Rating: 
Summary: Human Nature
Review: William Golding's very first novel, Lord of the Flies, is an intriguing look at aspects of human nature. In Lord of the Flies, Golding tries to accurately portray human nature or at least as he saw it. This idea of human nature is the main theme of his novel. The story begins when a group of English school boys become plane wrecked on a deserted island.
In the beginning the group of stranded boys' works together and cooperate as a whole. They attempt to gather food, make shelters and signal fires, and anything else they can do just to survive. The novels protagonist, Ralph, oversees their efforts to survive and tries as best he can to maintain some order and decency on the island. His sidekick, Piggy, a chubby boy with glasses tries to help Ralph maintain order as well. However, too many of the kids want to goof off and fool around. Ralph's rules get ignored which leads to the splitting of the boys into two camps. Jack, the antagonist manages to lure away most of the boys to join his camp of savages. The situation gets progressively worse as the values and morals of everyday civilization are lost. Eventually, Ralph and Piggy become hunted by Jacks band of savages. This story shows how people. Lord of the Flies is an interesting novel that explores the thin line between human reason and animal instinct. It is a wonderful book and I would recommend it to any reader at the high school level.
Rating:
Summary: Chock-full-o-symbols
Review: This book is so full of metaphors and symbols that it's actually two books in one. There's the story, right up front, and then there is the use of just about everything IN the story to tell another story. And, oh, wait! There's actually THREE books, as the story is one giant metaphor for society and its evils. Few other books have this kind of depth (the only other one I can think of is McCrae's "Bark of the Dogwood") and this is probably the reason for this novel's long shelf life. Excellently written, with remarkable characters and a plot that will make you squirm, "Flies" is a tour-de-force of literature that must be read over and over by each generation.Also recommended: BARK OF THE DOGWOOD
Rating:
Summary: A realistic exploration of human nature
Review: I have probably read this about 10 times now and am reading it once again for school this year. It seems wierd to me that a book like this can be taught in so many schools and the underlying meaning is understood by so few people, and if it is understood then it isn't acted upon. I think that this book examines many things including our 'civilized' way of life (which is truly very animalistic), religion, and what it takes to keep peace in a human society. The boys on the island stand for a lot of things. They are us. They are our country. they are our planet. I think that this comparison is shown very clearly at the end for those, that did not understand it at first, when the soldiers save the boys from thier war with each other, when they are in an equally childish war of thier own. who will save them? no one. Except perhaps thier invention of a God or some kind of other higher power. that is probably the reson that I like this book: It's deep message. Because usually I find that these kind of stories of island desertion are pretty boring, such as the book that I have been assigned equal amounts of time, hatchet by gary Paulsen that lacks ay kinf of connection. this book is so many different things to so many people. I think that everyone who reads it enjoys it though. For example, a very conservative classmate of mine enjoys this book just as much as I do, if not more but he sees nothing beyond what is clearly presented in the book. Anyway..I don't know how to reccomend this to anyone. It is a classic. If you have heard of it(which I don't see how you couldn't have), then you have probably read it by now. buy it if you don't have it. It is definetly a book worth having on your bookshelf.
Rating: 
Summary: One of the few assigned works of lit I disliked
Review: I normally loved the books I was assigned to read in my English classes, and never understood why so many other people were complaining about and trashing on the great books we were reading (probably because they hated anything they had to read and I've been reading since the age of three). But not this book. I just found it boring and unrealistic, slow to get into and then still slow once I'd gotten into it. The icing on the cake for me in my dislike of this book was when my ninth grade English teacher (who does this with this, her favourite book, for all of the classes she's had before and since mine, which was 1994-95) gave us a little lesson on the symbolism of this book. I don't have a problem with symbols or allegory in a book, and thank God I've forgotten most of the symbols in this book (and in the other books she taught us). It's interesting to realise, for example, that the conch symbolises order, but how is that going to give you some sort of epiphany while reading the book? And everything in this book is a symbol-Piggy's glasses, some kid's scar, the obnoxiously-termed "littluns," the conch, fire, Simon, the decapitated head of the pig, you name it. Could we be any less subtle? I, like most of the other students who had this woman for English, regardless of our respective religions, had no problem with the fact that Simon is supposed to represent Jesus, but the way our teacher presented this information made the Biblical account of Jesus's life and crucifixion seem like (no pun intended) the Gospel truth, telling it to us as though that's exactly how it happened, based on nothing but the Biblical account and not any opinions by scholars which might challenge the old view. Her little lesson broke the Establishment Clause, and every time I see this book, I think back with revulsion and anger to that uncomfortable May day when she gave us that religious sermon in a public school. Getting back to the book, it's incredibly unrealistic how these well-bred English schoolboys, none of them over the age of twelve, devolve into savage, unreasonable, wild, uncontrollable, murderous, unrestrained beasts after maybe two or three weeks on this island. It's one thing for a sadist like Roger or a bully like Jack to go that way, but all of these boys, so quickly forgetting their high-class upbringings and education, losing hope of being rescued that soon and turning to setting fires and allegorically raping sows? Maybe if they were older, or maybe if twenty years or so had passed, then it would seem believable for them to descend into animal madness due to being stranded on an island. All humans have these primal base instincts within, but surely they're not brought to the surface after so short a period of time! They should have still been sending signal fires, making shelters, and looking for fruit and water sources by the time the deus ex machina ending rolls around, not chasing one another around wearing pig's blood on their faces, brandishing spears, ghoulishly chanting "Kill the pig! Spill her blood!," talking to decapitated pig's heads, thinking the bogeyman is after them, and all while an out of control fire is raging on their island paradise. Things don't happen that way. This would have made a more believable story had the events taken place over maybe ten or twenty years, not two or three weeks, so we could see a natural and realistic progression from proper British schoolboys to wild marauding savages. They're skipping a lot of steps in between.
Rating: 
Summary: Very good.
Review: The first thing that got me was that this is very similar to the Catcher in the Rye when it comes to how fast I was able to read this without getting bored. I think William Golding has created a very distinct book on humanity, as well as an interesting story that I had to read twice before I understood it. ^_^
Rating: 
Summary: Jamaal's Review for The Lord Of The Flies
Review: My opinion of this book is that this book was horrible. The only time that it caught my eye was when they first got stuck on the island and when they got off. So basically,in the middle of this book, i wasn't listening. This book had alot of realism and creativity that was probably the highest point of this book. If I would have to pick a leader for them i wouldn't have picked any of them because they all act like animals. And the events that took place like for one when they thought that Simon was the beast, that was just dumb to me. I also gave it one star because it didn't deserve anyting better than that.
The friendship between Ralph and Piggy was odd. Another thing that was odd was these kids had the urge to kill one another. At the beginning of this book, I asked myself,"How did all these kids survive but not one adult did?" I think the book would have been a whole lot better if they had about 2 or 3 adults to keep the kids from talking about that ridiculous beast. The Lord Of The Flies I read for an sophmore english class. But the books that I read my freshman year like, Of Mice and Men, Romeo and Juliet, and To Kill a Mockingbird, those were good books and better books than Lord of The Flies.
Rating:
Summary: Is okay
Review: The book the Lord of the Flies is an okay book. Is not the type of book that a sophomore would want to read it everyday. The book is about a group of kids around the age of 11/12 that get stranded on an island. There are no adults or any kind of supervisors watching over them at all, so basically they are on their own. The group is around 15-20 kids. The kids get to choose a leader so they can have everyone in control so nothing can go wrong (even though there is always something that goes wrong).Then later on the book a lot of kids get hurt and there are no adults to help them. Well, I can't say no more because then I will give the end to the story and it wouldn't be interesting anymore, but you will enjoy it. Well, this book teaches you a lot of things like for example; it teaches you how to be more responsible and more mature about things. It also teaches you how to respect yourself and others; I do recommend you to read this.
Rating: 
Summary: My Review
Review: In my opinion, Lord of the flies was on of the dullest books I have ever read. It started off slow and at times I found myself trying hard not to fall asleep. The plot was actually quite interesting, but William Golding wrote it in such a way, sometimes I couldn't understand exactly what was going on. His word choice left me scanning through a dictionary a majority of the book. Yet this book did contain some quite profound symbolism. The theme would have to be the best party of this novel, being it relates to the real world or the cruelties of the real world. Some of the scenes in this book are actually quite violent, and unrealistic being that the kids are so young. In fact, numerous times I became sick to my stomach. Some of the scenes were good and beautifully written but overall I felt most of it was superfluous .
Rating:
Summary: The direction of all organized religion
Review: I read this book because a Canadian student friend insisted. She apparently had it as part of her high school curricullum. I was not disappointed! I saw so much of modern life expressed through the eyes and actions of these primitive boys as they try to bring man's order to their society through ritual, then shunning, and ultimately, the well-intentioned persecution of those outside the group. It's too bad that more people can't guage their own actions from these themes of classic literature.
Rating:
Summary: M Opinion
Review: The lord of the flies is a book with a mixture violence, friendship, and magical realism. The friendship between Ralph and piggy isn't just any ordinary friendship but more like one between a teen and a pet he has owned since he was a small boy.
The rivalry between Ralph and jack on the other hand is like that of two rampaging behemoths who despise each other.
I like this book because of the small amount of magical realism that was added to this book because i dont't like realism. I don't like this book because of the descriptive senseless violence in it and also because I think that of kids that ages were stuck on an island the last thing they would think about would be hunting and killing. I think that other people might enjoy this book when they read it becuause of the violence and action.
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