(3) WILLIAM GOLDING –

LORD OF THE FLIES (1954)

 

“Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill! You knew, didn’t you?” said the head…”You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you?”

I’m fond of quipping that I’m working on my own version, Lord of the Files, set in my office.

As per TV Tropes, “a plane full of British schoolboys crashes on a deserted island, and the darkness of humanity spills forth as they turn against each other.”

I don’t know why they had to crash on a deserted island for that. Frankly, I think my school could have just stayed put and we would have been hunting each other within a week with a little push. Which is no doubt why they teach it in school – “it is very popular for English literature assignments in high school…thanks to its themes about morality and authority, and its symbolism, which is extremely easy to spot, but open to many different interpretations.”

Those interpretations are usually proposed along the lines of protagonist Ralph representing reason, his sidekick “Piggy” representing science, Simon representing intuition, and antagonist Jack representing “savagery, violence, and power”. Needless to say, it doesn’t work out too well for the Ralph, Piggy, and Simon.

The most iconic element is the Beast, identified by Simon with the titular Lord of the Flies or Beelzebub, with its iconic representation as the pig’s head mounted on a stick that features on my favorite variations of cover art for the book – and with whom Simon has the imaginary dialogue I quoted at the start. Apart from Simon, the boys believe the beast to be an actual beast in the forest with the pig’s head as an offering to it, but the pig’s head tells Simon otherwise – that there is no beast except that within the boys themselves.

 

RATING: S-TIER (GOD TIER – OR IS THAT BEAST-TIER?)