Lord of the Flies: Lord of the Narrative

Sometimes when you approach something you loved as a child, you prepare yourself for the inevitable disappointment.  Your original experience is unrepeatable; you cannot step in that same river twice, as the saying goes, because it is not the same river, and you are not the same person.  So it was with both excitement and fear that I picked up my copy of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies to read it for this list.

I may have mentioned in one of my other posts that I was not much of a reader as a child.  Reading was not something I typically chose to do on a Saturday afternoon, or even before bed.  So I don’t have a slew of children’s books that compete for my memory's affection.  The first book I remember being compelled by was Where the Red Fern Grows in 4^th grade.  And the book that stands out in my memory after that is Lord of the Flies, which I believe I read in 9^th grade.  That makes for a very short list of childhood favorites.

For how important the book was to me, I was surprised at how poorly I remembered it, and while I knew the large events that shook the plot, rereading the book was a lot like discovering it for the first time.  It was every bit as riveting as I remember, only now I was able to appreciate the language, the movement of plot, and the strength of character.  The book may be thought of as a Young Adult novel nowadays because every high school student in America reads it and discusses its symbolism, but in 1954, it was a novel written for an adult audience, and it rewards its adult reader with its masterful storytelling.

The story is about a group of British school boys (ranging from six to twelve years old) whose plane crashes on an island after it is stuck down, presumably due to a third world war.  With no adults around, the boys come together and form a plan for survival and, hopefully, rescue.  Ralph, the protagonist, is voted “chief,” and Jack becomes the leader of the “hunters,” the choir boys who were with him.  Through the course of the novel we watch as the boys’ “civilization” collapses and the schoolboys devolve into “savages.”  “Mankind’s essential illness,” as one character in the novel calls it, and the thin line that separates civilization from animal ferocity are rather heady topics for such a short novel, and there are a million ways to botch the story.  To make the story both believable and compelling, Golding has to show us the movement both within the individuals and the group that leads from Ralph’s rule to Jack’s.  We need to see Jack’s hunger for death and power grow.  We need to see fear spread throughout the group to lead them to Castle Rock.  And Golding does it all.  He cuts no corners in giving us the push and pull of Jack’s and Ralph’s respect for and antagonism of each other.  The characters’ developments are directly tied to the plot and the two move hand in hand. 

Golding rushes nothing in the dissolution of order, using Roger as the measure of the grip society exerts even across the ocean.  Roger is described as “a slight furtive boy whom no one knew, who kept to himself with an inner intensity of avoidance and secrecy.”  He follows a six-year-old who wanders along the beach, watching him from the jungles edge.  When nuts fall from a tree above him, he notices the rocks on the ground.  He picks one up

and threw it at Henry—threw it to miss.  The stone, that token of preposterous time, bounced five yards to Henry’s right and fell in the water.  Roger gathered a handful of stones and began to throw them.  Yet there was a space round Henry, perhaps six yards in diameter into which he dare not throw.  Here, invisible yet strong, was the taboo of old life.  Round the squatting child was the protection of parents and schools and policemen and the law.  Roger’s arm was conditioned by a civilization that knew nothing of him and was in ruins.

These small stones are the heralds of the avalanche that will follow when Roger, perched at the top of Castle Rock throws first small stones at Piggy and eventually launches the boulder that will cause Piggy’s death.  Roger is a terrifying presence, and the arc of his arm describes the vanishing hold of civilization over the boys.

Things fall apart so logically and smoothly, that you never feel like you are being forced to swallow a sermon or a sleight-of-hand prophet.  On the level of simple plot and character—if the novel were trying to say nothing about people and our world—this work would be a resounding success.  But add to that the echoes, imagery, and subtleties of social commentary, and you have an incredible story, one that can be relished at any level of engagement.  Rocks are falling throughout the story.  The dead parachuter does an incredible amount of work in both the worlds of plot and symbolism.  As a manifestation of the beast, he is that which is rotten in human beings.  He is a symbol of the adult war that is merely a large and unseen version of what is happening on the island.  He is dressed in the clothes of society, but he is an “ape-like” figure.  The desire to control the lives—and deaths—of other creatures is present from Henry’s playing with the translucent miniscule creatures on the beach to the killing of the pigs and to the deaths of Piggy and Simon.  The destruction of society plays in every detail, even in the killing of the sow, whose head becomes the Lord of the Flies.  She is the sole image of femininity, of maternity, and the killing of her is incredibly graphic and rape-like: “The hungers followed, wedded to her in lust, excited by the long chase and dropped blood. . . .  The sow collapsed under them and they were heavy and fulfilled upon her.”  And when Roger removes his spear from her, all the boys delight in seeing that he got her “right up her ass.”  Golding is in control of all his details and descriptions so that it all unfolds effortlessly and unpretentiously. 

How wonderful to rediscover something that I have loved and find that it is richer than I remember!  If you have not read the novel since you were young, I urge you to take it up again.