Unkai

Lord of the Flies

For the study of the first amendment and censorship we had to read a banned or challenged book. I read Lord Of The Flies by William Golding. Lord Of The Flies was written in the 1950's during the World War Two era.

This book is about a bunch of boys aged 6-12 that get stranded on an uninhabited island with no adults. They elect Ralph as leader and Jack and the choir members from his school as the hunters of the group. The little kids, or litluns as they are referred to in the book, believe there is a monster on the island, and as the book progresses some of the big kids believe the monster is real after a few kids mistake a dead man for the monster. Jack splits off from the group because he does not agree with Ralph's obsession with keeping the signal fire burning at all times and would rather be hunting then tending to it. The majority of the group goes with him except for Ralph, Piggy, Simon, Sam, and Eric. After one of the new groups hunts they cut off a sows head and put it on a spear, and stuck in the ground as an offering to the beast. Simon sees the dead man for what it really is and when he sees the pigs head it talks to him and tells him that his theory that the beast is actually just the boys fear of the unknown and it reveals itself to be the Lord of the Flies. When he goes to tell the other boys what he found out they mistake him for the beast and kill him out of fear. Jack's tribe realizes they cannot make cooking fires without Piggy's glasses so they ambush Ralph and the others in the night and steal Piggy's glasses. When Ralph, Piggy, Sam, and Eric go to speak with Jack's tribe to get Piggy's glasses back Ralph and Jack end up fighting, Sam and Eric get taken prisoner, and Roger kills Piggy. Sam and Eric (now part of Jacks tribe) warn Ralph that the tribe plans to hunt Ralph and put his head on a spear like they did to the sow. Roger tortures Sam and Eric until they tell him where Ralph is hiding, so Jack's tribe sets off hunting for Ralph and light the forest on fire to smoke Ralph out of hiding, but the fire burns out of control and the whole island catches on fire. When Ralph reaches the opposite end of the island he finds a navy soldier their, he had spotted the fire and came to find the people on the island. When everyone sees the cruiser and the soldier they forget about the hunt and are happy to be rescued.

I believe that lord of the flies was banned because of the violence, gore, and because it suggests that humans are no more than savage animals. Jack and his hunters attack a sow and her piglets while they were feeding, stabbing one piglet with a spear and stabbing several into the mother while she ran until she finally collapsed from loss of blood and lack of energy. Then the boys jumped on her stabbing their spears wherever they could until Jack cut her throat with his knife. Robert exclaims "Right up her ass!"(123). Talking about where to put the spear to carry her body back to camp.

An example of the violence in the book is when after Simon returns from talking with the Lord of the Flies and the others kill him. "The beast struggled forward, broke the ring and fell over the steep edge of the rock to the sand by the water. At once the crowd surged after it, poured down the rock, leapt onto the beast, screamed, struck, bit, tore."(139). The beast in that part was Simon. The others mistook him for the beast, and they murdered him.

An example of the gore is when Jacks tribe killed Piggy. "His head opened and stuff came out and turned red. Piggy's arms and legs twitched a bit, like a pig's after it has been killed."(165). This describes when Piggy landed on the rock after he had been knocked off a cliff by a boulder sent rolling by Roger.

"There were no words, and no movements but the tearing of teeth and claws."(139). This quote suggests that the humans were like animals in the way they were fighting, saying that they the tore each other apart with their teeth and claws, like animals.

Although Lord Of The Flies is found offensive by some it has some redeeming qualities. It is a classic story of survival in which the characters