Rating: 
Summary: A classic ....
Review: Its a story of some children standed on a island after their oceanliner sinks. The children are well disciplined upon their arrival on this island. But, that all changes. Its a tale of human nature and how we will revert back to some of the natural instincts that we as humans try hard to ignore. A grim look at our darker side. A excellant read, and a classic book.
Rating:
Summary: Frightening look at the inner beast in mankind
Review: This is such a meaningful book, with such relevance for our society that it's worth reading, even if you've already read it in school.The story is rather contrived, yet believable. English schoolboys are stranded and forced to survive in the wilds. The school bully system, endemic in boarding schools and in schoolyards everywhere, devolves into pure savagery and of course, someone gets hurt. Badly. The subject of bullies is interesting; Golding's depiction of tow-headed little rapscallions turning into real monsters is a metaphor for the lawlessness that lurks under a thin veneer of any society. If you have kids in school, this is a great book to read at home and discuss with them. How did each character react to violence? How did they justify violence? How did they fight or accept evil? What would you do differently?
Rating: 
Summary: Lord of the Bookshelf
Review: In the novel "The Lord of the Flies" by William Gerald Golding, a group of English schoolboys get deserted on an island after a plane crash, left alone with no adults. This book follows the day to day life on the island, cooking, hunting, and the desperate struggle to keep their smoke signal going. However, as civilized as these children appear at the start of the book, the call of their savage, human, inner soul is too strong for them, and the instinct to survive forces them to undergo a a shocking and terrible change. The book, using dramatic imagery and a disturbing plot drew me into its fast paced world, where I discovered shocking and horrifying secrets about the human spirit let loose. The book was severely disquieting, yet its strong and bewitching plot made me read on. Ending with a roar, this masterpiece alarmed me greatly, yet I still recommend it to a young adult reader who is willing to let a gripping page-turner sweep them away to a land that they have never dreamed of.
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Summary: What A Great Book
Review: The Lord of the Flies was one of the best books I have ever read. Not only did it have one of the best story lines a book could have; it also delivered a very important message pertaining to rules and anarchy. The book was about a group of young boys who's plane crashed on an island. There are no adult survivors and the kids are left to fend for themselves. Some of the boys that are on the island are Ralph, Jack, Piggy, and Simon. Ralph is kind of the leader of the boys in the beginning. He is later left alone with piggy, a rotund boy whose glasses play a very important role in the book. Jack is one of the meanest boys on the island. He is the leader of the choirboys, which later become the hunters. He is the one who later takes control of the group and moves them to the other side of the island and attacks Jack and Piggy. Simon is the one who discovers the Lord of the Flies. He also represents pureness among the boys. The book is about how a world without rules would only result in chaos and anarchy. At first the boys still acted civilized and respectful, but when the boys slowly broke away from the rules, their world descended into a world of madness. There are a lot of twists and turns in this book. You will never know what will happen next. I would recommend this book to anybody that wants to dive into a world without rules. It is a good source to show all of us just how important rules can be to us and that in order to maintain civilization; we must uphold these rules. This is a definite must read for all ages.
Rating:
Summary: "The darkness in Man's heart"
Review: William Golding's first novel has rightly been regarded as a classic of modern literature since it was first published in 1954, in fact many consider this to be one of the finest novels of the last century if not ever. While it's certainly true that the greatest literature has a timelessness that lends itself to reinterpretation by subsequent generations, is this story of a group of boys who as Stephen King put it "just went a little too far" really in that category? In my opinion, absolutely. Set sometime in the near future during an unspecified world war, the story concerns the fate of a collection of boys stranded on a tropical island paradise after the plane evacuating them from the war zone crashes. All adults are dead and there is no way to make contact with the outside world. In short the boys are thrown back on to their own resources and forced to re-create the society that they knew. At first things go well "after all we're not savages", but as tensions tear the group apart and fear and superstition reshape the boys world, we are confronted with the stark reality of just how fragile the structures of our own society which we have come to think of as indomitable actually are.
Many feel that Golding was too pessimistic in his assessment that man is inherently bound to society and without day to day constraints imposed on us by the culture we live in we would more likely than not revert to nothing more than "painted savages". But I feel that the power of the book derives from its fundamental truth, the darkness that dwells in the pit of the human heart is at times all to hideously evident and that's what makes "The Lord of the Flies" so brilliant and so frightening.
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Summary: Human Nature working at its best
Review: I thought that the book lord of the flies was a unique and realistic portrayal of human nature. I thought that the way the boys adopted to their surroundings was phenomenal. If i could symbolize this book in one line i would say that when it comes down to it every living organism on earth is interested in one thing and one thing only, its own survival. I thought that a little bit of it may have been extreme with the killing of eachother and everything but i think that being on that island long enough might have driven people to do things like that. One thing that i realized in the book was that you never actually find out where the island that they are on is located. My theory to why you never actually get to see this information is because William Golding was actually trying not to pay to much attention to detail because this story was about something as general as human nature. I think that the contrast and conflict between the characters is so intriguing and the transformation of these characters throughout the story from nice english boys to nasty savages is completely fascinating. I think another theme that i can derive from this book is survival of the fittest. This is Darwins theory at its best it is the show survivor but with no cameras and real danger. Instead of getting voted off you really die. I also think that even though it seems like a lot of the boys are against eachother that they could not have survived without eachother. Even though it seems like Jack was made for this stuff if he was put there alone instead of being almost excited about being a leader he would be in a state of panic and i dont think he would last too long. Overall i thought that this book was very intriguing and it is a good look at what is going on in the brain of a man who knows a huga amoung about human nature.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting Take on Human Nature
Review: The Lord of the Flies is simple on its surface, but look a little closer and you'll find a commentary on the nature of human beings and their relationship to society (I'll not spend too much time on this since the book is so well known). A group of British shoolboys are stranded on an island after their plane crashes. Ralph, the main character, is the responsible leader who tries to bring the group together to build fires, collect food etc. Piggy is the chubby intellectual and Jack is the rebelious one who eventually persuades most of the younger boys to follow his lead rather than Ralph's. Jack's group becomes increasingly savage-like while Ralph and Piggy remain optimistic about being rescued. In short, the story is a commentary on the basically wild and savage nature of man. Like Freud before him, Golding identifies the Id, our inner self-preserving nature, as the primary core of our being. The Lord of the Flies itself (supposedly a translation of an ancient Hebrew word for the Devil) is represented by a severed pig head on a post (erected by Jack's group to ward off the supposed Beast that's rumored to exist on the island). At the symbolic climax of the story the head has a conversation (in the form of a hallucination) with one of the boys. Here we are reminded of the weaknesses of our own moral and social conventions and the constant presence of our deeper and darker side. The end is a real psychological shocker and makes the whole book a very worthwhile read.
Rating:
Summary: Leaves an indelible impression
Review: Having not been assigned to read this powerful and provocative work in high school or college, I decided to see what all the fuss was about, so to speak. Although short and compact in size, Lord of the Flies proves to be anything but that in breadth and depth. Nothing short of incredible, Golding's novella examines human nature and its internal and external variables that wield it into shape. An allegory no less, the pages of Lord of the Flies nonetheless come alive as they provocatively bring the reader into a paradoxical world of bestial Darwinian survival of the fittest versus rational deductional logic and care for one's fellow man. Unlike The Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Flies asserts that human nature is inherently evil - not corrupted by external forces, but rather an intrinsic trait to be overcome. Our innocence is not lost by some terrible experience, because conversely we have never had it. While evil exists in all of us, Golding says, we must conquer it and make a decision based on logic and sound reasoning to consciously reject it, and, in turn, not revert to barbarous savagery. We, as individuals, must cognizantly and wisely choose the righteous, yet discerning path of Ralph, as opposed to the malevolent and malicious evil one of Jack, or for that matter, the indecisive and naive path of hapless Piggy.
Rating:
Summary: A deserved classic
Review: I never read Lord of the Flies in high school, so, I finally got around to it, near to my 30th birthday. It is a novel of great depth and symbolism. The characters all represent a portion of leadership: Jack- the warmonger; Ralph- the diplomat; and Piggy- the brain behind the diplomat. Some may say that this book is just a cynical view of human nature. But I believe it is just realistic. After all most of the boys that Jack scares into becoming a part of his tribe are young and therefore ignorant. This shows how most despots keep control, by denying their population with any real higher education (except for the privileged few) and intimidating them to stay in line. The outcome of the novel is tragic, yet a lesson in survival and civility: when might makes right, there is no progress and only fear.
Rating: 
Summary: Tedious
Review: Yet another book suffering from the "classic-itis" syndrome. Golding presents an intriguing premise and utilises provoking themes of savagery versus civilization, but he writes in such an uninspired and drawn-out manner that it's extremely difficult to truly absorb oneself into the narrative. Every character was flat and unlikeable in at least one way; the only one that came close to gaining my interest was one I pitied, and I deeply dislike piteous characters. I am female, and I have usually never minded any lack of prominent female roles in books or films. The way Golding uses the female here, though, is half-baked and somewhat insulting. As well, while I don't mind symbolism if it's varied and carefully used, there is only really one large symbolic theme in this book, and I found it rather elementary and fumbled. I don't mind gore either -- among my favourite books is All Quiet on the Western Front, and despite its skewered view, one of my favourites movies is the hyperrealistic Black Hawk Down -- but the gore here has almost no emotional value at all and simply disgusts. The closing paragraphs are the only parts that came close to being interesting, if just for the symbolic contrast it provided. Even then, however, because Golding for me had built no tension or suspense whatsoever up to it, it merely showed how silly the entire affair and its participants were, and almost made me laugh despite the apparent gravity that was involved. It may have been all the enthusiasm around it from other readers, but even so, William Golding's "Lord of the Flies" is one of the worst "good" books I have ever read.
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