Over the years I must have read this book five or six times. Last night I was reading it on a train with a highlighter in my hand, because I decided to teach it this year again. Teachers wreck books, of course. We all know that. On the other hand, whatever you have to study-read, you tend to carry a bit of it with you. You don't forget that book, at least. Although I must add, that it's quite risky introducing to a Scottish classroom a book with the memorable words: "The English are best at everything...."I wasn't sure how much it would have dated. I must have read it for the first time 30 years ago. Published in 1954, the phrasing would have been pretty modern then. Even now, most of it has work well. The phrase that jumped at me -- and it only appeared once -- was when Piggy (I think) compared the boys detrimentally to 'niggers', instead of just 'savages'. Ouch. Mental note to make them look hard at this bit. After all this is such a horrible little group of boys. As complacently white as can be, one group of them from a choir school (or a public school with a choir), no less. And Ralph, the 'hero', son of a naval officer. Golding, as a teacher in an upmarket school, presumably knew those sort of boys all too well. The boys being prepared to carry the empire forward.Except the setting suggests the empire may not be going forward. Somebody somewhere is fighting a war that is evidently nuclear. It's never quite clear what is going on or how the officer turns up cool as cucumber on a naval cutter at the end.Most of the young people in my class this year have (sigh) seen the film, so they know what happens. The group of boys marooned on an idyllic Pacific Island first start off having a sort of cheery adventure. There are references to Coral Island, Swallows and Amazons and Treasure Island too. They want to have fun, and one of their number -- Jack -- talks a great deal about 'fun', though his idea of fun is killing pigs.They arrive a fairly civilised little group but they gradually degenerate. Golding's moral message is about the "darkness of man's heart" and it's a good moral companion to Heart of Darkness now I come to think about it. The boys natural fears escalate and the younger children create a mythical 'beast', which then seems to materialise as a fact when the body of a dead airman, killed a war fought in the skies overhead, floats down to the island in a parachute.But the real beast is their own desire for control and domination, as well as an interesting bloodlust -- the word 'lust' is used of this, and the killing of the first pig is certainly described with unmistakable sexual resonance. One of the boys pushes a sharpened stick "up her ass". There are no girls in the group -- what a different novel it would have to have been if there were! -- but the pig they kill is a sow, and they interrupt her in suckling a brood of piglets. What a strange, strange thing to put into your novel. Not just the killing, but the slaughtering of a mother pig and a kind of sexual frenzy. Yuk!But hey -- he's intending to shock. He's intending to show that this blood lust thing isn't far away from human kind, or male human kind at least, and that it doesn't take much to call it out. Even Ralph, the Aryan protagonist, feels himself getting caught up in it. Paint your face, start whooping and chanting and you can do, it seems, almost anything.The kind, poetic, imaginative Simon gets butchered (teeth and nails at this point -- not spears). PIggy is despatched by Roger, the executioner. The whole of their little society is clearly turning into a Stalinist regime, with each boy taking his place, as prescribed by Golding, which is what you get to do when you write an allegory.It's a powerful read, though more repetitive, in linguistic terms, than I remembered - almost as repetitive as D H Lawrence in places. At the highpoint, towards the end, when Ralph is completely isolated and being hunted down, the word 'ululation' is done to death. But at least you can't read this book without learning what it means!What I both like and don't like about it is the way it makes me want to argue. The whole thing is completely manipulated. Is this what would happen? Would the darkness of man's heart take over? I have not much doubt that man's heart is dark, I guess, but when I got off the train I left my very lovely reddy-orangy furry scarf, and the chap who was sitting opposite me (I didn't speak to him during the journey) ran after me with it. It brightened my day. Perhaps he was a 'Simon' and would quickly get trampled if our civilisation were to decline.But look Golding, my lad -- that bit where you allow the man in the parachute to get dumped, dead, on the island, scaring the boys out of their wits -- if that hadn't happened -- your choice plot element -- well, the three boys Jack, Roger and Ralph, would have established Absence of Beast. It might all have turned out very differently.If Piggy hadn't been wearing glasses, there would have been no fire....If it had started raining sooner....If Ralph had been a bit more intelligent....If the pigs had been a bit better at getting away....On an island, living on fruit and getting scratched and cut, one or two of them would have developed fatal infections and their main enemy would probably have been illness and death, which would have drawn them together a bit. Even the biting insects would probably have driven them potty. One or two of them, it's my bet, would have descended into depression and just dwindled away.It wouldn't have been like The Coral Island, but it wouldn't have been the inevitable collapse of civilisation either. Steven King likes this book. It fits beautifully with his love of dramatic thriller, increasing isolation of central brave character, and underlying opposition between good and evil. Here evil wins, though. Ralph is about to be exterminated when the officer arrives, so the deus ex machina is just there as an ironic way to end the book. That bastard is even 'embarrassed' when Ralph bursts into tears. That's British stiff upper lippery for you. I don't believe, in the boys' behaviour. I don't believe that Jack, the killer (I nearly said Jack the Giant-Killer), is there just below the surface, although I do believe that wars bring out the worst in us. I don't believe that Roger -- just a little boy -- is the natural henchman, with a desire to execute his peers running just below his veneer of civilisation. But then perhaps I do. I've seen it, haven't I? Seen nasty young people doing nasty young things nastily. Conditioned into that, in their turn, by not very delightful adults, damaged adults.Oh bloody Golding -- go away! I put my money on man's intelligence. You gotta use your head to survive, whichever allegory you seem to be inhabiting. And sometimes you do survive and sometimes you don't, but the 'darkness of man's heart' is offset by the light, which always returns.The trouble is, the dark heart goes for power - doesn't it? And the desire for power and control over others can be wielded quickly and wrongly by just a few people. It's what's happening all over the world at this minute.And yet -- the majority are good-hearted souls, who will pick up your scarf on a train and return it to you. There are more good guys than bad ones. Some of them are quietly and happily reading books at this minute. Otherwise, what would be the point?
Can someone tell me where the anarchy lies in this book?All I can remember about discussing this book in high school is that it was supposed to be about anarchy, about how we descend into madness and "chaos" without law and order to hold our childlike hands. Every time I've overheard a conversation about LOTFs since, it has been the same thing: somewhere in the discussion someone mentions anarchy, as though that one word can sum up everything Golding was doing. Even the afterword by E.L. Epstien calls "Jack ... the leader of the forces of anarchy on the island," and still I wonder "Where is the anarchy?"I don't see it anywhere. Anarchy reigned on the island for all of ... what? Eight pages in my edition. Then Ralph pulls up the conch and anarchy is over. The conch comes, the meeting is called, and society rears its ugly head, and that felt to me like the point of Golding's book -- the ineluctable need to "civilize" ourselves and what that civilizing drive really looks like.It's a fucking ugly drive. Many see Ralph as the best of the kids, the natural leader who is looking out for the good of the many. I don't see it. I see a selfish little shit, whose only desire is to leave the island (a desire that I think has little value or necessity) and return to civilization, and while stuck on the island to build himself a shelter so that he can play "society" as comfortably as possible. He tells everyone and us that they need shelter, but the actual need for shelter never appears beyond Ralph's constant bitching. He becomes the leader of the democratic government, leaves too much power to Jack and the hunters so that he can avoid early conflict, then spends his entire time telling everyone what is important, what they should care about, and he can't stand it when they have different priorities. Everyone was eating, breathing and drinking, Ralph (apart from those your need for a fire burned to death the first day). They didn't need you or your rule as "chief."Then there's Piggy. Whiny, bright ideas Piggy, always pissing and moaning about right and wrong. Always needing others to police those who "wrong him" always wanting to make more rules, always opining about the need for them all to be more civilized. Always backing Ralph to exert his power, to use the conch to gain control, to talk and impose his will on the littluns and the hunters. He's in fear for himself, and he's more than willing to have other impose their will on still others to make him feel safe. But he takes no personal responsibility. He talks and talks and lectures and lectures but never does.Then there is Jack. I don't think he's really any worse than Ralph, nor do I think he is better. He has other priorites that are just as fucking selfish. He wants meat. He believes that more food, better food, should be the priority -- and he's sure that his position as the strongest, the best provider, should give him a right to power. He doesn't give a shit about the fire and rescue. Then he -- like Ralph in practice and Piggy in support -- places his own idea of society on the group, and like Ralph he's responsible for some deaths. Ralph gets away with his deaths in the minds of readers because they were a foolish "mistake," and the killing of Simon is too personal and bloody to be forgiven, so Jack is seen as the force for evil on the island. Yet the catalyst for the killing of Simon was genuine (albeit misplaced) fear and superstition of "the Beast" they all (not just Jack) talked themselves into. Ultimately he rejects Ralph's power, Ralph's vision for their society, and he sets up his own, with his own rules and regulations and controls and defenses.And now I go back again to the question I can't stop thinking about: Where is the anarchy? I don't see any anarchy here (unless it is in the nameless, faceless, uncared for littluns that populate Ralph's benevolent dictatorship. It's important to note, since I am talking about them, that Jack makes his littluns an active part of his tribe, while Ralph barely notices their existence. Nice leadership, Ralph). I see imposition of social constructs, I see a drive to law and order, I see a desire to remake the social structures from whence they came. I see imposition of control at every turn, and it's a control that instantly takes on the trappings of a "system" with rules and rituals and imposed consequences.Don't misunderstand me. I am not espousing anarchy as a real world possibility (it is an ideal that fascinates me, but I know that it is a practical impossibility); I am not saying it would have made for better living conditions on the island (although I highly doubt it would have made them worse); but I am saying that I never saw anything approaching anarchy in Golding's writing, unless it was as the unspoken, hinted at ideal of a world beyond "civilizing" influences.What I did see was Golding telling us that all our instincts to govern and control and civilize have dire, ugly and pitiable consequences, no matter where we sit politically or philosophically. I saw it in Ralph and Piggy and Jack, and it was driven home when the naval officer -- the "saviour" of the boys on the island -- saved them from their own little wars to return to a "grown-up" society at war, playing the same ugly games on a grander, uglier scale. I saw a mirror, and I didn't like what Golding made me see.
What do You think about Lord Of The Flies (1999)?
أمير الذباب....اسم غريب لرواية اغربرواية حصلت على جايزة نوبل!...ويالها من روايةمجموعة من الاطفال مسافرين على طيارة الطيارة وقعت بيهم فالبحر فراحوا لجزيرة وبقيوا فيها لحد ما حد يسال عنهم او يدور عليهم....البطل هو رالف الولد اللي يحمل الشخصية القائدة المتحملة للمسؤلية والمحبوب من الكل واللي يعتبر ناضج وعاقل جدا بالنسبة لسنه....معاه تلات اولاد شخصيات رئيسية....جاك الولد اللي لا يؤمن الا بالقوة وهو اكبرهم سنا وواكثرهم شراسة....وبيجي الولد السمين اللي دايما بيقول الصح بس ماحدش بيسمعه وبيستخفو بيه....واخيرا سايمون اللي حتدور حوله حبكة الرواية....الرواية خيال محض اعتقد انها كانت في وقت الحرب العالمية التانية....مجموعة من الاطفال في جزيرة.....بيحاولو يتصرفو بتحضر ويحمو نفسيهم ويقسموا نفسهم لاعمال تحافظ على المجموعة....مجموعة تجيب اكل ومجموعة تبني بيوت ومجموعة تشعل النار على قمة الجبل كنوع من الاشارة لاي حد عشان يشوفهم...الغريبة في الرواية دي على الرغم من بساطتها الشديدة....انها بتحكي عن طبيعة البشر...وطبيعة الدول وطبيعة السياسة وطبيعة الغرائز...وطبيعة الغباء البشري....والصراع...كل ده بشوية اطفال!...رالف القائد المناسب يحاول يوجه مجهود المجموعة لهدف اسمى وهو انهم ينقذوا....وفي نفس الوقت متفاءل جدا وعارف انهم حينقذوا وحد حيلاقيهم في يوم من الايام ومهما تمر الأيام مش بييأس (شوفت فيه التيار الديني المتفاءل المؤمن بالعدل وبالخير في النهاية)....المحارة اللي بتدي الحق لحمالها انه يتكلم والباقي يسكت...حسيت ان ليها مدلول في ارض الواقع ممكن نقول انه البرلمان مثلاالشخصية اللي قصاده جاك....واحد بيسمى نفسه عقلاني ومنطقي...مؤمن انهم حيعيشوا طول حياتهم في الجزيرة دي ومحدش حيلاقيهم....وكل همه اللحمة...انه يصطاد ويجيبلهم لحمة...ولا يؤمن الا بالقوة....وشايف ان رالف اخد منه القيادة وهو اللي يستحقها (شوفت فيه العسكر بشدة والتيار المادي الغير مؤمن بالروحانيات)....يعمل ايه بقى....يبدأ يشكك في قدرات رالف على القيادة ويتصيدله الاخطاء....يجيب مجموعة من الولاد يساعدوه ويكونو عون وقوة ليه....يجبرهم على الطاعة العمياء في مقابل انه يمنحهم اكل باستمرار....ويوهم الاولاد كلهم انه في وحش في الغابة حياكلهم وانه الوحيد اللي يقدر يقف قصاده!يحصل انقسام في المجموعة وتبقى الفئة دي ضد الفئة دي....واعوان رالف يقلوا من حواليه واحد ورا التاني وينضموا لجاك...عشان اللحمة!...وعشان القوة اللي بتحسسهم بالامان....لانهم خايفين من الوحش الوهمي....بعد ما جاك يحس بالقوة وبان معظم الاولاد معاه...يبدأ يهاجم رالف وسايمون وبيجي....ياخد منهم اللي يفيده ويضيق الخناق عليهم....في لحظة هيستيرية حيخلي الاولاد يقتلوا سايمون في الظلام معتقدين انه الوحش!....(رالف على اليسار وجاك على اليمين)وبعدها يتشجع رالف هو وبيجي ويحاولو يتكلمو مع جاك والاولاد ويقنعوهم انهم لازم يكونوا واحد عشان يقدرو يعيشو في الجزيرة دي....يقوموا يقتلو بيجي قدام عيون رالف!...وتيجي اشهر جملة في الحكاية....لما رالف يقول لجاك انه مش حينجو باللي عمله ده.....يقوم جاك يرد عليه ويقوله يعني انت تقدر تعملي ايه؟!صحيح حيقدر يعمله ايه؟....ايه اللي يقدر اي مواطن يعمله للعسكر وهما معاهم القوة والسلطة...يقدر يظلمك ويدوس عليك وماتقدرش تعمل حاجة....ولو قولتله ان اللي بتعمله ده ظلم حيقولك حتقدر ترد؟النهاية كانت سيريالية وجميلة ان في حد لقاءهم فعلا....وسط بكاء رالف اللي كان خلاص حيتقتل....بعيدا عن فكرة الرواية .....اللغة اللي ببيصف بيها الكاتب كل ما في الجزيرة كانت لغة مرئية حسستني اني باشوف كل حاجة فعلا قدامي....لدرجة اني لما اتفرجت على الفيلم لقيت كل حد في الاولاد زي ماتخيلته....ولقيت كل تفصيلية في الرواية زي ماتخيلتها....وعلى فكرة دي مهمة صعبة جدا ان كاتب يصف كل حاجة بدقة البيوت الزرع الوحوش الخنازير الاولاد الحوارات.....مشهد النهاية المفاجئ....تصوير الشخصيات الدقيق والرمزي جدا.....الحقيقة الرواية فعلا مقارنة بالزمن اللي اتكتبت فيه تعتبر جميلة وغريبة ومؤلمة....بتعرينا قدام انفسنا...بتوصف المجتمعات بشكل نادر كدة ومش مباشر....رواية جميلة
—ياسمين ثابت
I hated this book. First off, as I remember, it talks about humans failure to govern ourselves, or more broadly the failures of human nature. There are a few reasons why I think simply dropping a group of kids on a desert island does not in fact prove anything.1) These kids were raised in a capitalist, nominally demcratic society. The first thing they do is appoint leaders. As someone who spends my time working in consensus based groups seeking to challenge hierarchical structures, I have a strong belief that this is not how things need to be. It takes a bunch of unlearning and relearning to use these formats - simply being in a new space or being a child does not do this work. The author and the children he writes about are a part of a specific culture, and it's incorrect to generalize these values to a broader concept of human nature.2) They're all boys! Again, socialization (yes, even of a 6 year old) plays a huge role in what behavior we see as appropriate. While it's quite true that men (or at least masculinity) control government, it's ridiculous to use only boys to extrapolate what ways of governing ourselves are possible.I read this book in 1996 when I was a freshman in highschool, so maybe there's something I missed. Or maybe my memories are being colored by just how gross the pig's head descriptions were. If so, feel free to correct me. For now though, I have to say that this book is offensive and makes dangerous assumption.
—Mk
THIS IS ABOUT KIDS ON AN ISLAND THE FAT ONE IS CRUSHED BY A ROCK.
—Esteban del Mal
