At the behest of my wife, and as a last-ditch effort to hit my Goodreads reading goal for 2024, I have been dusting off a few shorter works of fiction on our bookshelf that I probably should have read before graduating from high school. I have been surprised at the dearth of novels in this young adult fiction category that I have read. I have also come to realize that there is a category of books that is difficult to label as young adult fiction simply because it is so much more formative than that and affords a level of respect short of literary canonization. One such work, and my last completed novel of 2024, is William Golding’s 1954 novel Lord of the Flies.
Among the most striking things surrounding this novel was my realization within the first few pages that I had only a vague impression of the plot and overall theme of theme of the story. For some reason, I had falsely believed that the novel was about a tribe of cannibalistic youth on an otherwise uninhabited island in the ocean. The actual content was to me more jarring and believable, with poetic imagery that lingered in my mind long after the covers of the book were closed.
The book begins with a group of British school boys stranded on an island in the Indian Ocean following a plane crash. Notably, the details surrounding the plane crash are never given, and there is also no plausible explanation for why no adults survived the crash. Presumably there were adults on the plane, at least to pilot the plane, but the oldest survivor of the plane crash is a boy named Ralph who is around 12 years old. He is the protagonist of the story, along with his rotund, cautious, myopic, and asthma-prone circumstantial companion Piggy.
The two make their way to the beach from the plane crash site and soon find a beautiful conch shell. Piggy recognized its utility in being able to rally any other survivors who might be on the island and showed Ralph how to blow it to summon others. Soon survivors arrive and a first meeting is held in which Ralph becomes the de facto leader. He is proclaimed the chief, and we are introduced to an undisclosed number of “littluns” and approximately seven “biguns” at this meeting. Among the seven biguns is another boy around Ralph’s age named Jack Merridew.
Jack is already a leader of sorts by the time he is introduced, as he is leading a group of choir boys, and it is implied that he oversaw them before the plane crash. He reluctantly acquiesces to the hand vote of the first assembly that Ralph should be leader, though the ominous undertones of his resentment towards Ralph are present from the start. Ralph proposes a conciliatory gesture by making Jack the leader of a band of hunters composed of his choir boys. Ralph, Jack, and a choir boy named Simon then set out to explore the island and leave Piggy to take a census of the “littluns”.
The three adventurers climb the tallest mountain on the island and initially get along famously, playing as a group of English school boys might on a pretend marooned island. Ralph proposes that they light a fire in hopes that a passing ship might see the smoke and come to their rescue. They use Piggy’s glasses as a magnifying glass to create the first fire, and the continual maintenance of this fire on the mountain as well as their improbable rescue becomes the sole fixation of Ralph and Piggy.
On their trek to the mountain, they also discover that the island is plentiful not just with fruit but also with wild pigs. Jack is at first fascinated but then increasingly consumed with the idea of hunting and killing these pigs. It becomes evident that his hunting and the party of converted choir boys are approaching the hunt with more than mere practicality and a desire for meat. They begin to descend into blood lust and a sort of frenzied return to that state of nature that civilization had once tamed.
As can reasonably be expected, tension and a power struggle ensue between Ralph and Jack. The conch and its ability to call an orderly assembly gradually lose meaningful power as the English school boys become more uncouth and disconnected from the societal moorings that once anchored them. This is especially apparent when Piggy, the clearest voice of reason on the island, attempts to use the conch and garners no respect from the assembly. Paranoia also creeps in, and they begin to fantasize about a “beast” on the island that must either be hunted and killed or abated with pig sacrifice.
While Ralph represents an attempt at order and civilization and Jack represents the innate pull towards savagery and power – one of the more intriguing characters in the story is Simon. He seems to characterize innate human spirituality and morality and often ventures out into the woods on his own for solitude. He has an encounter with the beast and the question is posed to him:
“Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill.. You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you? I’m the reason why… things are what they are.”
Simon brings his newly enlightened thinking on the beast back to the rest of the boys, and their response is an integral theme of this work. Once stripped of the trappings of civilization and society, our self-imposed morals break down in the face of the dynamic allure of power and savagery. Undoubtedly after experiencing the horrors of WWII as a Royal Navy lieutenant and commanding a landing craft on D-Day, Golding peered into the raw soul of his fellow man when all the rules were suspended and saw a smiling pig’s head with blood dripping from its mouth.
In the Old Testament, the Lord of the Flies is a literal translation for Ba’alzevuv – possibly a rabbinical mockery of the Philistine god Ba’al as being a pile of excrement only fit for attracting flies. To the Philistines, he was the god of pride and war Ba’alzebub. New Testament Christians thought of this demon as the transliteration Beelzebub, perhaps another name for Satan. Further into the occult literature of the 16th century Catholicism, he was more commonly thought of as a fallen angel in the hierarchy of Hell. He was cast as a chief demon in John Milton’s Paradise Lost and John Bunyan’s The Pilgrims Progress. This persistent fiend even made his way into the Salem Witch Trials as a possessing demon, with Cotton Mather penning a pamphlet titled Of Beelzebub and his Plot.
Fitting for the transition to a post-modern world, Golding challenges us to think of the Lord of the Flies in a different way than he has been thought of before. To drive the point home, he places these uncivilized and savage children side by side with the civilized and equally savage adults who through war and conquest created the world that made this novel possible in the first place. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to take a closer look at why things are what they are, as globally the beast continues with us into another year.
Written by Cal Wilkerson
Brains and Brawn 