Rating: 
Summary: It was complicated, but it was pretty good
Review: The main reason why I didn't like this book too much was because I couldn't relate the way that the people lived. The lesson that I got from this book was that real friendships are hard to come by. Real friends are those who cares and treats you for the real you. Even though real friendships are hard to come by, there will be one of them for at least one time of your life. Don't throw that away. After reading this book, I feel lucky for the friends that I have because not everybody will have the same luck that I have had of having them.
Rating:
Summary: A great fable
Review: I read this novel a long time ago in its Russian
translation (a reasonably good one), but it goes without saying that the original is vastly superior to any translation. The entire novel is symbolist - from the very first
sentence to the very last, and in this symbolism lie both its strength and its greatest weakness. The problem is: it is *too* neatly symbolic, all symbols fit too perfectly into the author's preconceptions. This book is definitely a fable (as opposed to fiction), but for a fable it is a very good one.
Rating: 
Summary: A storytelling classic
Review: Here is my literal interpretation of Lord of the Flies.
It is a novel about children, and one of the few novels ever written about children that does not turn them into creatures of myth. Think about it. In becoming adults, we assume a very distant and elegaic picture of the beings we once were.
Happy.
Carefree.
Innocent.
All of which is so much bulldust. Happy? Childhood is a period of time spent in constant waiting for the transformation to adulthood. No, we weren't happy. Carefree? Hardly. Reckless and foolish, perhaps, but every child has its worries: we all remember the monster under the bed. And innocent? A child is innocent up to the period when it encounters other children. Bang - end of innocence. In group formation, we learn the real truth of the world. And that, really, is what happens on Golding's island. There is plenty of analysis to be done on the allegorical nature of the story, and its laid on thick symbolism. But it also succeeds merely as a tale, something that might have happened. And we read on, horrified, ensnared by complete and utter _plausability_. And as a final word, it is not that surprising that Lord of the Flies should remain such a controversial work, school reading assignments notwithstanding. As someone who I've inexcusably forgotten once said, "If you make someone think they're thinking, they'll love you; If you _really_ make someone think, they'll hate you."
Rating: 
Summary: Good idea, bad development
Review: When I fisrt heard of the story and of the idea
behind this book, I thought it could really be a
great novel. The main idea is to propose a metaphor of what our societies are like, but from the point of view of children lost on a desert island. They "build" their own little society, with a chief and people who have to do some tasks if they want to survive. Well, the setting sounds really cool, doesn't it?
That's why I wanted to read this book, and I was not compelled to read it by one of my teachers. But when I finished it, I was very disappointed. The basic idea is great, but the way it is developed is flawed. You just have kids who go crzay and wild because there are no more adults above them to tell them what to do or not. And moreover, when trying to show us a bit of what is our history, and an insight into the development of our civilizations, Golding forget many very important things along the way.
As a matter of fact, there are no women on the island (or, well, no little girl to fall in love with). And thus, no Queen to fight for. Another example : no power behind the throne. It's just a story about survival, fisrt against Nature, and then of course against humankind (here, other children).
I think that's why on one hand I loved this book, because of the setting, the ideas, and also the story. But on the other hand, this work is only a draft, not really complete and definitive (ok, no work is definitive, if you see what I mean). Sometimes when I read a book, I feel that it is the _ultimate_ novel about a subject, and I felt that for _The old mand and the sea_ (Hemingway) or _The Plague_ (Camus). This book is a good one, worth reading, but I'm sure someone can write a far better novel on this topic, and that's why I think it only deserves a 6 rating.
Rating:
Summary: fantastic, compelling for some,boring,"retarded" for others
Review: You may be wondering why there are such drastic variations in the reviews of this book. One reason that so many hate it, as another reviewer pointed out, is that many were forced to read it at school which most definately would put a damper on their enthusiasm. Another is the different ways in which people approached it. Some came into it expecting a Swiss Family Robinson or Hatchet type book, in which a group of boys in a plane crash struggle to survive. Many of these readers were probably appalled at much of the symbolism and Golding's strange style of writing. Those of us who came at it expecting this type of literature were drawn into the book. If you are the first type of reader, I would not recommend this book, but if you are the latter and haven't read it yet, read it now! I am not going to go too far into my own interpretations of this book, but I am going to say it is one of the best pices of writing I have ever read. Golding puts you on this island with the boys (in my opinion I don't think you are supposed to question what happened before the plane crash or how they got there. it is irrelevant and the author doesn't give much information on it, much to the frustration of some readers) and they start out much as you would expect them to. One boy takes command and they build their shelters, gather food, all of the things you are supposed to do in this situation. But then things go terribly, terribly wrong and the dark side, the Id as Freud might have called it, comes to the surface and the boys become horrible savages, and you are shocked to see the children's innocent exterior melt away. And then, at the gut-wrenching climax, they are suddenly seen again from an adult's eyes for what they really are. This book is one of the great triumphs of all symbolic literature
Rating:
Summary: this is one creepy book
Review: If you like watching little boys degenerate into littlesavages, this book is for you. The book is adventurous, well writtenand interesting, but its a little cryptic and kind of depressing.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best books ever
Review: As I read through the reviews for Lord of the Flies, I noticedthat some people really hated it, but the people whom hated it arealso the ones that read it in school and are very young. The first time I was supposed to read it in school, I did not take it seriously and in fact hated it as well, but later when I had to read it again in another school, I loved it. The difference was I was older and ready to learn and I feel it was a great book. So those who thought The Lord of the Flies was stupid, try again later, chances are your prespective on the book will change.
Rating:
Summary: A Very Thought-Provoking Book
Review: I am a seventh-grade, home-schooled 13 year-old. My dad oftenassigns me books to read and writes me questions on the philisophicalpoints in the chapters I just read. He assigned me to read Lord of the Flies and I must say, I wasn't to enthusiastic. But I read it and I enjoyed it. It wasn't my favorite book in the world, but it was well worth the read. My comment for the people who hated the book is that they must not have wanted to find the hidden meaning in it. If they would be serious about the book whan they read it, they might find a little more meaning.
Rating:
Summary: controversial, cogent, cohesive, compelling, captivating
Review: "'I don't like it.' 'As true as it may be?' 'Yes.'" Thus was the course of a "conversation" with a laconic English teacher, Who ended it abruptly with that final "yes." Why? What is the stigma attached to this book that some many are disturbed to the point that they would shun it as Huckleberry Finn (though that's another story)? It provides perhaps the most verisimilar (and concomitantly terrifying) inscape into the innate nature of human beings. Author of this masterpiece, Richard Golding, a Nobel Laureate, advocates atavism, expounding that people are perhaps intrinsically imperfect and moreover dangerous. The veneer of English etiquette and polite mores eroded in attrition, a group of boys stranded in a plane crash devolve, their true truculence evinced, the primal potential of all manifest in their actions.^M Furthermore Golding masterully implements symbolism on many levels, handling mutliple allegories within the macrocosm of the world and the microcosm of the island, and yet He hews this imminent, immanent, threatening eminent imbroglio into a wonderful web of fantastic connections, so that all is one. There is no superfluity in this work. All is essential, all is exigent, and all is effective, entirely unfettered from tautology, redundance, or any kind of pretention (which is far more than can be said of this deplorable "review"). Rarely live such authors of Golding's caliber. Even less often is such an important, demanding novel produced. Reading it is requisite, particularly if We remain blind enough to ignore its painfully blatant manifestation in reality, today, yesterday, and fearfully tomorrow. Lest society fail, lest morality fall, lest ethics moulder, don't forget Beelzebub within (for "Lord of the Flies" is, i understand, translation of the Greek transliteration/translation of the Hebrew word for demon, or perhaps even "devil") It would be equally foolish to fear not the book as to ignore it and abscond, ensconced comfortably complacent, and fain free from peril of being disturbed. That You may never rue ignorance of the id, of the dark heart within, read, ruminate over, and ponder please the novel. "Know thyself? Why, if I knew myself, I'd run away." -- Goethe
Rating:
Summary: An interesting fact about the title
Review: In Hebrew, Beelzebub(another word for the Devil) translates "Lord of the flies", thus the title
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