Lord of the Flies
written by William Golding
223 pages, published by Faber and Faber LTD

Lord of the Flies is written by William Golding 1954. It has been translated to several languages and it is a popular book all over the world. The edition that I've read was first published 1958, and reprinted 1959 and every year from 1963 to 1971, so it is hard to really know when this book was printed.

William Golding was born on the 19 of September in Cornwall, England, and he decided to be a writer when he was only 7 years old. From the very beginning he studied natural science, but he became wearied of that so he began to study English literature and Physics, which he also got degree in. 1935 he made his debut with a poetry collection, but he didn't like to be a poet. His real debut was in 1954 with this book "Lord of the Flies". He continued writing and after several short stories, histories, dramas and articles he was selected to receive the Nobel's Prize of literature in 1983. William has also written The Inheritors, Free Fall, the Spire, Darkness Visible and many more.

Lord of the Flies is about a group of English schoolboys who are from 6 to 12 years old. They have been set on a fate island somewhere in the south Pacific after a plane crash. This could have been a dreamsituation for the boys; no teachers, no parents and no rules that tell them what to do or not do, but the dreamsituation develops in to a hard society where rules are set up and everyone has its own task. They set up a fire so that they could be found if someone flies over or went by boat near the island. They started to hunt and live a life like if they never would be rescued. After a while this big group became divided into two smaller groups with Jack and Ralph as leaders. This "competition" developed a bloody fight on life and death.

The leading characters in this book are Ralph, Jack and Piggy. The other boys are mentioned often but most of it is about those three boys. Ralph and Jack are both "leaders" but in different ways, they are not so clever but it is always their ideas that the group use. That's because they are so "loud", everyone listen to them. Piggy is really different from Ralph and Jack, he is kind, he do what other want him to do, he seems to be quite shy too, but he is also very clever, he has good ideas but it is hard for him to be heard. The environment where everything happens, is on an island that looks very nice, like a paradise; palms, white sand, coco-nuts, clear water and so on.

I think that William use a good modern language and it is easy to understand the context, but some parts were a little bit hard. There were a lot of new words and its impossible to find them all in a dictionary but as a said it is easy to understand the context. He describes the environment in a wonderful way, and it is not hard to imagine how it really looked like. I will give you an example of an exemplary environment-description:

"The shore was fledged with palm trees. These stood or leaned or reclined against the light and their green feathers were a hundred feet up in the air. The ground beneath them was a bank covered with coarse grass, torn everywhere by the upheavals of fallen trees, scattered with decaying coco-nuts and palm saplings. Behind this was the darkness of forest proper and the open space of the scar. Ralph stood, one hand against a grey trunk, and screwed up his eyes against the shimmering water. Out there, perhaps a mile away, the white surf flinked on a coral reef, and beyond that the open sea was dark blue."

Sometimes I could find it too much of anything in his descriptions but the book would not be as good as it is without those long environmental descriptions. I like Lord of the Flies because it was exciting and it showed how we, human animals, really are. I've also searched on Internet for other opinions about the book, and some of them says that it was to long, to horrible, to cruel and so on, but there were also people who thought that it was mirror of how bad we actually are in a pressed situation, but that's also what I think William wanted to say with this book, he did also show the difference between two different kind of leaders. It is really a reminder about how bad it is in some countries all around the world; people fights without reasons when they can have fun instead.

I think that it is a good book for everyone to read, I highly recommend it.

Written by Håkan Enhager