I read Lord of the Flies for my Eng. Lit. O Level about 100 years ago. You suggested above that sometimes you just need to enjoy the story, but this was the first book where I really delved into the meaning. My teacher spent weeks talking us through the meaning before the exam. I loved the experience.
I started reading The Lord of the Flies in the 1950's or early '60's. I could not put it down and read the book in its entirety. My two young sons were asleep and I was horrified to think in this situation they might react at such a base level. It challenged what we think we know about ourselves and others in a given setting.
It really is a gripping story. It introduced readers to a new myth of human nature, opposed to the Enlightenment myth. At the time it was shocking, and it looks like you were the perfect audience. As one of my younger subscribers commented about his thoughts when he read it in high school, "I think the proposition that 'we are all savages inside' could no longer be shocking even to a high-schooler. My honest reaction to it was something like 'Yeah, and who doesn't know that? [...] Still, it is perhaps somewhat sad that we have come to live in a world where a mere high-schooler simply accepts that we are all savages."
I hated reading Lord of the Flies in high school. I don't think it was because of the mandatory reading, since I truly enjoyed reading Sense and Sensibility and Great Gatsby. Lord of the Flies felt so dull, predictable, prescriptive and formulaic in delivering its message, and overrated. My opinion might change if I re-read it, but now I think the propostion that 'we are all savages inside' could no longer be shocking even to a high-schooler. My honest reaction to it was something like 'Yeah, and who doesn't know that? So what? You ever went to a school?' Perhaps the novel was more shocking in the 1950s when the UK and other European countries still kept many of their colonies. Still, it is perhaps somewhat sad that we have come to live in a world where a mere high-schooler simply accepts that we are all savages.
I'm not surprised at that response. The first work to present a theme that others mimic will often seem predictable in retrospect. This book couldn't be formulaic, since Golding invented the formula. Before Lord of the Flies (1954), castaway stories were all very optimistic, offering an Enlightenment view of European man as rational and industrious. After the two World Wars, though, it became pretty hard to cling to that view, although Americans tried real hard.
I enjoyed this reading more than the last time (2009). I may have read it in high school (early 1970's), but I can't remember doing so. Since I was deep into post-apocalyptic fiction at that time, it probably would have struck me as pretty tame and unmemorable.
I see that I may have been too harsh on Golding, but now I wonder, how come Defoe's Robinson Crusoe or Verne's Two Years' Vacation haven't lost their charm (at least for me) while Lord of the Flies seems to have? Could it be that I have been bombarded too much already with depressing news that the barbarians (us!) are already in the city and not at the gate, ever since I was born in the nineties? When it comes to twisting castaway stories, I prefer Tournier's Friday, or, the Other Island. Maybe I want to hear that we will somehow make it work even if we turn into savages, instead of waiting for civilized adults on a ship.
Very insightful! It doesn’t sound like you have lost your humanity. That’s what an interest in literature will do for you. I’m sure that’s little consolation when you discover that your generation must become the adults on the ship who must repatriate and re-civilize your savage elders.
I read Lord of the Flies for my Eng. Lit. O Level about 100 years ago. You suggested above that sometimes you just need to enjoy the story, but this was the first book where I really delved into the meaning. My teacher spent weeks talking us through the meaning before the exam. I loved the experience.
I started reading The Lord of the Flies in the 1950's or early '60's. I could not put it down and read the book in its entirety. My two young sons were asleep and I was horrified to think in this situation they might react at such a base level. It challenged what we think we know about ourselves and others in a given setting.
It really is a gripping story. It introduced readers to a new myth of human nature, opposed to the Enlightenment myth. At the time it was shocking, and it looks like you were the perfect audience. As one of my younger subscribers commented about his thoughts when he read it in high school, "I think the proposition that 'we are all savages inside' could no longer be shocking even to a high-schooler. My honest reaction to it was something like 'Yeah, and who doesn't know that? [...] Still, it is perhaps somewhat sad that we have come to live in a world where a mere high-schooler simply accepts that we are all savages."
I hated reading Lord of the Flies in high school. I don't think it was because of the mandatory reading, since I truly enjoyed reading Sense and Sensibility and Great Gatsby. Lord of the Flies felt so dull, predictable, prescriptive and formulaic in delivering its message, and overrated. My opinion might change if I re-read it, but now I think the propostion that 'we are all savages inside' could no longer be shocking even to a high-schooler. My honest reaction to it was something like 'Yeah, and who doesn't know that? So what? You ever went to a school?' Perhaps the novel was more shocking in the 1950s when the UK and other European countries still kept many of their colonies. Still, it is perhaps somewhat sad that we have come to live in a world where a mere high-schooler simply accepts that we are all savages.
I'm not surprised at that response. The first work to present a theme that others mimic will often seem predictable in retrospect. This book couldn't be formulaic, since Golding invented the formula. Before Lord of the Flies (1954), castaway stories were all very optimistic, offering an Enlightenment view of European man as rational and industrious. After the two World Wars, though, it became pretty hard to cling to that view, although Americans tried real hard.
I enjoyed this reading more than the last time (2009). I may have read it in high school (early 1970's), but I can't remember doing so. Since I was deep into post-apocalyptic fiction at that time, it probably would have struck me as pretty tame and unmemorable.
I see that I may have been too harsh on Golding, but now I wonder, how come Defoe's Robinson Crusoe or Verne's Two Years' Vacation haven't lost their charm (at least for me) while Lord of the Flies seems to have? Could it be that I have been bombarded too much already with depressing news that the barbarians (us!) are already in the city and not at the gate, ever since I was born in the nineties? When it comes to twisting castaway stories, I prefer Tournier's Friday, or, the Other Island. Maybe I want to hear that we will somehow make it work even if we turn into savages, instead of waiting for civilized adults on a ship.
Very insightful! It doesn’t sound like you have lost your humanity. That’s what an interest in literature will do for you. I’m sure that’s little consolation when you discover that your generation must become the adults on the ship who must repatriate and re-civilize your savage elders.
One can almost see the same archetypal quality in our US national election! I wonder who would represent Jack? :)
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Haven't read Lord of the Flies in... probably 40 years! This took me back. Thanks.
Yeah. It's not a bad idea to reread those good old banned books every now and then.