abode on an outcropping called Castle Rock.
Deserted by most of his supporters, Ralph journeys to Castle Rock with Piggy, Sam, and Eric in order to
confront Jack and retrieve the glasses. The boys reject Ralph, with Roger triggering a trap that kills Piggy
and shatters the conch. Ralph manages to escape, but Sam and Eric are tortured by Roger until they
agree to join Jack's tribe.

That night, Ralph secretly confronts Sam and Eric, who warn him that Jack plans to hunt him. The
following morning, Jack's tribe sets fire to the forest, with Ralph narrowly escaping the hunters.
Following a long chase, Ralph trips and falls in front of a uniformed adult – a British naval officer whose
party has landed to investigate the fire. Ralph, Jack, and the other boys erupt into sobs over the "end of
innocence". The officer expresses his disappointment at seeing the boys exhibiting such feral, warlike
behaviour before turning, "moved and a little embarrassed," to stare at his cruiser waiting offshore.

Characters

Primary

Ralph: The athletic and charismatic protagonist who is the elected leader of the boys. He is often the
representative of order, civilization and productive leadership. At the beginning of the novel, Ralph sets
out to build huts and think of ways to maximize their chances of being rescued. Ralph's influence over
the boys is, at first, secure but it declines as the boys defect to Jack and succumb to savagery.
Jack: The strong-willed and egomaniacal antagonist who represents the instinct of savagery, violence
and power. At the beginning of the novel, he is infuriated by losing the leadership election to Ralph. He
then leads his band of choirboys into the deep forest where they hunt pigs and turn into barbarians with
painted faces. By the end of the novel, he is using the boys' fear of the "beast" to assert control over
them.

Simon: An innately spiritual boy, he is often the voice of reason in the rivalry between Ralph and Jack,
and when the boys on the island turn to savagery.

Piggy: Ralph's intellectual and talkative friend, he helps Ralph to become leader and is the source of
many of Ralph's innovative ideas. He is the representation of the rational side of humanity. Despite this,
Piggy's asthma and poor eyesight make him a target of scorn and violence.

Roger: An intense and quiet boy at the beginning until, by the middle of the novel, he begins to terrorize
other boys. When Jack rises to power, he turns into a brutal sadist.

Themes

Symbolism

Golding, who was a philosophy teacher before becoming Royal Navy lieutenant, had encountered
violence and atrocities firsthand in battle such as when he served in the Normandy landings during D-
Day in 1944, in which he commanded a landing craft. After the war, when he returned to England he
found a world threatened by two nuclear superpowers vying for power and dominance, and the globe
faced nuclear annihilation and devastation. Confronting such dilemmas throughout this period led him
to examine the very nature of humanity and subsequently inspired him to write the Lord of the Flies in
1954.[14]

Closely associated with war, the novel took its title from Beelzebub, a biblical demon who is considered
the god of pride and warfare. The novel is often viewed as a bleak satirical interpretation of a famous
children's book, Coral Island, about adventure and the experience of boys living in an exotic island,
similar to the setting of Golding's novel. The protagonists in the novel are able to master nature while
avoiding danger in a hostile environment. A recurring theme in Lord of the Flies is the matter of colonial
narration found in many British books of this period.[14]

The narrative in the book reveals that the lack of cooperation of children without adult authority can
quickly descend into disorder and chaos, although the boys try to establish some sort of order and
coordination among themselves to survive. Another point made in the book is the matter of leadership,
as the protagonist Ralph fights with the older Jack over becoming leader of the group, leading them to
darker intentions and disillusion. The book's major themes, such as morality, civility, and modern
society, make the novel a satire of the very behavior and nature of humans, long held beliefs that
support the very foundation of human activity.[14]

Allegorical stance
At an allegorical level, the central theme is the conflicting human impulses toward civilisation and social
organisation – living by rules, peacefully and in harmony – and toward the will to power. Themes include
the tension between groupthink and individuality, between rational and emotional reactions, and
between morality and immorality. How these play out and how different people feel their influence
form a major subtext of Lord of the Flies, with the central themes addressed in an essay by American
literary critic Harold Bloom.[15] The name "Lord of the Flies" is a literal translation of Beelzebub, from 2
Kings 1:2–3, 6, 16.

Genre and style

Lord of the Flies is often regarded as a novel about the exploits of boys living in a hostile environment on
an island in the Pacific Ocean, making a novel of often adventure and survival, thus into it being a genre
mainly about romanticism. Lord of the Flies often explore not only the positive effect of the moral of the
story about a practical lesson about good moral significance but also the negative moral about the
questionability of human morality as well, which make it stand out as a unique form of a novel of
philosophical fiction. The novel is largely written in the order of allegorical fiction, in which a realistic
situation of boys stranded on a desert island to embody the concept of inherent human savagery, mob
mentality and totalitarian leadership being a style of addressing the main plot and the summary of the
novel as whole.[16]

Though, this is not the case with Golding's point of view, as the novel deviates the allegorical imagery
and style of books of that particular kind, such as Coral Island by R.M. Ballantyne, which might have
inspired the main body of the novel, in turn satirizes it. Another key factor is that both the protagonists
and the antagonists are grown, fully developed, conflicted boys who express their feeling in ways that
seem sympathetic and often violent. This is due to the novel representing a different style of
philosophical allegory such as human emotion, human interaction and civilization. This is in contrast to
the writer, William Golding's own experience during his lifetime both as a teacher of philosophy and
Royal Navy.[16]

Reception

Critical response

The book, originally entitled Strangers from Within, was initially rejected by an in-house reader, Miss
Perkins, at London based publishers Faber and Faber as "rubbish & dull. Pointless".[7] The title was
considered "too abstract and too explicit". Following a further review, the book was eventually
published as Lord of the Flies.[17][18]

A turning point occurred when E. M. Forster chose Lord of the Flies as his "outstanding novel of the
year."[7] Other reviews described it as "not only a first-rate adventure but a parable of our times".[7] In
February 1960, Floyd C. Gale of Galaxy Science Fiction rated Lord of the Flies five stars out of five, stating
that "Golding paints a truly terrifying picture of the decay of a minuscule society ... Well on its way to
becoming a modern classic".[19]

Lord of the Flies presents a view of humanity unimaginable before the horrors of Nazi Europe, and then
plunges into speculations about mankind in the state of nature. Bleak and specific, but universal, fusing
rage and grief, Lord of the Flies is both a novel of the 1950s, and for all time.

—Robert McCrum, The Guardian.[7]

In his book Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong, Marc D. Hauser
says the following about Golding's Lord of the Flies: "This riveting fiction, standard reading in most intro
courses to English literature, should be standard reading in biology, economics, psychology, and
philosophy."[20]

Its stances on the already controversial subjects of human nature and individual welfare versus the
common good earned it position 68 on the American Library Association's list of the 100 most frequently
challenged books of 1990–1999.[21] The book has been criticized as "cynical" and portraying humanity
exclusively as "selfish creatures". It has been linked with "Tragedy of the commons" by Garrett Hardin
and books by Ayn Rand, and countered by "Management of the Commons" by Elinor Ostrom. Parallels
have been drawn between the "Lord of the Flies" and an actual incident from 1965 when a group of
schoolboys who sailed a fishing boat from Tonga were hit by a storm and marooned on the uninhabited
island of ʻAta, considered dead by their relatives in Nuku‘alofa. The group not only managed to survive
for over 15 months but "had set up a small commune with food garden, hollowed-out tree trunks to
store rainwater, a gymnasium with curious weights, a badminton court, chicken pens and a permanent
fire, all from handiwork, an old knife blade and much determination". As a result, when ship captain
Peter Warner found them, they were in good health and spirits. Dutch historian Rutger Bregman, writing
about this situation said that Golding's portrayal was unrealistic.[22]

Awards

Lord of the Flies was awarded a place on both lists of Modern Library 100 Best Novels, reaching number
41 on the editor's list, and 25 on the reader's list.[23]

In 2003, the novel was listed at number 70 on the BBC's survey The Big Read.[24]

In 2005, the novel was chosen by Time magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels from
1923 to 2005.[25] Time also included the novel in its list of the 100 Best Young-Adult Books of All Time.
[26]

Popular in schools, especially in the English-speaking world, a 2016 UK poll saw Lord of the Flies ranked
third in the nation's favourite books from school, behind George Orwell's Animal Farm and Charles
Dickens’ Great Expectations.[27]
On 5 November 2019, BBC News listed Lord of the Flies on its list of the 100 most inspiring novels.[28]