Lord of the flies door William Golding

Lord of the Flies                                        
William Golding, 1954

223 pages

The story starts when a group of children crash with an airplane on an uninhabited island. They discover that they are all alone, there aren’t any adults. To survive on the island they will have to organize themselves into a society. They decide to choose a leader, and they vote for Ralph. Ralph is a 12-year old boy, with long fair hair. After the crash, when the kids were scattered around the island, he was the first one who found his way to the beach .There he finds a conch on which he blows. Everybody comes after the signal, and so he succeeds in gathering everybody on the beach. But also Jack wants to be the leader of the group. At home, Jack is the leader of the school choir. He is a good leader and he treats his choir members like soldiers. Ralph wants to keep Jack satisfied, so he makes him the leader of the “hunters”, the choir members and some other “biguns”. Ralph has the idea to make a fire on the top of the mountain, so that ships and planes can see them. Four hunters will watch the fire and keep it burning. The first time they try to make the fire, they accidently put the forest on fire. From that moment on, the fire is treated with more caution and there aren’t any bushfires after this. The fire is lit with Piggy’s glasses. Piggy is a fat boy with glasses and asthma and is frequently bullied. With the fire burning, they build shelters, and eat fruit from the trees. This goes on for a few weeks, until they see a ship passing by. Ralph looks up to the mountain, and he see that the fire is out. When he arrives at the top, Jack comes back with his hunters, they caught a pig. Ralph is very angry and he keeps telling that the fire is the most important thing on the island. Meanwhile the “littluns” are afraid for a beast. This beast should live in the sea and come out at night to frighten the children. At first the biguns don’t believe them, but the fear is getting more and more followers, and the children start to see weird things.

At one night, the twins Sam and Eric are watching the fire on top of the mountain, but they both fall asleep. While they are asleep, a dead parachutist lands on top of the mountain. The wind makes him go up and down. The twins notice this and run downside. At an assembly the next morning, the children decide to go to the mountain with an “army” of children with wooden spears. Ralph Jack and Roger go to look first, but when they see the parachutist, they all run away. Down at the beach, Jack says he quits living under Ralph’s leadership. He calls Ralph a weak person, because he would have run away when they saw the beast. Ralph and Jack were arguing for a long time. Jack thought hunting was the most important thing, and Ralph thought the fire was. Jack tells he will go to a cliff, which he calls “Castle Rock”. Everybody who wants to join his tribe can come. A little time after the meeting Ralph notices that some biguns have disappeared. And when Jack gives a party at Castle Rock, whit a pig as ace, almost all the biguns join Jack’s tribe, instead of Ralph’. Ralph only got Piggy, Sam and Eric, and Simon. The four decide to go to Jack’s party, to win some biguns back.

Meanwhile, Simon is in the forest and finds a cut-off pig head. Jack left it as a sacrifice to the beast. It is placed on a stick, sharpened at both ends. The head starts to talk to Simon. He calls himself the lord of the Flies, because he is covered with Flies. The Lord of the Flies tells Simon that Simon will be killed by the other children on the island. Simon collapses, and when he wakes up, he stumbles to the mountain. Simon discovers that the beast is actually a dead parachutist. He runs down to the party so he can tell the rest of the children. During Simons run back, it starts to storm, and ruthless thunders and impenetrable darkness overthrow the island. When Simon arrives at the party, loud screaming: “Beast, beast”, everybody thinks Simon to be the beast. They attack Simon immediately.

Simon’s dead body is taken by the sea. Waves flush over him, and the ocean gods claim his broken and torn body.

Now Ralph is alone with Piggy, Sam and Eric, and the little ones. They decide to make a fire on the beach, for the ships. They do this with piggy’s specs again. Meanwhile, Jack has got a problem. He has got the meat from the hunted pigs, but he needs Piggy glasses for a fire. So that night, they sneak into Ralphs shelters and steal piggy glasses. The next morning Ralph, Piggy and Sam and Eric decide to go to Castle Rock and ask piggy’s glasses back, as an act of despair. They take the conch, the symbol of authority on the island, with them. When they arrive, all the hunters are painted on their faces and bodies, and they are all armed with wooden spears. Ralph asks Piggy’s glasses back but Jack attacks him. Rogers throws a stone at piggy and hit him on the head. Piggy stumbles, drops the conch which falls into thousand pieces, and falls of the cliff. Forty meters down, he falls, hitting a square, flat rock. His head breaks open and his brains come out. The ocean comes, and with a big wave, Piggy is gone in less than five seconds. The twins are being tied, and forced to join Jacks tribe. Ralph can just escape with spears flying round his ears. He waits until nightfall, and sneaks to the walls of Castle Rock, and talks with Sam and Eric. Tomorrow they will all go out for hunt. They will hunt Ralph. “What will happen to me when they catch me?” He asks. “Roger sharpened a stick at both ends”, they answer. Ralph doesn’t understand what they mean, even though the weapon in is hands was taken by him from the pig’s head. Ralph tells he will hide in the shrubs near the camp, so that the hunters will pass by without noticing. When the morning breaks, the twins tell Jack about Ralph, and Jack sets the shrubs on fire. Ralph runs out into the forest. He finds a hole and gets in it. His weapon ready to stab the first who discovers him. When he looks at his weapon he sees that it is sharpened at both ends. “They want to kill me”, he realizes. Meanwhile, the cheerful shrub fire set half the island on fire.

Ralph becomes discovered but, he can stab the hunter, and he escapes. He runs to the beach, knowing his last seconds are dawning. On the beach stands a naval officer: “we saw your smoke”, he says.

The bushfire was their rescue. All at once all the murders become harmless children again. Everybody starts crying. Ralph tells the officer about the dead and the officer is surprised about the spears and the horrible events. Eventually, it turned out that the beast was not in the water, nor on the mountain, but it was inside of all the children, just waiting for a moment in which it could come out, when all lines and rules expired.

His voice rose under the black smoke before the burning wreckage of the island; and infected by that emotion, the other little boys began to shake and sob too. And in the middle of them, with filthy body, matted hair, and unwiped nose, Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.

The officer, surrounded by these noises, was moved and a little embarrassed. He turned away to give them time to pull themselves together; and waited, allowing his eyes to rest on the trim cruiser in the distance.



The story takes place on an uninhabited island during the Second World War. This can be derived from the shot parachutist, and the fact that the children were evacuated from England because of the war. The time that passes during the story is a few months. The story is built up completely chronological, without any flash-backs, or flash-forwards. Although the language was difficult to me, the plot was quite easy. Except for the parachutist part, I didn’t understand this, until I read it on the internet.

There are no caricatures in the book.

The point of view is that from an anonymous, third person narrator. Mostly it is told through Ralph’s position, but sometimes Piggy’s and one time Simon’s (the lord of the Flies pig head).

The ending is closed; they are rescued, but also open, because you don’t know what will happen to the children. Will they ever be normal again? Will some of them be punished for the murders? You don’t know.

I think the ending is happy, because they are rescued and will be taken home by the navy.

There is a strong dominant hierarchy in the group of children. On the top, Jack, then Ralph, then Simon, Roger and Maurice, then the rest of the biguns, then the littluns, and last and least Piggy.

The story is about the power struggle between Ralph and Jack, so the social class of the characters is really important. Where do they stand in the group?

Lord of the Flies is a novel and an allegory.

Golding wants to show the world how the worst in people comes out of them when lines and rules expire. This message is hidden in the beast-part of the story. It was in them and it came out when it got its chance. Golding wrote the book because of the events in the Second World War.

The name of the book is directly derived from the, with flies covered, pig-head which talked to Simon before he collapsed. But indirectly it means the power struggle between Ralph and Jack. Who has the right to be the lord of all the flies (the littluns and the other children).

I think it was a very special book, because it combined the dream of tropical sandy islands, with the horrors which happened. It was full of suspense, especially the last part with Piggy’s death, and the hunt on Ralph. In the beginning it was quite dull, but at the end, when things got mean, it was really special.

But the scariest thing of the book is that you know that this would also happen, when it was for real.