Lord of the Ramblings? Lord of the Flies by William Golding

Cassie <3
Aug 28, 2023
2 min read

My Rating: 1 Star

I wanted to like this. I really did. It seems like it should be the backbone of all young adult dystopian books. Kids stuck on an island with no parents, creating their own little society. But...I hated this.

The writing is so incoherent, I didn't even know what was going on half of the time. There's no lead up to any of the important events, none of the characters are well developed, and of course there's the never ending descriptions about the island.

I've read some classics, ok. I know how to have patience for eighteenth century ramblings. But this was 1954!!!! What is the reason??

First of all, I truly could not hate these kids more. I guess I can add this book to my list of reasons to never have children. They could get stuck on island and go ballistic, start having hallucinations, and kill the few kids that are actually nice.

And second of all, I thought these "kids" would be at least sixteen with some kind of thought process in their minds. But no, these kids are straight up twelve years old and are acting like wild monkeys with no thoughts whatsoever (except for my boy Piggy, that is).

I suppose if you can focus enough to figure out what's going on in this book, there are good themes about civilization, order, mob mentality, etc. But it's a pretty bleak story without a lot of hope. Even the adults that the kids look to for salvation from the island are in the middle of a war. AKA they're too busy killing other people to even find the kids. So therefore, everything sucks and all of humanity is bad.

I appreciate the actual storyline and themes of this book, but it was a true struggle to get through the writing to even figure out what was going on.

In conclusion: Just read the SparkNotes on this and go read a new YA dystopian novel. Sometimes the products of inspiration are better than the source of inspiration itself. Better yet, just go watch Lost. Even with its bizarre ending, it was better than this.

Synopsis:

At the dawn of the next world war, a plane crashes on an uncharted island, stranding a group of schoolboys. At first, with no adult supervision, their freedom is something to celebrate; this far from civilization the boys can do anything they want. Anything. They attempt to forge their own society, failing, however, in the face of terror, sin and evil. And as order collapses, as strange howls echo in the night, as terror begins its reign, the hope of adventure seems as far from reality as the hope of being rescued. Labeled a parable, an allegory, a myth, a morality tale, a parody, a political treatise, even a vision of the apocalypse, Lord of the Flies is perhaps our most memorable novel about “the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart.”