This is one of my favorite books. At the beginning, we are told little of the world war that has led to the evacuation of these English schoolboys and the subsequent crash of their airplane on a remote tropical island, where they are left to fend for themselves, all adults having been killed.
12-year old Ralph is the first to emerge from the jungle undergrowth. Then, Piggy joins him. When they find a conch shell on the shore, Ralph blows it, which brings the other boys, including the choir, led by Jack. At first, the boys attempt to set up a democratic society. Ralph is elected "chief," and the conch shell is used to call assembly when decisions are required. Piggy's spectacles are used to raise a fire for rescue and roasting the wild pigs that are found in abundance on the island. Other than their isolation from the world, their greatest worry is the rumor of a beast on the island. However, as days go by, the island paradise crumbles as Jack challenges Ralph's leadership. By the end of the book, the island is in flames, two boys have been murdered, and Ralph is running for his life.
Although the boys range in ages 6 to 12, this is not a children's book. Indeed, the portrayal of their island society, degenerating from order to chaos and destruction, is so brutal that I'd probably not consider it for readers under 10. And yet, its theme of human nature and its predilection for violence and savagery is too important to overlook. This book should be required reading in every high school and college, because the characters are too well known to us, too much a part of our history and experience.
It would also be a mistake to think that the book implies that children are savages more brutal than their adult counterparts. Golding wrote this book at a time (the early 1950's) when it was fashionable for art to portray youth as an age of innocence in contrast to the corruption of adulthood (as exemplified in "The Catcher in the Rye"). Not so, Golding writes. This corruption is part of us, an innate part of Mankind itself, not something that comes with the experience of adulthood. We mustn't forget that this book is set at a time of world war.
The book is allegorical. Standing in opposition are the natural leaders, Ralph and Jack. Ralph represents good government, order, justice, restraint, responsibility, and common sense. His authority is represented by the conch, a symbol of stability, democracy, and civilization. Jack represents despotism, injustice, irresponsibility, lust for power, and oppression of the weak by the strong. His authority is the spear, which invokes fear and violence.
Piggy and Roger are respectively the henchmen of Ralph and Jack. Piggy is an overweight, asthmatic boy whose intellect and rationality make him a valuable advisor to Ralph and the object of loathing to Jack. His greatest contribution to the survival of the island civilization is his spectacles, which are used to make the fire. This is an apt symbol, since fire was ancient Man's first tool, separating him from the beasts and giving him the means to develop other technologies. Roger is a natural-born sadist who bullies the younger boys even before the decline of their civilization. An analysis on lordoftheflies.org calls him a force of primal evil. It is he whom Jack uses to maintain his control over the other boys of his "tribe" and it is he who kills Piggy on Castle Rock.
If Roger is the primal evil, Simon is the primal good. Simon is the most complicated character in Golding's novel. Although he sides with Ralph in his power struggle with Jack ("Go on being chief"), he remains an outsider to both groups. When Ralph's and Jack's groups splinter off, Piggy's prestige within Ralph's group rises, whereas Simon's falls. Piggy's dismissal of him as "batty" reveals the tension between Piggy's realism and Simon's spiritualism. Simon, however, sees what Piggy doesn't see. From the beginning, Simon believes that the feared beast is human ("Maybe it's us..."), to which Piggy contemptuously explodes, "Nuts!" Later, when the others have fled in fear from the beast on the mountaintop, only Simon is courageous enough to climb alone to the top to discover the truth, quietly trumping the bravado of Ralph and Jack. When Simon finds out that the beast is really a dead parachutist from the war-torn outside world, still strapped to his billowing parachute, he frees the corpse and returns to the others to share the truth before being ceremoniously and hysterically killed by them, thus fulfilling his role as Christ figure. Before his discovery, he stumbles upon the impaled head of a pig, presented to the beast as a gift by Jack and his superstitious savages. The scene that follows is a surreal conversation between the Head and Simon. Attended by a swarm of flies, the Head becomes a demonic apparition, confirming Simon's belief and threatening him with destruction at the hands of the others. But Simon must deliver the truth to the boys. Christ-like, he accepts the consequences ("What else is there to do?"). His message, however, is lost in the confusion of the wild tribal dance of the others on the beach in the darkness. They beat him to death and leave him in the sand, where his body is carried out to sea.
Ralph and Piggy remain the only forces against Jack's despotism and Roger's sadism. It is inevitable that they meet Simon's fate. When Jack's savages take Piggy's spectacles, he and Ralph can do nothing but confront them. Roger knocks Piggy off Castle Rock and his body is dashed to death. Ralph is left alone to escape the flames as the savages set fire to the island to force him out of hiding. Soon, Ralph is left without refuge and staggers out on the beach, where he is stopped by the appearance of a British naval officer and his crew. Rescue has come just in time. In the comfort of the adults, Ralph is the first to mourn the loss of innocence. Soon, all the savages join him in tears, becoming schoolboys again, mindful of their fall from grace. The adults have rescued them, but who will rescue the adults from the world that they have created?
