William Golding's Lord of the Flies (Bloom's Notes) (Paperback)

by Harold Bloom (Editor) "The boy with fair hair lowered himself down the last few feet of rock and began to pick his way toward the lagoon..." (more)
Key Phrases: hands for the conch, grey shirt, fair boy, Jack Merridew, Percival Wemys Madison

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
William Golding's classic tale about a group of English schoolboys who are plane-wrecked on a deserted island is just as chilling and relevant today as when it was first published in 1954. At first, the stranded boys cooperate, attempting to gather food, make shelters, and maintain signal fires. Overseeing their efforts are Ralph, "the boy with fair hair," and Piggy, Ralph's chubby, wisdom-dispensing sidekick whose thick spectacles come in handy for lighting fires. Although Ralph tries to impose order and delegate responsibility, there are many in their number who would rather swim, play, or hunt the island's wild pig population. Soon Ralph's rules are being ignored or challenged outright. His fiercest antagonist is Jack, the redheaded leader of the pig hunters, who manages to lure away many of the boys to join his band of painted savages. The situation deteriorates as the trappings of civilization continue to fall away, until Ralph discovers that instead of being hunters, he and Piggy have become the hunted: "He forgot his words, his hunger and thirst, and became fear; hopeless fear on flying feet." Golding's gripping novel explores the boundary between human reason and animal instinct, all on the brutal playing field of adolescent competition. --Jennifer Hubert --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From School Library Journal
Grade 10 Up?A solid tool for the study of William Golding's classic novel. Sixteen critical selections from both journals and books are arranged in chronological order by date of publication from 1961 to 1993. The examined topics, length and completeness of entries, and depth of analysis present a wide range of material. Articles selected by Bloom have not previously appeared in works easily accessible to most readers. There is little duplication with "Contemporary Literary Criticism" (Gale) or with "British Writers" (Scribners); both cover less ground. Clarice Swisher's Readings on Lord of the Flies (Greenhaven, 1997) includes two of the same critics, but Bloom's book has complete articles rather than excerpts. While some readers may struggle with these selections, the book is an excellent resource.?Gail Richmond, San Diego Unified Schools, CA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Library Binding edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: Chelsea House Publications; Workbook edition (January 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0791041352
• ISBN-13: 978-0791041352
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1,283 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,788,720 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Human Nature through the eyes of William Golding, March 17, 2001

By	Timothy_Froh (The United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lord of the Flies (Paperback)

With this his first novel, author William Golding wrote a novel that he could never surpass in greatness. Lord of the Flies is a novel about our human nature. Too often I think, people jump to quick conclusions about the book and Golding's stand on human nature. "His stance is too pessimistic" or "That books really gross." What these people fail to realize is that Golding tried to paint a picture of human nature as he saw it. He wasn't making things up, I don't think he was particularly angry, he wrote Lord of the Flies to expose people to the atrocities that he witnessed in World War II.

One of the largest underlying principles in Lord of the Flies is of course, human nature. William Golding gives the reader three interesting characters to analyze: Jack, Piggy, and Ralph. It's quite apparent as you read the novel that Golding must have read a little Sigmund Freud before writing Lord of the Flies. Let's start with Jack. Jack is the definite Id on the island. He wants to survive but he also wants to eat meat and have fun. Jack is clearly unable to control these urges and in turn has a pretty large influence on the other boys on the island. Piggy is the definite Superego on the island. Piggy is always referring to "well my auntie..." and always finds an excuse not to do something. Piggy has no intentions of satisfying his id, and in turn influences only Ralph and Simon. Ralph on the other hand, takes the middle road. He is clearly trying to find a way to satisfy his id, but he can't seem to find one. Take what he said in chapter eight for instance: "...Without the fire we can't be rescued. I'd like to put on war-paint and be a savage. But we must keep the fire burning..." Ralph is definitely trying to satisfy his id, but those laws of culture still remain with him, telling him it's not the thing a proper English boy should do.

Another interesting connection I made while reading, was one between Jack's status of leader and the ideology of Thomas Hobbes. Unlike Hobbes though, Jack's power was used for quite the opposite affect. Hobbes believed that in order for a perfect society to exist, a higher power had to be in charge, in order to keep the other citizens in check. Jack was that higher power on the island. He was in control of everything, however, his power had quite the opposite affect of "keeping people in check." Jack used the powerful persuasion of the id to persuade others. Jack could promise meat and fun, whereas Ralph could promise labor and fruit, something the other boys definitely didn't want.

Lord of the Flies is also a novel filled with symbolism. Probably the most important of these symbols was the conch. The conchs represented several things, including freedom and order on the island, and possibly, even for a short time, unity between the boys. One of the most interesting aspects to the conch was the fact that Piggy couldn't use it. This shows a lack of leadership or strength on Piggy's part. The conch became a tool of free speech. Those who wanted to speak at the tribal council had to hold the conch in order to be heard. However, as the story progressed, this practice diminished more and more, until the island was a place of complete chaos and anarchy. In one of the last chapters of the novel, the conch gets completely destroyed. This symbolizes two things. First, it symbolizes the end of order on the island- no more meetings, no more assemblies, none of that, the island was a place of anarchy. Secondly, this destruction symbolizes the end of Ralph's leadership. The boys had become slaves to Jack and his power, their conscience gave in.

Finally, about the novel itself. Golding is quite obviously a fan of Joseph Conrad. The writing style is almost identical, and the subject matter is very similar, with Golding opting to use children (young boys) instead of the men of Conrad's Heart of Darkness. The novel moves very quickly and it's rather short (202 pages in my copy.) You'll be immersed in the varying characters and degrees of humanity that they present. Keep in mind, that although Golding's view on humanity may seem very pessimistic, he's writing from his perspective on human nature, something that he witnessed first hand during WWII.

42 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Humanity tooth and nail, July 19, 2004

By	Rocco Dormarunno (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Lord of the Flies (Paperback)

If not for anything else, William Golding's LORD OF THE FLIES (1954) is remarkable for having come out at a time when Western society was being bombarded with visions of totalitarian nightmares. The Nazis were gone, but still in modern memory. Russia's totalitarian state was a constant threat. McCarthyism hovered over everyone's privacy, as did J. Edgar Hoover. And recent fiction, like Aldous Huxley's BRAVE NEW WORLD and, especially, George Orwell's 1984 presented world views where the human spirit is all but squelched by governments and technologies.

LORD OF THE FLIES, in its own way, says, "Hold on a second! Humans do need to be regulated. And they do need to protect themselves from each other." His tale is a warning: Humanity, without government, will degenerate into savagery and anarchy. And that is precisely what happens in this book. You know the plot, by now. But what has to be mentioned is that William Golding is a visionary who has the story-telling mastery to convey and do justice to that vision. LORD OF THE FLIES is a remarkable and powerful book, one that should be on everyone's bookshelf.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "I'm frightened. Of us.", December 5, 2000

By	Cipriano "www.bookpuddle.blogspot.com" (Planet Claire) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Lord of the Flies (Paperback)

A group of young schoolchildren (all male) are evacuated from Britain in the wake of a nuclear war. As it turns out, their airplane has crashed onto an uninhabited island, with the result that there are no adult survivors to be found. In the opening scenes, children begin to slowly emerge from the forest and converge on the beach at the summons of the book's main character Ralph. As they are now thrust together in this new environment, it becomes apparent that a new sort of social order is going to be necessary. What follows for the length of the book is an elaborate working out of this (attempted) democratic style of social order.

After an initial confrontation of two groups on the beach (one led by Ralph, the other led by Jack), Ralph is elected as leader. Early on, we see that Ralph's interests tend to be "group" oriented. His concern is with rescue, and with keeping the others focused on this objective through the maintenance of a signal fire. We see shadows in Jack however, that are more temporal, concerned with the hungry rumble in his stomach. And here we sense the beginnings of conflict, and the age-old fact looming to remind us that, even in democracy we need to recognize submission to elected leadership.

In a pivotal chapter (ch.5) one of the children declares "We're drifting and things are going rotten. At home there was always a grown-up." The significance here is that, by filling his island with castaway children (rather than adults) Golding allows us to consider more aspects of innate or instinctual human nature than if it had been otherwise. Children are raw. If this island were inhabited by castaway "grown-ups" the results and conclusions they came to would be conditioned by all of the ingenuity, resourcefulness, and maturity with which they'd have dealt with previous struggles and needs. Socially, they would have been able to draw upon the results (good or bad) of past decisions made in the clash and clang of more mature inclinations and inhibitions. But children are not afforded this perspective of experience. Golding populates his island with children because he wants to emphasize the full range of possibilities that are INNATE in the human condition, typified in this case by Ralph's tears on the very last page. Tears, we are told, which he wept "for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart."

With the frenzied killing of Simon in ch.9 comes the real disintegration; a rapid descent into moral anarchy. Ralph is the only one who dares to say it... "That was murder." He has the keenest sense of the mob mentality that will inevitably run roughshod over the individual conscience. Earlier than any of the others he understands their own capacity for evil when he says to Piggy, "I'm frightened. Of us."

I had the heartrate of a chased fox in the last chapter... you will too. And when the question was flung out at the end "Who's boss here?"... Ralph's loud cry of "I am" rang through my very soul. Those two words signify the triumph of perception over ignorance.

The lasting value of the book is its ability to pose the question "What if I were thrust into a similar situation?" Which character would I most resemble... with whom do I most identify? How is it then, that we in fact, do behave? What if?...

This story speaks to any overly optimistic answer to that question when we remember that the entire reason these children found themselves on this island in the first place, was that they were fleeing a nuclear war that "grown-ups" had started.