The Lord Of The Flies

"Lord of The Flies"

BY: William Golding

When a group of children become stranded on a deserted island, the rules of society no longer apply to them. Without the supervision of their parents or of the law, their primitive human nature comes out. William Golding portrays this primitive human nature very exceptionally in the novel "Lord of The Flies."' This interesting book it somewhere about 223 pages, and was first published in 1958. The key summary of this book is that a group of English schoolboys who are from 6 to 12 years old crash-land on an island somewhere in the Pacific. This could have been a dream come true for the boys; no teachers, no parents and no rules that tell them what to do or not do, but this was nowhere near a dream come true, matter in fact it was a nightmare.

There is a pretty decent range of characters that play diverse roles in the story but the main characters in the book are: Jack, Ralph, and Piggy. Jack Merridew began as the arrogant and self-righteous leader of a choir. The freedom of the island allowed him to further develop the darker side of his personality as the Chief of a savage tribe. He eventually took power through brute force, and toward the end had no humane feelings what so ever. He was completely a savage. Ralph on the other hand started as a self-assured boy whose confidence in himself came from the acceptance of his peers. He had a fair nature, as he was willing to listen to Piggy. He was softer compared to jack, and also became pretty dependent on Piggy's wisdom throughout the book. Piggy himself was an educated boy who had grown up as an outcast. Due to his academic childhood, he was more mature than the other boys and retained his civilized behavior. But his experiences on the island gave him a more realistic understanding of the cruelty possessed by some people, and this was due to his maturity level. He was actually able to observe what was going on with everyone.

The setting of this book is basically when an airplane load of school-age boys are stranded on a deserted tropical island after their plane is accidentally shot down during World War II. They are completely by themselves on this island on the Pacific Ocean. The island, on which they are on, is a tropical island, full of trees, and greenery.