Lord Of The Flies


Lord of the Flies is a dystopian novel of 1954 that was written by the Nobel Prize winner from England, William Golding concerning a group of boys of British decent who were stuck on an island that was not inhabited. They tried to govern themselves but certainly got very lousy result. The novel stands on the existing controversial topics about human nature and personal welfare against the common good. It is a response to the novel, “The Coral Island” written by Ballantyne.

In the presence of an intense war and conflict, a plane used to evacuate a team of school boys from Britain is unfortunately shot down over a lonely tropical island. Among the group of boys are Piggy and Ralph who go on to notice a conch shell around the beach. Piggy gets to learn that it may be used as a horn for summoning the rest of the other boys. After it was assembled, the boys become determined to choose a leader and they devise a way of getting rescued. Ralph is chosen as the leader who later appoints one of the other school boys, Jack to exercise authority over the boys given the task of looking out for food for all to eat.

The myths revolving around the book state that all these events occur during a certain unstipulated nuclear war. A number of the marooned characters are mere students as the others reach as a musical choir coordinated by an established leader. Most of those present except for the choirboys seem never to have come met each other ever before. The novel shows their descent into cruelty – left to them in a nation that is paradisiacal far from contemporary forms of civilization, the well-learned children degenerate to a state of primitivism. At a metaphorical degree, the main theme is the human impulses that seem to conflict in the wake of civilization. People live based on rules, in harmony and peaceably and again towards the will to power.

The novel, “Lord of the Flies” has horrifying themes that include a tension existing between individuality and groupthink especially between emotional and logical reactions and again between issues of immorality and morality. The manner in which these play out and the way the various people feel concerning their impacts is a major subtext of the novel. It is a novel that highlights important life subjects and issues affecting human co-existence, power and conflicting impulses in a civilized world.