Sep 17
Authors hate kids. I’m convinced.
Okay, maybe “hate” is a strong word. But, many, novelists really enjoy putting their young characters through the literary ringer.
Have you ever thought about how much bad crap happens to kids in famous novels? No wonder they’re all jacked up.
You’d probably be jacked up, too, if awful stuff like this happened to you:
A few weeks ago, my wife and I had the chance to take our little guy to a treehouse exhibit hosted at a local botanical garden, Cheekwood, here in Nashville.
Now, you’re probably wondering, Hey, I’m glad you had a nice family outing and all, but what does this have to do with books?
Thanks for asking! The tree houses, you see, were all inspired by literature. Literary tree houses! Now how cool is that?
The funny thing about the trip: I was much more into the tree houses than our two-year-old. He didn’t seem very impressed, plus all the people crowded around annoyed him. He needs his space.
But, since I took a bunch of photos, I thought I’d share a few with you today. Hopefully, unlike my two-year-old, you’ll think these tree houses are super cool.
Let’s take a look, with the passage that inspired each treehouse below the photo:
I could probably have a much more entertaining review if I let my one-year-old son review Animal Farm.
Me: “What’s the cow say?” Him: ”Moo!” Me: ”What’s the pig say?” Him: ”Oink! Oink!” Me: ”What’s the doggy say?” Him: ”Woof! Woof!”
Outside of animal noises, though, I’m not sure how much insight he could give you. And, really, he’s so fond of pigs right now I don’t want to burst his bubble and reveal Napoleon’s dastardly deeds. That just might break his heart.
Lord of the Flies was the fourth novel I read after I started this project.
That seems like forever ago, but it was just last October. Since then, I’ve read 25 more books and ranked each one in my highly subjective and totally meaningless rankings.
When I look over those rankings, I’m always surprised at how low I ranked Lord of the Flies. Golding’s classic is currently 26 out of 29 books. And, for awhile, before Margaret and Mrs. Dalloway arrived on the scene, it was actually ranked last.
Jun 17
Lord of the Flies: Great Opening Line
Way back when this blog had about 5 readers, I discussed this topic. So since I’ve got a few more visitors than that these days, I thought we could revisit it.
If you’ve read at least one of my reviews, you’ve probably noticed that I include the opening line of the novel in each review. Why?
I don’t think you can judge a book by its cover, but you might be able to judge it by its opening sentence. Whenever I’m browsing books in a bookstore (remember those?), I always flip to the first page and read the first paragraph or so.
You can learn a lot from the opening line—things like the setting, the plot setup, a fact or two about a character, the author’s style. The opening line is almost like a piece of chicken on a toothpick from one of those Asian places in the mall food court. Even that small little bite can tell you whether or not you’ll like their food.
Sep 27
Quick Facts
My Thoughts
Lost drew heavily from Lord of the Flies.
I find it interesting that three of the first four novels I’ve read during this project involve adolescent protagonists. But that’s really all Lord of the Flies has in common with The Catcher in the Rye and To Kill a Mockingbird.
The story is a bit depressing. Set in World War II, a group of schoolboys–who have been evacuated out of England—crash onto a deserted island. What starts as freedom and maybe every boy’s dream (an island to explore, without grownups!) slowly devolves into chaos, mutiny, and even murder.
Two leaders emerge: Ralph, who is intent on getting off the island by keeping a signal fire going no matter the cost, and Jack—the more aggressive and vocal of the two—who becomes the group’s face-painted hunter and eventually overthrows Ralph as leader.
In a nutshell, the story demonstrates two of man’s competing tendencies: order versus chaos. At first, the boys follow Ralph’s lead. He blows a loud conch to summon everyone when he chooses to have an assembly. They discuss matters of the island—food, shelter, and fire.
The longer the boys stay trapped on the island, the more chaos that follows. Jack and his group break away from Ralph and Piggie, who is the voice of reason, and begin painting their faces, hunting pigs, and participating in “tribal dances”—during which one boy, Simon, is killed. They begin hunting—to kill—Ralph and any other stragglers that haven’t joined their club. It’s no longer play time on the island.
There’s an interesting tension between this disjointed civilization the boys have created for themselves and the fact that they are in fact still young boys. You almost forget that you are reading about a bunch of kids. They exist in a world of life and death, but issues like imaginary monsters still haunt them.
One of the youngest sees a “monster” early in the story. Slowly, they all begin to believe a monster lives on the island. This beast turns out to be the dead corpse of man who parachuted onto the island and got hung up in a tree. The wind knocks the parachute around and, at night, seems to be a breathing beast.
Jack offers a sacrifice, a severed head of a sow, to the imaginary beast. This
sacrifice is “The Lord of the Flies,” a smiling head that attracts flies, of course. But, more than that, it represents the evil that has overtaken the island. In one scene with Simon, he imagines the head talking to him, telling him that evil lies in all of us and to have fun with it:
There isn’t anyone to help you. Only me. And I’m the Beast. . . . Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill! . . . You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you? Close, close, close! I’m the reason why it’s no go? Why things are the way they are?
There’s a load of symbols here that point to Satan’s influence on man. We all have the potential to be evil. Simon resists, but ends up being killed by Jack and his savages. But Jack gives in, illustrating how out of hand we can get when we follow that path.
Golding’s writing is memorable. If you’re not into overly-descriptive writing, you may find the novel a bit tedious at times. I’ll be honest, I did. It’s not uncommon for Golding to take a couple of pages just to set up a scene. Here’s an example:
The edge of the lagoon became a streak of phosphorescence that advanced minutely, as the great wave of the tide flowed. The clear water mirrored the clear sky and the angular bright constellations. The line of phosphorescence bulged about the sand grains and little pebbles; it held them each in a dimple of tension, then suddenly accepted them with an inaudible syllable and moved on.
My favorite novels have a fair amount of dialogue with descriptive paragraphs seamlessly woven throughout. With Lord of the Flies, I felt like Golding was almost too descriptive. Some critics may laugh at a statement like that, but I’ve read a lot of novels and sometimes I get bogged down by rereading sentences two or three times. That was the case, at times, while I read this novel.
Other Stuff
The Meaning: As I mentioned above, the decapitated pig’s head on a stick is the Lord of the Flies and symbolically represents the presence of evil on the island.
Highlights: I loved the final scene of this book. It’s a beautiful exchange between Ralph and the naval officer who rescues them. Maybe it was the officer’s patronizing tone, but, for the first time in the novel, I became vividly aware that these really were just kids.
Lowlights: I’m not a fan of some of the overly descriptive sections of the book, but who am I to question a Nobel Peace prize-winning author? Kurt Vonnegut says every sentence in fiction should advance the story. Sometimes, I got bogged down in Golding’s descriptions, anticipating the next set of dialogue or forward movement in the plot. It was distracting.
Memorable Line: I thought this piece of dialogue, quoted by Piggie right before he died, sums up the main tension of the novel: “Which is better–to have rules and agree, or to hunt and kill?”
Final Thoughts: I enjoyed Lord of the Flies, but I wasn’t overwhelmed by it. Would I read it again? Doubtful. In just 200 pages, Golding tells an involved and layered story. At times, I couldn’t put the book down. And, at other times, I was just ready to finish it and move on to the next novel. The story is a half a century old, but it still influences both literature and television today. It’s definitely worthy of Time‘s list, but maybe it’s just not my cup of tea.
Up Next: Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Question: Lord of the Flies fan? Why or why not did you enjoy the novel?
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