Lord of the Flies

October, 2018

In Lord of the Flies, written by William Golding in 1954, a group of boys ages 6 to 13 crash land on a desert island, and find themselves under the leadership of two extremely inexperienced and different young boys. One strives to lead with fairness and a system, while the other leads with an iron fist and a skill for hunting. The novel truly is a sobering image of what humanity is bound to do, left to itself. It shows the evil tendencies, the selfishness, and the utter darkness of our hearts. Golding presents these very mature, serious topics in a brilliant display of symbolism, and a series of metaphors that are sure to spark phenomenal conversations. 

Some overarching themes in Lord of the Flies are Man vs Nature, and the fact that humans are basically evil. When thinking about those themes, some quotes from the book that show these are, “Maybe there is a beast… maybe it's only us.” “We did everything adults would do. What went wrong?” “What are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages?” “The world, that understandable and lawful world, was slipping away.”