Lord of the Flies (Abridged Audio Edition)

Rating:
Summary: "A stick sharpened at both ends."
Review: Lord of the Flies, William Gerald Golding,
Perigee, 1959, 208 pgs

William Gerald Golding was born in 1911. He was an English novelist who won the Nobel Prize in 1983. He was educated at Marlborough Grammar School, which was where his father taught, and at Brasenose College in Oxford; he graduated in 1935. He became a schoolmaster in a school in Salisbury and joined the royal navy in 1940. After the invasion of France, he began teaching again until 1961. He published Lord of the Flies in 1954, Free Fall in 1959, The Spire in 1964, Darkness Visible in 1979, Rites of Passage in 1980 (won the booker prize) in addition to its sequels Close Quarters in 1987 and Fire Down Below in 1989. He was knighted for his accomplishments in 1988, and died 5 years later in 1993.

The main idea that the author is trying to present deals with society. Golding is trying to convey that without the principles, conditions, or standards of society, individuals lose these values; without order, there can only be disorder. Thus, without rules, the ability to differentiate between right and wrong is lost, leading to chaos.

The novel takes place during a war, which is unmentioned. A plane that is carrying a group of British students is shot down somewhere over the Pacific Ocean and crashes. The pilot dies and the children find themselves alive on this uninhabited island without any adults. Ralph, one of the oldest of the survivors, along with his friend Piggy, find a conch shell. Ralph blows the conch, and gathers the survivors and the novel begins from there. Events lead to the death of Piggy and Jack, one of the choirboys, to take control of the group of children. The boys start hunting Ralph, and Ralph runs to the beach where a naval officer arrives with a ship. The boys then get to go home after the officer thinks they have been playing games.

As I said before, the author is stating: without the rules brought by society, the difference between right and wrong is clouded. I agree with the author because his novel was the perfect example of his message. It seems as though society is represented through a conch the characters carried around with them. After the conch was broken, society diminished from the island and the boys resorted to violent ways of attaining order; the hunters and the hunted. When the naval officer arrives, society's rules are again present on the island, and the boys become civilized again. This whole novel is a fair representation of what can go wrong without the standards of society. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a novel that deals with human nature and survival, because it so graphically and accurately depicts it.

Rating:
Summary: Tense, scary, and disturbing
Review: This is a very interesting look at human nature. The pacing of the book makes its tense moments all that much more scary and disturbing.

I think, however, that teachers should stop assigning this book to their students. All that happens is that Amazon gets flooded with reviews about how boring it is, which is probably the worst criticism you can make about a book.

Rating:
Summary: the worst book I have ever read
Review: I had to read this book last year (tenth grade) for English class. I didn't really know anything about it before I read it, but I had heard that it was about boys getting stranded on an island that eat each other. They don't actually eat each other.

When the author, William Golding, was reading the English classic, THE CORAL ISLAND, to his son, he said to his wife, "I'm so tired of this business. Wouldn't it be fun to write a book about boys on an island and see what really happens?" Ironically, I thought the same thing when reading Golding's novel, which is a parody of THE CORAL ISLAND. Golding portrays that ethical behavior is forced on people by civilization, instead of natural instinct, and that people, when left without the conditions of soceity, become barbaric and cruel. In the novel, Golding relates his theory that human nature is evil through the story of boys stranded on an island turning against each other. The entire theme of LORD OF THE FLIES is wrong. The plot is totally unrealistic. The very individuals who Golding implies are evil are the ones who make up society, which he conveys as sometimes good. How much sense does that make?

If six-to-twelve-year-old boys were stranded on an island, they would definitely not revert to savagery like the boys in the novel, and they would not forget about rescue. They wouldn't become so obsessed with hunting. They would probably also have more votes instead of just the vote for chief, since they would be used to democracy. They definitely wouldn't forget their own names like Percival.

Golding also clearly has no idea what it's like to be a twin. He acts like Sam and Eric are one person and states that "they could never manage to do things sensibly if that meant acting independently." (96) They can't even take separate turns watching the fire. I am a twin, and there are five different sets of twins in my class, and I know that most twins have no problem acting independently and definitely see themselves as two separate people.

Maybe someday somebody will write about boys on an island and see what really happens, but Golding sure hasn't done it. His book tries to take a stand on human nature, which would be great, if he had only chosen the right one.

In addition, there is a lot of contrived, boring setting description of the island. In spite of this, it's really hard to picture the island in your head.

Rating:
Summary: I was very surprised!
Review: When I first heard abuot this book, it was in my grade 10 english class, and I assumed that like so many of the books we read, this would be just another boring novel to be tested on. As there was to be a quiz on the first and second chapter, and I figured I wouldn't bother with the book, i read the Sparknotes version. Well the sparknotes version definetly caught my attention, and made the book seem more interesting than I originally assumed, so i decided to actually read the assigned pages. The only problem was that once I started reading it, I couldn't put it down! i was finished the book within 2-3 days while the class was still on the fifth chapter or so, i couldn't believe how good this book was! To this day, it is still one of my favorites.

Rating:
Summary: Good but not great
Review: The main thing that people rave about this book is its SYMBOLISM. Well, I think that symbolism is based on your own opinion. We don't know that the author meant to have this particular thing represent this particular idea. When you get to the story itself, the first four chapters and the last four chapters are worth a read. However, everything in between I found to be very boring and you find yourself having to stop and re-read certain things because you forget what is happening; there is no action to help keep you up to speed.

Just FYI, I didn't have to read this book for school. I read it in my spare time. From what I understand, those who must read it for school have a far lower opinion of this novel, but I don't know that for a fact.

Rating:
Summary: For everyone
Review: A book everyone must read. Tells of mankind's inner sin and depravity. I would recommend it anyone!

Rating:
Summary: Society is always one generation from barbarism
Review: THis book, despite being rated very poorly by people who had to read it for their middle school english classes, is a very good book. The book illustrates how mankind is always just one generation from barbarism. Society can deteriorate and crumble in a hurry.

Rating:
Summary: Lord of the Flies?.....eh
Review: The Lord of the Flies begins in complete chaos. A group of young boys are stranded on a tropical island after their military school plane was shot down. All the adults onboard were killed, so the boys were completely alone. Even without the supervision and direction of parents to help them, the boys try to get organized. The pick a leader, establish a set of "laws" for the island, and make plans for their survival.
Throughout the book, there is one boy who is rediculed at every chance, and only one boy tries to defend him. There is a constant battle for power between the boys named Ralph, who is sensible and only concerned with getting rescued, and the boy called Jack, who is a savage and only thinks of hunting pigs and having fun. After heated arguments that split the boys in two, raids by the hunters that destroy Ralph's shelter and his only chance of making fire, and the murder of two boys by Jack's tribe, the battle escalates to a the whole island going up in flames while the hunters try to flush out their prey... Ralph.
Golding uses a lot of desciption to make you feel as though this could actually happen. He creates a realistic microcosm (a little "world" that represents a bigger world), with a government and a trouble-maker, that shows what humans resort to in times of desperation. The climax of the book is a good surprise, but it ends too quickly without enough explaination to understand it easily. I enjoyed the story, but Golding repeats things too much, and I didn't even like those parts when I read them the first time. Jack talks about hunting too much, Ralph talks about keeping the fire going too much, and I hate the song the hunters sing. It repeats killing the beast and spilling its blood over and over, and they sing it all the time. Without these annoying repeats and the short boring periods spred throughout the book, I would say that the Lord of the Flies is a great story (but it is not written like one.)

Rating:
Summary: Lord of the Flies
Review: Lord of the Flies is a very deep and symbolic novel, perhaps too much of one to really be entertaining. While i did enjoy the basic storyline, Lord of the Flies was written in a way that i found extremely confusing and basically uninteresting. The parts of it that i acctually understood weren't so bad though.
In the start of the novel, a lot of young boys find themselves trapped on an island with no adults. In the first few days that they are there they elect a leader, set up rules, and get an organized camp going. They seem to be used to having rules and regualtions, and no one objects to this. There are some important main characters in this book. Ralph is the civilized, rational figure who is elected cheif in the beginning. He knows what needs to be done to get rescued, and throuout the book he is focused on that. Then there is Jack, who turns out to be the "bad guy". He wants to be the cheif, and he really isn't interested in doing productive things, he wants to hunt instead. Piggy is the wise figure in this novel. His ideas always are the obviously correct thing to do, but because he is somewhat of a nerd, no one really listens to him and most of what he says is shot down.
Throuought this book civilization goes down the drain. Jack eventually breaks off from the rest of the group with his hunters, and soon enough all the boys except for the little ones, Piggy and Ralph join his tribe to feast, dance and have fun.
The conch, the shell that symbolized organization and power in the start of the novel, is smashed into thousands of pieces, which shows us that the morals and society of the boys has completely died. The beast, which all the boys are afraid of, symbolizes the fear that we all have of the unknown. It seemed that every word in Lord of the Flies had some deep hidden meaning, which i felt made the book tedious and confusing. Yes, it is a good book, but would i read it again? No.

Rating:
Summary: 50th anniversary of Schools making students read this book.
Review: This book I found took a while to get into but had a good way of starting. I love the plot and how everything turns out at the end. The story starts of well but soon enough the children become scared because of the "beast".
The group is split into two. Ralph and Piggy end up by themselves and Jack and his tribe become a bit obbsessed with the beast. They are the hunters and almost become to caught up in being standed on the island and fending for themselves.They go to far and end up doing things that are quite shocking for anyone espeshally children. The group become to over the top and they end up just not caring about their old friends anymore.

One of the main points in the book is the fire. They decide to make a fire and keep it going so that passing planes nad ships would be able to find them. When the fire is left to go out and a plane passes the island Ralph and Jack have the fight that almost leads to jacks death.
The tribe and jack and piggy are always stealing and fighting and even when people get hurt and things are getting out of control. Alot of the book is very sad and it just shows you what could happen if people did get stranded on the island. Toward the end things are going crazy and before they find adults theey almost burn down the island trying to find Ralph.
When the children suddenly become in contact with adults at the end again they act as if they have woken up from a very long dream. They start crying and everything hits them that has happened in the last few weeks. They tried to act like adults and make rules but things definatly didint go as smooth as im sure all of them wanted.