Lord of the Flies

It's some unspecified time in the near future. A plane-load of schoolboys have crashlanded on a remote island. Their pilot is dead. There are no teachers to look after them. The boys must fend for themselves. Power struggles ensue.

William Golding's allegorical tale of armageddon on an island is yet another classic I'm going to wax lyrical on for a few paragraphs. There's a doom-laden sense of foreboding to the precedings here that infects the prose with an apocalyptic feel... as if we are witnessing the end of the world in microcosm. The descent of the boys into savagry and madness seems far too realistic for the reader to remain comfortable, and the ending - whilst simplistic and an obvious way to end the story - is perfect and probably the only way to resolve it all satisfactorily.

We start the story with the boys trying to assemble themselves into some kind of order. Ralph is initially voted leader by the boys and represents democracy. By his side is Piggy, a chubby bespectacled boy who does Ralph's thinking for him - he represents reason, logic and bureaucracy. Things go well for a while but eventually another boy Jack, jealous of Ralph, decides to take leadership for himself. He represents right wing rule... under him the boys run riot and fairness goes out the window. Under him, the path of their survival leads to ruin and bloodshed.

It's all the more shocking because the characters are young boys... their cruelness and innocence is easy to imagine and it taps into the fears of adults everywhere - that our children aren't equipped to exist on their own. It taps into this and utilises it to explore notions of authority and government, an exploration that would probably otherwise seem heavy-handed. Whereas here it seems natural - stripped back to it's barest basics.

The Lord of the Flies of the title is (the way I saw it anyway) a pig's head on a stick at the top of the island... a representation of evil, an altar for the flies to worship at... an offering the boys make to an imagined beast that terrorises them. Satan himself.

I find this book terrifying, a real horror piece. Ghosts, monsters, vampires - whatever, they aren't real. They don't really do anything for me in the scare department. I find horror to be more effective when it's based in real situations. And here, well, one gets the impression that the boys may never be the same again... their innocence is dashed away from them. I find that really unsettling.

I read this at school in year 10 I think, and it's probably one of the best books we ever got to read.