Lord of the Flies

Lord of the Flies has entered the culture. Ralph, Jack and Piggy are archetypes of human fallibility, but most of all they are real characters, fully imagined and leaping to life off the page.

  • “Aren’t there any grown-ups at all?
    I don’t think so.”
  • “Ralph turned involuntarily, a black, humped figure against the lagoon. The assembly looked with him; considered the vast stretches of water, the high sea beyond, unknown indigo of infinite possibility; heard silently the sough and whisper from the reef.”
  • “The chief was sitting there, naked to the waist, his face blocked out in white and red. The tribe lay in a semicircle before him.”

A place crashes on a desert island and the only survivors, a group of schoolboys – including Ralph, Piggy, Simon and Jack – wait to be rescued. By day they inhabit a land of bright butterflies, golden sands and dark blue seas, but at night their dreams are haunted by the image of a terrifying beast. As the boys’ delicate sense of order fades, so their childish dreams are transformed into something more primitive, and their behaviour starts to take on a murderous, savage significance.

Lord of the Flies was William Golding’s debut novel, written just a few years after he experienced the horrors of the Second World War. Golding said that during this time he had ‘discovered what one man could do to another – vileness beyond all words.’ Golding was thrilled that Lord of the Flies was so loved among readers, especially young people. In his own words, ‘I am moved and fulfilled by the fact that anyone of your generation should think a book I have written is significant for you.’

Adaptations

You might like The Inheritors

If you enjoyed the tense balance between chaos and disorder in Lord of the Flies, you might like The Inheritors, about a family of Neanderthals whose peaceful existence is fatally threatened by the emergence of Homo Sapiens.

View The Inheritors View all books

Explore