I realized that I was 26 years old and had never read the classics, so now I”m catching up, one volume at a time. You can read the intro to this blog series here.
Part Two – Lord of the Flies
by James Roland
I finished Lord of the Flies with my feet in the surf of Koh Tao, Thailand. This does not make for pleasant dreams. But luckily for me, I felt an odd detachment my entire way through the book, so I was disturbed far less than most folks who sing this book’s praises. It’s not that I don’t see the brilliance of the idea and the beauty of the prose … This guy treated descriptive passages like Pollack treated a canvas: beautifully confusing at first glance, intuitively brilliant upon meditation. Still, there was a strand of self-awareness that made me constantly focus on the message, and at the end when the characters reference the moral decline in perfect, articulate clarity, I lost all emotional connection and treated the text just like I was in the classroom. It was interesting to dissect, and that’s about all. The part I found the most engrossing was Simon’s mental break in front of the pig’s head. Here Golding managed to shed intellect for character development and emotion without losing the social commentary. Most other pivotal scenes are hobbled by the author’s need to make his point, including the ending. Still, Golding manages to suck you in with his final image, as the children’s savior, unable to handle their bared emotions, contents himself by staring longingly at his war ship. I could have used more of this sort of writing and less scenes of the children whining about The Horror of it all. What really struck me about this novel was just how unlikable a lot of the characters were. Ralph is the underdog leader, but still manages to degrade Piggy like the other barbarians and treats the Littluns like imperialists treat natives. Piggy is the voice of reason, but refuses to step up for himself until it gets him killed. Samneric are literally and figuratively two-faced about all their decisions, including whether or not to succumb to the barbarian rhetoric. I think in retrospect I read this book too late in life. The meaning and message is too overt for an older reader, while as a teenager it would have been life changing. This makes me a little sad, like I let the signal fire die and missed the boat. It makes me wonder where I would be as a writer if this novel had changed the course of my art; would I be more (or less) civilized?
