Lord of the Flies - William Golding

Lord of the Flies
By William Golding

Characteristic Track : Master of Puppets by Metallica - this song's choppy guitar riffs really resembled the savagery of the boys.

A group of young boys are stranded on an island after an unfortunate plane crash. Without any adults around, they are left having to fend for themselves. The first thing that they do is attempt to put some form of an organizational structure in place. A leader is elected, and a set of rules is agreed upon.

However, it is not long before everything degenerates into chaos. Certain individuals refuse to play their part for the party, others appear to have conflicting ideas of their own, and still others believe that rules are beneath them. A rebellion thus inevitably ensues. In time, the boys lose all trace of civility, and become akin to savages, resembling wild tribes in certain parts of Africa or even primitive mankind.

In this title, Golding raises several questions about human nature that are if not disturbing, at least thought-provoking. He presents his view that when left to themselves, without any semblance of civilized order whatsoever, human beings will end up fighting for their individual rights, without a modicum of empathy for those around them. This is demonstrated in the tribal ritual the boys teach themselves and engage in, at first while attempting to capture pigs for food, but which thereafter led to the death of one of them. Indeed, even before Golding, Thomas Hobbes, the late 17th century English philosopher, wrote a book titled Leviathan, where he also takes this position. Leviathan, published in 1651, is regarded as one of the books which helped shape western philosophy.