Pretend they were still boys, school boys who had said ‘Sir, yes, Sir’ and worn caps? Daylight might’ve answered yes; but darkness and the horrors of death said no.
I am in the minority of individuals who were not required to read Lord of the Flies in high school and having just now read it, I’m grateful for my belated exposure.
William Golding paints a world where the playtime imaginings of being stranded on a deserted island becomes reality for a group of British school boys, a reality void of adults. Whatever semblance of order they pull together after they are first shipwrecked falls away as conflict and a coupe for power pull the group apart, exposing an allegory of society that every teacher and student has had to pick apart.
I’m grateful for my belated reading for two reasons. The first, is that any book assigned in school must fight an uphill battle against being labled as “work” in order to leave a good impression, and I fear I would not have appreciated the quality of Golding’s story if I were required to analyze it. The second reason is the emphasis placed on adults being a type of safety net, the reliable backbone to order, structure, and society. Were I to have read the book in high school, I wouldn’t have thought twice about this subconscious association, agreeing with the sentiment that adults equalled safety and stability. Since I’m reading as one of those “adults” and am very much disillusioned of the notion that to be adult means you have everything in control, the emphasis strikes me in a painfully ironic way, providing another layer of Golding’s analysis to gnaw on.
I was pleasantly surprised by a book that I only read in order to check off an obligatory list of “books everyone assumes you’ve read”, and if you were one of the unlucky masses who were forced to read it in school, I’d encourage you to give it another go.
Personal rating: 7.5/10
Recommend? Yes
Re-read? Maybe, but not likely
Time: 1:57
Bonus Content
William Golding’s message at the end of the audio book:
“…because what’s in a book is not what an author thought he put into it, it’s what the reader gets out of it.”