Lord of the Flies

Copyright Jonathan McNeill 20021105

There are few books that I have read in my lifetime that I truly hated. And the number of those books just increased by 100%. Recently, I read "Lord of the Flies" by William Golding, bringing my number of books in my list of hated books to a stunning two. Unremarkably, the other book on my list of hated books is also considered a classic, and is, for equally unknown/bizarre reasons, on many high schools' required reading lists. The other book is "The Red Badge of Courage," by Steven Crane.

Needless to say, if you liked Red Badge, ignore everything I'm saying, run to your nearest bookstore and buy Flies.

Golding firmly believes that when humans are removed from civilization and the guiding hand of external government they will immediately revert to savagery. Golding uses Flies as a symbolic illustration of this "principle." In Flies, a group of British lads, between the ages of 5 and 16 years, are stranded on an uninhabited island without the "government" of grownups surrounding them.

Immediately, the two main characters, Ralph and "Piggy" (whose real name is never used) decide that there must be rules to their little society. They call everyone together, rig an "election" to determine Ralph to be the chief, and tell everyone how and when they can speak. With that said, you may find it difficult to believe that Ralph and Piggy are not villains in the book. The real villain in the book is Jack Merridew.

Back in civilization, Jack Merridew is the leader of a boys choir. The image of societal perfection in behavior and dignity. Separated from the guiding hand of government, Jack and his merry choir become a group of savage, and violent hunters.

With all Golding's attempts at showing the necessity of rules, his rulemakers and rulekeepers seem to have only the most unnecessary rules. They have rules about keeping a fire lit, about only keeping a fire lit in a certain place. They have rules that determine who can speak and when. What they don't have is rules about keeping the "littluns" (the youngest boys, who often get permanently "lost") nearby. Piggy suggests that they should keep a list of all the names of the boys, but even this is only given a perfunctory attempt. A much more moral thing would have been to assign a "bigun" as a partner to every "littlun." Instead, the littluns get lost, and presumably die. As it becomes evident that the littluns are dying, the few remaining "moral"/civilized main characters show little or no concern about their presumed deaths. However, the first death of a "bigun" becomes a defining moment for all of the main characters. Though this death was a murder, their views and paradigms seem terribly skewed.

If this sounds implausible, if any of it sounds implausible, that's your reason kicking in. The entire book is very contrived, and none of the characters are realistic. I do not mind allegory, some of my favorite books are allegories. However, in those books the characters were well-developed and believable. In Flies, the characters are merely puppets used to illustrate Golding's misguided philosophy. The only character that any empathy or sympathy can be felt for is a minor character named Simon, who many purport to be a Christ-figure. Simon seems to be the only character not specifically designed only to personify one specific quality. The other characters seem to only personify one quality per character, and that's all they exisit for. My sympathy or empathy for Simon also cannot be explained by saying he is a Christ-figure. I don't understand how his character has any similarity to Christ, except that Simon is murdered by a mob. My sympathy for Simon is because of his realistic intellect, and his nervousness speaking to groups of people. Momentarily, a few pages before his death, the reader is actually taken inside the mind of Simon. If this happens with any other character in the book, it does not happen as meaningfully or as realistically as it does with Simon.

If humans are merely a product of their environment, as Golding believes, then the only real villains in the book are the ones who didn't adapt to their surroundings. In other words, those who maintained a sense of "civilized society" were the true villains. What's more, if this is the case, there is no sense in reading books or watching movies about great, overcoming people. Those we call heros are simply the product of their environment. There is nothing special about these people that we should admire them or have any particular desire to think of them.

I can see why teachers assign this book. In a system which loves docility and malleability in its students, what greater programming could there be? "If you seperate yourself from our control, you will become murderous savages, creating your own sacrifice-demanding gods, living without any control or restraint." The problem is, when their prophecy is believed, it becomes self-fulfilling.

I remind you that your identity rests solidly in your own hands, and that is the beauty in humanity. It isn't in our great architecture, in our art, or in our societies. It is in our self-determination. We honor the men and women who fight to become more than society tells them they can be. We have no memory of those who sit docilely by as time takes its toll. There are no honors for those who merely conform to normalcy. Because we define ourselves, humans who allow themselves to be created by their environment are nothing more than animals. And yet the weight of human history decries a wholly different story. The history of humanity is a history of people who changed their environments and their societies. The individual holds civilization accountable, not the other way around. Humans do not need a government to tell them that stealing and murder are wrong. That isn't to say that humans will always do what is right, only that they often know what is right, and if they do wrong, they do it in opposition to that knowledge. Governments do need humans to tell them what is right and what is wrong.