Lord of the Flies-Final Review

[하현봉]

At first, I was shocked to see the picture on the cover. There was a fat boy in a black suit. Behind him, there was a giant fly. So I just thought that this book is about the adventure of this fat boy and a big fly. However, the story wasn’t.

This book, ‘The Lord of the Flies’, is a fiction about survival of young boys in an island. Originally, they were flying to somewhere during nuclear war. But ,accidentally their plane crashed and they fell on the island. In the first part, there were two boys, Ralph and Piggy. Ralph is a handsome and strong boy. Piggy is fat, timid, and lack of confidence, but very smart. Ralph found a conch shell and blew it. After then, littluns and a choir appeared to search for the source of the sound. The choir was led by Jack Merridew, a boy who is powerful and have strong self-esteem. When they gathered for the first time, they tried to imitate modern society, like voting for chief, making an assembly to discuss what to do to survive, and making the conch shell the symbol of right to speak their own opinions. But there was a serious conflict because of difference in opinions. Ralph, who was chosen to be a chief, suggested that they should light a fire by Piggy’s specs to make a smoke, so that other ships could see and rescue them. On the other hand, Jack, the head of the choir, insisted that they should hunt for food. At first, children did what Ralph ordered. But Jack tempted children to go hunting and succeeded. Children thought hunting was more exciting and interesting than keeping the light on, so they accepted Jack’s suggestion and successfully hunted a pig. When they went hunting, Ralph and a few boys were building a cabin. At that time, an object seemed like a ship passed, but since there was no children to make a smoke, so they lost a chance to be rescued. Ralph became very angry and reproved children about not carrying out their duties. In this part, I thought about Jack’s behavior and attitude. Everybody participated in the vote and made Ralph their chief. Also, Ralph made the conch shell the symbol of right to speak, so that they could claim their opinions freely. However, Jack shows power-oriented attitude. He consciously ignores Ralph’s order, and tempts other children to follow him. I partly understand because he’s just a kid(only 12~13 years old), but in extreme situation like survival on an island, they should behave in rational, logical, efficient way. Once they were ordered by their chief, they should do their duties. But Jack’s action only can be seen as a behavior with an intent to disrupt the community.

One night, after the feast, there was a fight in the sky high above the island. A plane cracked and the pilot was dead in strange posture. The fire-keeper SamnEric found that creature the first time, and it made all the children frightened. There were no adults, and there were a ‘beast’, a very scary beast. So the assembly was held and they decided to go hunting to kill the beast. Just one boy, only Simon realized that the ‘Beast’ is not real; it is their fear in their nature. Unfortunately, Simon was too timid and introvert, so everyone in the assembly nearly ignored him. Children went hunting but they were all afraid about ‘Beast’, so most of them returned to their territory, and only Ralph, Jack, and Roger stayed to kill the beast. Ralph didn’t try to conceal his fear, but Jack made fun of him. However, when they faced to the Beast at night, they all ran away. After all of them came back, they had the assembly again and the conflict burst out; they were divided into two groups. At first, almost everyone remained in Ralph’s, but as time goes on, most of them chose Jack to be their leader. Jack made a tribe, became a chief, and went hunting. They hunted a sow mercilessly, and made a totem with a wooden stick and a pighead. He offered this totem to the Beast, which made them afraid. From this part, I started to think about the conflict between two main characters; Ralph and Jack. Ralph is a very democratic leader. He tried to do things in right way(in adult’s society). He has capacity to take care of littluns, and he is the only one who respects Piggy’s idea, though sometimes he ignores him. But that part can function as his weakness. Sometimes, he is sometimes too indecisive, and lack of charisma. That was his worst part. So little bit different from my opinion, Ralph represents order, leadership, and civilization. On the other hand, Jack is very power-oriented child. He wants to be a leader to get power, and in order to become a leader, he insisted wrong opinions about the reason why he had to be a leader; He could sing well. And in my sight, he seemed like an axis of evil. He divided the peaceful group into two pieces, and that was critical for their survive. Moreover, he is lack of sympathy or capacity. He even suggested(even though it was just a joke)that they should use littluns to play a role of pig in imitation hunting. Also, he tempted children to go hunting instead of keeping the light. He took other kids to the brutal side, not the civilized side. But he has strength, too. He is very charismatic. Jack is physically strong, so he has power to have an argument with Ralph. Also, by killing pig and making a totem, he showed him full of charisma. If Ralph had half of Jack’s charisma, things would be better then. So we can say that Jack represents unbridled savagery and the desire for power. Now we can talk about the ideal leader. Absolutely, most people will think that Ralph is better than Jack for the leader, but Ralph is not a idealistic leader. Then what is essential for the ideal leader? I think, the ideal leader should have Ralph’s sympathy and capacity, and Jack’s charisma. The ideal leader should understand both sides of people. Richness, disability, intelligence or anything else. Also, the leader should have charm to attract people and make them do what they should do.

A little bit later, Simon found the totem and saw the hallucination - The Lord of the Flies - and fainted. The hallucination said repeatedly- “You are a silly little boy. You’d better run off and play with the others. They think you’re batty. Arent’you afraid of me?”-(p.199-200) This part can be seen as Simon’s inner conflict. He wants to reveal the fact about ‘Beast’, but on the other side, there is a thinking that he just want to be normal like other children. He might think he wants to be free from worrying, and play like other littluns. the Lord of the Flies becomes both a physical manifestation of the beast, a symbol of the power of evil, and a kind of Satan figure who evokes the beast within each human being. Looking at the novel in the context of biblical parallels, the Lord of the Flies recalls the devil, just as Simon recalls Jesus. In fact, the name “Lord of the Flies” is a literal translation of the name of the biblical name Beelzebub, a powerful demon in hell sometimes thought to be the devil himself.

While Ralph, Piggy and a few were working, Jack and some savages appeared and announced that they would have a feast with sow on that evening. Since they desired for meat, they went to the feast and were offered some meat. After eating, the savages started dancing and singing. It started raining and storming, and a creature appeared and ran into their circle. They became madness and misunderstood that the creature was Beast, so they killed it. However, the creature was Simon, who went to the mountain and realized the reality of Beast. However, the morning came, and they dimly understood what had happened, but they didn’t investigate the fact.

Jack and his fellows tried stealing Piggy’s specs to make a fire, so they ambushed Ralph’s side and succeeded. So Ralph’s team visited Jack’s base(the Castlerock)and tried to have a conversation, but they finally fought. During fight, Roger, the torturer, rolled a huge rock to Piggy and killed him. Ralph ran away, and the left, SamnEric, was forced to follow Jack. This part is important. Roger killed Piggy on purpose. That means, children were perfectly free from civilization; they became real savages. Piggy was described as a timid, but very smart boy. He always suggested reasonable, rational ideas like making a list of survived kids or making a fire. However, because of his appearance and bad background(He was not very educated, and he lived with auntie because he has no parents.), everybody ignored him even though he had a conch shell. And his specs were the only way to make a fire, so he represents the scientific and intellectual aspects of civilization. Also, there was a character who attracted my interest; Roger. He is the best companion of Jack, but there are some difference. Jack killed sow to show his charismatic points get authority. But Roger killed sow just because he likes it. He killed sow, he killed Piggy, and he tortured SamnEric. He is the symbol of human brutality and bloodlust at their most extreme.

Luckily, Ralph ran away from them, but he decided to go there again. There was a feast, and SamnEric were guarding the Castlerock. Ralph tried to persuade them. They fully agreed that they didn’t want to follow Jack, but they were afraid of the result which would happen when they betrayed Jack. They just gave him information “Roger sharpened a stick at both ends.” They made a promise, but in the morning, Roger tortured the twins and learned about the place where Ralph was hiding. So they started hunting Ralph, They even made a fire on the island, so the whole island was on fire. Running and Running, Ralph passed out. When he woke up, there was a, adult; an officer of the cruiser. All the survived children came there, and when the officer asked why they hadn’t done things in ‘Coral Island’, everyone started crying. They were finally rescued.

In this book, my favorite character was Simon. Simon was the only one who doubted about the beast while everyone was afraid of it. Also, his behavior is similar to me. He tried to reveal the truth, thought about human nature, and had internal conflicts between acting like ordinary boys or doing what he really wanted to do. I do a lot of internal conflicts similar to Simon, so that part made me feel the same way and understand him more easily.

This novel is actually a parody of ‘Coral Island.’ There were parts which directly mentioned about ‘Coral Island.’ One of them was this; “Jolly good show. Like the Coral Island.”Acually, this book was published during the Cold War. In the Cold War, invisible warfare between Soviet Union and America, the pessimistic view dominated the world. However, ‘Coral Island,’ was written in middle or late 19th Century, which was dominated by optimistic view because of Victorian era. In Victorian age(or era), the European colonized many parts of the world, and their industrialization finally paid off, even to the bottom part of the society-the laborer. So people had optimistic view to their life and society, and it was represented by the novel - ‘Coral Island.‘ In the story, two of the main characters were Ralph and Jack, and they collaborated well to solve the problem. However, after two World Wars, people became pessimistic. And like Coral Island, the novel representing the main view of the age was ‘The Lord of the Flies.’ The author, William Golding, named characters Jack and Ralph on purpose; to parody the Coral Island. And by describing their failure on collaborating, he suggested a pessimistic view to the world and society.

Frankly speaking, I haven’t thought much about background or anything else while reading a book. I only recognized what had been going on and the causality of happening in the book. This book gave me a lot of sources to think about; Human nature, background(both historical or cultural), and the condition of ideal leader. Now, I really hope to read Coral Island to understand this book better, and think about differences between two books.