Lord of The Flies book summary and review

  Check out my Lord of The Flies book summary and review that I created to help you understand the basics of this great book. Lord of the Flies is an allegorical novel by William Golding published in 1954. The novel tells how a group of children stranded on a desert island build a fragile civilization without the guidance of adults. 

In the end, due to the dark side of human hearts, this civilization system was inevitably replaced by barbarism and violence. The theme is the controversial conflict of human nature, individual rights and collective interests, which is a classic in contemporary English novels. William Golding was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983.

Lord of The Flies book summary :

The Lord of the Flies was published at a time when McCarthyism was rampant and the Cold War was raging. The story told in the novel takes place in an unrealistic nuclear war. Some of the characters in the book are ordinary students who are isolated and helpless, others belong to the vocal band and a leader.

Most of the boys (except the vocal band) did not see each other. The novel pushes the boys of the paradise-like country away from modern civilization, describing how these well-educated children fall into primitive barbarism.

Metaphorically, the subject matter of the novel is the conflict between human emotion and civilization - living in peace and harmony under the law - the greed for power. Themes include the conflict between collective thinking and individual rights, the conflict between rationality and sensitivity, and the conflict between morality and immorality. This contradictory presentation, and how people are influenced by them, is the main theorem of the Lord of the Flies.

Lord of the Flies ranks 68th on the American Library Association's list of the 100 most challenging books for 1990-1999. In 2005, "Lord of the Flies" was named Time Magazine's Top 100 English Novels of 1923-2005.

 Modern Library ranks 100th in the list of best novels, 41st in the list of editors and 25th in the list of readers. In 2003, Lord of the Flies ranked 70th on the BBC's The Big Reed.

Lord of the Flies is Goldin's first novel, published in 1954. At the beginning of the novel's release, it was cold. It did not sell 3,000 copies in the United States until 1955, so it had to be removed from the shelves. The novel quickly became a bestseller, however, and should have been read in colleges and universities in the early 1960's.

The novel is currently a major topic in the UK GCSE curriculum and has been adapted twice into English language films: Peter Brooke's version in 1963, Harry Hook's version in 1990 and once in the Philippines (1976).

The story tells the story of a group of 6- to 12-year-old boys who flew to Australia to escape the war, but were unfortunately shot by the enemy and landed on a deserted island with nothing but a knife. Ralph and Piggy pick up a shell and follow the little pig to Ralph to blow up the shell, and the shell makes a loud noise, which calls for all the children on the island to come together.

They have decided that Ralph will be the captain. But Jack is a self-righteous man and does not accept Ralph as captain. At Ralph's decision, Jack was appointed captain of the hunting party (a choir led by Jack). Although Piglet is the most unpopular person on the island, he is smarter than anyone and has become Ralph's assistant over time. Ralph takes Jack and Simon on a tour of the secluded island.

 On his way to explore, he saw a pig and Jack hesitated to pull out a knife to kill it, but it escaped. Jack promises not to hesitate next time. In the beginning, everyone was full of positive emotions, hoping to swim on this secluded island. By the time a child with moles on his face said he had seen a giant "monster", everyone was scared.

Later, they burned wolf smoke with pig's glasses (judging from this, they should be convex glasses), and wanted to let some passing ship find them. But the fire got out of control and turned into a forest fire. A sesame baby also disappeared in the fire and never appeared again (should have been burned, but it is not mentioned in the book. But some people think it was a hallucination due to fear inside).

Jack takes his twin brothers, Sam and Eric, who are guarding the fire, to hunt a wolf and extinguish the fire when a boat passes by and they miss the chance to rescue. So there is a conflict between the two main characters Ralph and Jack and in that conflict Jack breaks the pig's side glasses to divert the attention of the other children and those children gradually begin to lose discipline.

One night a plane crashed and a pilot got stuck in a tree while parachuting. Sam and Eric startled everyone when they saw the corpse in the dark and thought they saw a "monster". So Ralph, Jack and his assistant Roger went to see.

They saw the decaying corpse in the distance and thought it was a monster. Jack has decided to run for another leadership election, but unfortunately no one voted for him. He decides to leave and sets up his own camp and leaves with a lot of older kids (Bigun) Jack. Jack and his followers became oppressors, and Ralph thought they were rude.

Jack and his followers kill a sow in the camp, Jack cuts off his head and hits him with a stick, saying it will be given to the monster. Some flies begin to settle on the side of the pig's head. At this point, Simon had some hallucinations when he came here - he heard the head of a dead pig (he had a hallucination that made him think it was the Lord of the Flies) talking to him and telling him to do something.

Simon discovered that the "monster" was actually in everyone's heart and he also discovered the "true face" of that monster. So he immediately ran down the hill and told the others. But when he went to the others, because of the darkness, everyone thought Simon was a monster, so they killed him by mistake.

Ralph's team continues to decline, while Jack's "barbarians" grow. But since Jack had no equipment to put out the fire, they quietly raided Ralph's camp at night, taking away only the glasses left with a lens. Piglet could not survive without glasses because he lost his glasses (the book emphasizes that his eyesight is extremely poor).

Also they can no longer light fires and let the passing ships save them. So they decided to take the glasses back from Jack. They went to fight in Jack's camp. Piggy was stoned to death by Roger when he said he was "thinking logically." As soon as the pig is killed, the shell breaks. Jack also captures Sam and Eric. Jack immediately tried to kill Ralph, but he escaped.

The next day, Jack's camp hunts Ralph like a pig. They start a forest fire so that Ralph has no place to hide. A passing warship saw the fire, and a ship officer came to the island and saw Ralph and a group of "barbarians". Ralph calls him the captain of the island. Ralph cried for the first time on the island. Officers turned to them so they could express their emotions.

Lord of The Flies book review :

In William Golding's metaphor, Lord of the Flies, he tries to prove that people are bad, and must learn how to be good. This book was written after World War 2, so it means he believes it. He does a very good job of proving his point with the characters for example.

The first character I will talk about is Ralph. At the beginning of the story Ralph is happy that there are no adults on the island, and he messes around. Eventually, Ralph was elected leader by the other kids on the island.

 He is a good leader, and he is the primary representative of discipline, civility and productive leadership. Jack wants to talk about another character. Jack also wants to be the leader, but gets out of Ralph's vote.

Although Jack is not the primary leader of the boys, he can be the leader of the hunt. In a hunt he has a chance to kill a baby pig, but he decides not to. After that he just started caring about killing this pig and Ralph was sick and tired of it.

 Jack even decides to break away from the group to start his own. Almost everyone joins Jack, but Jack was a terrible leader. He thought only of having fun, not of survival. Jack represents chaos among people. Overall, William Golding does a very good job of using this book as a metaphor.

The characters are so well written that it fits the idea he was going for. My dear Jack, because of his development throughout the book. Although Jack is opposed to the story, I still like how he presents the madness of the world.