Lord of the Flies

Lord of the Flies is Golding’s first published work, first circulated in 1954. A cautionary tale that is highly ranked as a modern classic and the best known of the Nobel and Booker prize winner's works.

The set-up, however, was rather lacking in verisimilitude. Set in a world at war, a group of children were evacuating when their plane crashed on a deserted island. The story begins with the boys already on the island and enjoying the sun, sand and sea - the crash referred to in passing. However, if indeed the kids are on the island as a result of a crashed plane, and that the pilots and presumably stewards and stewardesses are dead, surely it was a serious accident. Surely then there will be bodies of both adults and kids. Surely after such a traumatic experience, limbs would be shattered, blood would have spilled, not to mention Piggy’s glasses. But the kids seem to emerge from it in complete soundness of mind and are in fact rather carefree! As if they had arrived on a cruise and were participating in a scout camp. Perhaps William Golding wished to start off with a halcyon spirit so that the eventual deterioration will have the desired contrast. In any case, I had some trouble buying into the set up. The boys initially began by an imitation of civilization – voting for a leader and assigning jobs. Soon, however, frictions between personalities, ideas and directions lead to division, antagonism, violence and deaths.

Golding’s book is essentially a miniature cautionary portrayal of the breakdown of the thin façade of civilization when the constraining regulations are removed and the primal urges are free to be unleashed. People, made vulnerable to the elements and the most basic needs, revert to the basics of Schopenhauer’s ‘Will’, or the basic instinct to survive and regress to embrace animism, tribalism and superstitious – in other  words, the most basic, instinctual and emotional aspects of what Darwin called our lowly origins rather than use logic, order and civilized behaviours. The book highlights that though we, the species, have progressed far, the progress is gained through tremendous efforts and that the basic animal instincts dwell within, ready to pounce. Because it is implanted earlier in our evolutionary history and has been useful in aiding survival, they are more powerful than the higher faculties. Vigilance is therefore the price of civilization, to prevent the recrudescence of ideologies and behaviours driven by these lowly instincts. The title, ‘Lord of the Flies’, refers to Beelzebub, one of the seven princes of hell, representing gluttony. Having participated in WWII in the navy (I believe as a member who sunk the Bismarck no less) and partaken in the Normanby landing on D-day, the war-induced allegory is very pertinent.

The characters of Ralph began as a likeable figure: a young boy with natural physical appeal and charisma but rather immature and cruel like most little boys. He represents, superficially, a natural leader and was hence elected as such in a democratic fashion. But as the story went on, his character becomes less and less appealing. There is no sign of humour, no clarity of thought (except keeping the notion of being rescued whilst the other descend to bloodlust and primeval behaviours), no leadership other than that which was given to him in the first instance almost by default and in any case largely to Piggy’s help.  He is taciturn, quick to anger, awkwardly emotional and lacks that unique feature of little boys: making friends quickly and having that mateship and solidarity to his friends.  Most of his ideas come from Piggy, whom he treats with disdain and impatience. Compared to someone like Tom Sawyer, Ralph was hard to like. You can imagine Tom diffusing any heated situation with a joke or making a silly face, something beyond Ralph, or in fact, any of the characters. The only positive thing I can fathom is his resistance from falling down the descent into barbarism, but you have to wonder how much of that is from staunchness of character, or rather (what I think more likely) from his antagonism with Jack and an undeserved pride that disallow him from relinquishing the power of the conch and the seat of leadership. The fury with which he dealt with the fire going out caused the turning point where the relationship between him and Ralph sours really says it all. Ralph lacks tact, humour, irony, patience, self-control and diplomacy, all things required for leadership. Golding indeed writes in the voting scene that his only qualities were his looks and the conch, the symbol of leadership. Perhaps a pertinent observation of human nature: that we are too much and too quickly impressed by outward appearance; indeed research says that an interviewer makes up his or her mind in the first dozen seconds of seeing the interviewee. Elections too is largely determined by media appearances – the leader must look the part, say the right thing with the right tone and the sound-bites is usually enough to determine the choice for most.

Piggy, on the other hand, is more able to engender sympathy, or at least empathy. Not altogether a likeable boy: pedantic, self-righteous, demanding and, to be honest, rather exasperating, he also lacks any leadership qualities, being fat, slow, short-sighted, asthmatic and with a habit of quoting his aunt. But still he is the most intellectual character. His obsequy towards Ralph is most likely due to his own recognition of his lack of confidence and leadership and therefore requires Ralph as proxy to voice his opinions. Ralph’s distinct apathy towards him until nearing the very end and the mal treatment that he receives from the others allow the readers to sympathise with him. However, I feel that Golding rather over cooked him, what with the repeated mention of asthma, the wiping of glasses etc. Sometimes he is rather lucid in thought and almost adult in his reasoning, but at other times, he would be annoyingly indignant and brittle, the type of boys who are magnets to bullying. His graphic and painful death makes his a tragic character, one who wishes for reason and order more than most but is killed in the most haphazard and brutal fashion. He perhaps represents the fact that logic, reason and being right alone is not enough – that truth without style is not enough to persuade. As someone said eloquently ‘a true thing expressed badly becomes a lie’. He could also, along with Simon, the boy who recognised that the so-called ‘beast’ in the forest whom the boys turn into a superstition and try to placate with the offering of a pig’s head, is in fact the dead body of a parachutist swaying on a tree and who is subsequently killed by the boys, mistaken for the beast before he could relate his realisation, be a metaphor for the impotence of reason and logic in the face of the mixture of brutal barbarism and superstitious thinking.

Rounding up the triad of main characters, Jack is perhaps the most well portrayed. Brash, prideful but with a boyish quickness to forget, he initially got along well with Ralph though Ralph’s election victory as leader was a shame to him. Jack had the urge to explore and to succumb to the ideas of self-sufficiency, the epitome of which is hunting. His first inability to strike the killing blow is again well written. The confrontation of a romantic idea and base drive with the realities of a screaming, struggling animal and the struggle of courage is quite realistic. His joy in the first kill and the immense pride to provide the tribe with meat is again understandable. Confronted with Ralph’s rage at letting the signal fire out whilst hunting and thereby missing a potential chance of rescue, he tried to diffuse the situation much better than Ralph could have managed. The fact that he has concrete results from his activities, meat, bolstered his natural leadership. This, together with the manipulating use of tribalism and quasi-religious rituals like the chants and face painting, shifts the boys towards him. He represents the downward spiral to the succumbing of primal desires – becoming something of a totalitarian leader, using the same weapons of fear, intimidation and coercion.

Golding was able to sketch out the desolate, lonely feeling of an island. His characters though rather lacks in personality. Perhaps he used this technique on purpose to heighten the tension and to jam up the situation by disallowing resolve and diffusion (maybe that’s why he used small boys, who are less able to reason but more likely to act). The ending was rather good, if a trifle over dramatic. The meeting with the sailor suddenly strip away the fantastic and makes one realise once more that they were just small boys playing (seriously) at civilisation, reflecting in its vignette tribalism, war, deaths, politics and the darkness in the nature of human beings, the vital ingredients of the majority of human history and how it progresses.

As a grammar boy and Oxfordian, then having served in the war, Golding’s book is one that relinquishes the romantic notion of the golden tinged image of English civilisation, the what-ho, we’re all good chaps Wodehousian idealism. Although I’m not sure of the accuracy of his psychology, it is, as an allegory, a pertinent book none the less. To end with a quotation from the end of the book, its summa: 'Ralph wept for the loss of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.'