Book Review of Lord of the Flies

A book review of Lord of the Flies

  Introduction

Lord of the Flies, written by William Golding, tells a story about a group of children are evacuated during a war. Their plane is shot down so that they are cast away on a deserted and inhabited island. At first, they can live together in harmonious way. However, owing to the fear to the beast,they separate into two tribes and come to fight against each other because of the evil of human nature.

At the beginning of the novel, Ralph uses the conch to gather the rest boys. Through a democratic election, Ralph is elected as the leader of the island. However, as the head of a choir, Jack is not suppressed by Ralph. He wants to get rid of the control of civilization, so the conflicts between them are gradually upgrading. They separate into two tribes: civilized tribe and barbaric tribe. Ralph is the leader of the civilized and democratic one, which encourages people to live and work together towards the same aim——being rescued. On the contrary, the other tribe,led by Jack, advocates violence, urging people to break down the constraints of civilization and ultimately causing chaos and casualties.

  Character analysis

In Lord of the Flies,there are four main characters who are worth discussing.

Ralph,a twelve-year-old boy with fair hair, is the leader of civilized and democratic tribe. He lives in a typical middle-class family so that he is considerable, decent and sensible. Ralph believes in two things: firstly, they will be rescued soon. That’s why he sticks to setting fire all the time; and secondly ,he is always insists on building a democratic and orderly society. His power and impact are over others at first. It is he who finds the conch and arranges that only the people who hold the conch can speak when holding a meeting. Conch is his talisman. As long as the conch remains, there is Ralph’s influence. However, as the other “littluns”succumb to Jack’s violence and savagery, Ralph’s power decreases inch by inch with Jack’s increasing. Law and order are facing danger of being destructed by the threat of violence. In the end, conch gets smashed and Ralph’s power gets smashed as well. Just as the line says in the book:”Ralph wept for the end of innocence ,the darkness of man’s heart, and fall through the air of the true,wise friend called Piggy.”

Jack, the head of a choir, is the representative of savagery. He marches the boys two and two up the beach. He loves adventure, excitement and shedding blood. The choir, which is led by Jack ,is responsible for hunting. At first, they are not capable of killing a pig. However, as time goes by, they are addicted to hunt. Jack paints his face like a barbarian so that he becomes safe from shame and self-consciousness behind the mask of his paint. As conflicts upgrade, savagery gradually controls the rest of the group. Finally he gets the triumph of savagery. It is their barbaric behaviors that cause the smash of civilization and the death of Simon and Piggy.

In Lord of the Flies, Simon plays a mythic and psychological role, who is a small and skinny boy. As a shy boy, he is not good at addressing speeches or talking in public. However,he is a mythic saint as well, who equips with the ability of foresight. When people are discussing what the beast is, he mentions initially that maybe beast is only ourselves,which means he is the first one claiming that the real beast if the evil in our heart. To Ralph, Simon prophesies that”you’ll get back where you came from,”and it comes true in the end. For finding out what the beast really is, Simon sets out to discover it since it is not a thing to fear. When he finds that so-called beast is just the body of a pilot, Simon decides to come down the mountain and save others from their false fears. What is an irony that he is beaten to death as others treat him as the beast mistakenly. The boys kill the only one who can share the truth with them. Unfortunately for them, they don’t realize that the dead are not be feared, the live are.

Piggy, a fat boy with asthma, is the brains of the civilized tribe. He is the most active advocate of civilization. His spectacles are the necessary tool to kindle fire, so we can treat it as the symbol of science and knowledge. Meanwhile, he is wise enough , for example, to question Ralph ‘s blind faith in rescue. Piggy is the only one who is loyal to Ralph all the time, and tries to stop him from making mistakes. Although he is a boy full of wisdom, he is tricked by others all the time. From my view, his shortcomings are that he believes in science completely and he can’t see the darkness of human, which are the part of the reasons that lead to his death. Golding dramatizes his death that” he hurtles through the air under a rock dislodged by savages. His skull and his brain spill out.” The result that he and the conch getting smashed stands for the destroy of civilization.