Top 30 Modern Classics - XXVI

Lord Of The Flies

William Golding

Lord of the Flies, by Nobel Prize winning English author William Golding, was published in 1954.

In the midst of a wartime evacuation, a British plane crashes on or near an isolated island in a remote region of the Pacific Ocean. The only survivors are boys in their middle childhood or pre adolescence. Two boys—the fair-haired Ralph and an overweight, bespectacled boy nicknamed "Piggy"—find a conch, which Ralph uses as a horn to call all the survivors to one area. Ralph is elected their leader, though he does not receive the votes of the members of a boys' choir, led by the red-headed Jack Merridew. 

Jack organises his choir group into a hunting party responsible for discovering a food source. Ralph, Jack, and a quiet, dreamy boy named Simon soon form a triumvirate of leaders. 

The semblance of order quickly deteriorates as the majority of the boys turn idle. At one point, Jack summons all of his hunters to hunt down a wild peg, drawing away those assigned to maintain the signal fire. A ship travels by the island, but without the boys' smoke signal to alert the ship's crew, the ship continues by without stopping. Angered by the failure of the boys to attract potential rescuers, Ralph considers relinquishing his position, but is convinced not to do so by Piggy.

Jack calls an assembly and tries to usurp the position of Ralph. He dose not receive much support. Jack, Roger, and another boy leave the shelters to form their own tribe. However, they are subsequently successful in luring away boys from Ralph's group by providing a feast of cooked pig. 

Simon has a secret hideaway where he goes to be alone. One day while he is there, Jack and his followers erect a faux sacrifice to the beast nearby: a severed pig's head, mounted on a sharpened stick, and soon swarming with flies. Simon conducts an imaginary dialog with the head, which he dubs the "Lord of the Flies". The head mocks Simon's notion that the beast is a real entity, and reveals the truth that the boys, are the beast; it is inside them.

Jack and his crew conclude that the real symbol of power on the island is not the conch, but Piggy's glasses—the only means the boys have of starting a fire. They raid Ralph's camp, confiscate the glasses. In the scuffle that ensues, Ralph escapes while his other three companions as either captured or killed by Jack's crew. 

The following morning, Jack orders his tribe to begin a manhunt for Ralph. Jack's savages set fire to the forest while Ralph desperately weighs his options for survival. Following a long chase, most of the island is consumed in flames. With the hunters closely behind him Ralph trips and falls. He looks up at a uniformed adult - a naval officer whose party has landed from a passing warship to investigate the fire. Ralph bursts into tears over the death of Piggy and the "end of innocence". Infected by his emotion, Jack and the other children, filthy and unkempt but suddenly reverting to their true ages, also spontaneously erupt into sobs.

(Extracts from Wikipedia)

Namaste

Prabir