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Before the start of this review, I would like to apologize that I didn't write 2nd review of this book.
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Lord of the Flies by Willian Golding – review by Hyeonchang Lim
This novel prize-winning classic by William Golding may at first, seem like a normal adventure novel of that time, but as the story goes on, readers will be able to notice that this is not just an adventure novel like The Coral Islands, the book mentioned at the end of the story, but a well written allegory featuring human nature and human society. So, focusing on what the writer intended to say rather than the confusion and disorder that the boys make will lead us to more accurate reading. It should also be helpful to mention that the time period here is wartime, and by the fact that quite a lot of technologies, like the nuclear weapons mentioned in the story, are being used, we can assume that this war’s motive was World War II, which ended in 1945(the work itself was published in 1954).
The story starts with a group of boys who survived in an airplane crash and landed on a tropical island in the middle of nowhere. At first, they don’t know anything about the island and even the fact that many boys were alive on the island. A boy named Ralph and another boy who is called ‘Piggy’ finds a conch. He blows it to find other survivors. (It should be noted that there are no grownups on this Island.) The conch later becomes a symbol of power and control when all the boys are assembled and they grant Ralph and conch the power by means of election. Here, they are divided into three groups. The First is normal big boys, the second, ‘littluns’, and the last is the choir boys led by a power-hungry boy Jack.
As they form a little community on this island, the way of democracy, in its simplest form, voting, is introduced to work together to survive and wait for rescue. The worriful but also thoughtful boy, ‘Piggy’ is in favor of this form and he is the one who will try to stick to this system to the last. However, Jack doesn’t really agree with him. He and his ‘army’, the choir, wants to hunt and live an exciting life then spending time with other kids.
The community has some tasks to do. Those are: making fire and sending out smokes for signaling nearby ships; making shelter so they can stay dry; finding something to eat. The tasks, at first led by Ralph, who was elected to be a leader, seemed to start well, but as the time goes on it eventually starts to fail. This is where we can find the human nature such as making short-sighted decisions, behaving savage behaviours, and putting off one’s responsibilities in favour of tempting actions.
The first discords of this community rings as Jack’s boys, who were supposed to be watching fire misses the ship passing and fails to signal by smoke as they are in their own adventure to hunt pigs living on the island. Of course, there were minor incidents like a little boy going missing and Piggy’s spectacles are crashed, but real point when serious conflicts begins is at this point where the boys form groups and disobeys agreement made in the first place to look for their own pleasure.
The discordance between Ralph and Jack gets worse and worse as Ralph still tries to maintain a controlled community where everybody has their own job to do and is peaceful, but in contrast to that, Jack forms up a group of boys and goes on hunting. Ralph and Jack collides in every way: Ralph aims for rescue and tries to make a sustainable community, but Jack only thinks about momentary fun and lavish feast of pork barbecue; Ralph is the one who tried to stick to original goals when they first formed community and who still believed that the power given to him at fist was still effective, Jack is the one who tried to focus on gaining power based on his force and enjoy the unlimited freedom that was given to them; Ralph tried to stay logical, Jack was more tempt-driven. Eventually, Jack and their fellows succeed in making their own kingdom and even finds a ‘castle rock’, which will be used as their dwelling place.
Jack and his sadistic friend, Roger, makes use of ‘the beast’, the fearful creature that kids believe dwells on this Island. The experience that Jack and Ralph makes also adds to kid’s fear and Jack’s status as a protector with physical power. After killing a pig, Jack offers ‘the beast’ the pig’s head. This act should be interpreted as Jack tries to make himself a leader in the human world in contrast to the beast and its supernatural powers. This kind of relationship between one leader and unknown mystic powers are often used to make people come together and follow one authority obediently. Scenario Writer Lee Kang-baek’s work ‘The Watchman’ and ‘The egg’ could be consulted to improve one’s understanding the theme related to this paragraph. The kid’s, who doesn’t know the real truth – although I doubt that Jack too, knew the truth – is persuaded more deeply by Jack.
Ralph and Piggy were not the only ones who did not yielded to this kind of violence and ignorance. There is a boy named Simon. Simon did not get along with others well (not in a meaning that he fought with others, but in a way that he like being alone). He trudges off into the forest when all the others are trying to decide whether they should follow Ralph or Jack. He is the only one who talks with ‘The Lord of the Flies’ in his hallucinations. Simon is countered there by ‘The Lord of the Flies’ and I think this is the scene where Simon faces his another inner ego, the more violent and instinctive one, trying him to succumb to his inner fears. But, Simon disagrees with ‘The Lord of the Flies’ and walks on. On the top of the mountain, he discovers that the feared ‘beast’ is merely a dead men’s body with a parachute attached to it so that when the wind blows, it moves as if it is alive. Simon, who now understood the ‘mechanics of this parody’(p.205) tries to tell the truth, but by the group of boys who were in a madness shouting ‘Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his Blood!’ he was shockingly and savagely ‘murdered’– as Ralph names the accident -, which marks the end of humanity and civilization.
The madness and uncivilized states the group of boys are in continue afterwards with no one to stop them, which led to Piggy’s death and hunting of Ralph. The story ends as the boys are rescued by the naval officer of their own country, but it should not be seen as the final and happy ending of this story as the name ‘naval officer’ and the ‘cruiser’ that he came with will be used to carry on fighting and kill humans in the real war.
There are still some unanswered questions to points and symbols in this work. Why were there no grown-ups in this Island? I can say that grown-ups, represent logical minds in the aspect that they should be more learned and also will have full control over the kids due to the grown-up’s authority and power. This kind of god-like absolute power would have not been appropriate for the writer’s attempt to depict an uncontrolled free state – just like the earth where there are no meditators save for human themselves - the boys were in.
‘The Lord of the Flies’ still leaves me many questions. Why is it the title of the work although it only appears once in the work? What was the thing that Simon saw? What does it really represent? It represents the human nature, violent and irrational, those that blocks the improvements that can be made to human society. This side of our minds keeps harassing us and lures us into madness. Golding wanted to talk about irresistible human nature that leads to horrible results.
Although this novel has some traces of the traditional theme of Good and the Evil, it stays realistic by making Ralph and Piggy lose power and Jack rise to power, and eventually makes a chaotic ending as boys are overwhelmed by their violent nature. The fact that kids were uncritically being brought around by Jack and their savages could be proved by the point where kids choose ‘to be a pack of painted Indians’, ‘to hunt and kill’, ‘hunting and breaking thngs up’ over ‘to be sensible’ ,’ have rules and agree’ ,’law and rescue’.(p.252) They are just like the mass that follows violent and populist parties in the real world, blinded by profits on the spot and being short-sighted. In the real world too, where the support of the mass often decides who has the real power, Jack should have been the one who finally controls a society. But it still makes us question whether the support and decision of the mass aids to the progress of a community.
Reading this, it left me in a state of shock and disgust at many scenes that were featuring boys’ savageness. It is true that the savage and brutal state the boys were in is a part of human nature and resides in every one’s minds, but we should also know that logical attempts to form a peaceful society and make logical laws to ensure everyone’s freedom and rights are consistently conducted by those who really worry and think about human’s future. This is a bitter comedy that warns what kind of despair human community could fall when no preventions are made. The World War II was one of the worst failures of that work, which left a devastating results and pessimism toward human in every one’s minds. It should be noted that the reason we study history and learn these works of literature is to prevent another events like this from happening and we should always look back at ourselves to find if we are again losing our wits to our negative nature.
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