by William Golding
Book Type: Allegorical Novel, Fiction
Summary: Lord of the Flies is an allegorical novel by Nobel Prize-winning author William Golding. It discusses how culture created by man fails, using as an example a group of British school-boys stuck on a deserted island who try to govern themselves with disastrous results. It has been "labeled a parable, an allegory, a myth, a morality tale, a parody, a political treatise, even a vision of the apocalypse." (goodreads)
My Review: Most people read this book in school. I somehow missed this book, among many others. Really? Where the heck was I when everyone was reading this book? I've heard a lot of debate on this book because of it brutal portrait of human nature. Controversial books intrigue me so I HAD to pick it up and see what it was all about. And I was disappointed. Not gonna lie. I put the book down and thought "what? really?" Okay okay, I know a lot of people really love this book. I'm just not one of them. There are too many innately good people in the world for this book to really reflect human nature. Yes. We talk about the natural man in the LDS church all the time. But I don't believe it is a part of our nature to KILL people. There are few people in the world who are naturally that sick and twisted. Most get there because of how they're raised, their mental history... I mean, the type of person that would turn out like the boys in this book are few and far between and generally labeled kind of nuts at a young age. I mean really? This book just was so extreme that I couldn't really enjoy or get into what Golding was trying to say. I didn't feel that the point Golding was trying to make was accurate. It was dramatized and quite frankly offensive. Maybe he has a problem if he thinks everyone is naturally inclined to kill their neighbor, or be so destructive and horrible. Did he ever see a psychiatrist? Oh, and on top of this major flaw, the characters were so lack luster and under-developed. I don't know if he did that on purpose or he is a poor writer... Either way, it turned me off from the story. I'm just saying.
I loved this book when I read it. I'm not sure why... I just took off with it! In our first class discussion my teacher made me stop talking, checked my book to make sure I wasn't using Matt's copy with all his notes in it and forbabde me to add more to the class discussion, though I could talk over it with her at anytime... Apparently I was giving the whole book away. I used it as the basis for one of my papers there in AP English which I titled "the Phycoanalytical Theory of Ralph, Jack, and Piggy" and my teacher about flipped when I turned it in... She had been waiting for someone to write that paper for years (she retired as my class graduated) If I can find it on the family computer, I'll send it to you :)
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