Lord of the Flies is a tale of pigs and death, boys and men, and the nature of humans themselves. The story is set on a remote island where a plane’s worth of schoolboys have crash landed while flying to safety during a war. They set up a somewhat ordered society while they wait for rescue, despite the conflicts in leadership and the struggles of staying true to the assigned tasks. But a strange bloodlust seems to take over at times, a dangerous thirst for meat. And when night falls, mysterious movements and sounds fill the air. Rumors of a beast abound, but perhaps the beast is not outside but within.
I really did not enjoy this book. I think the concept was probably revolutionary for the time when it was written, but I think other authors have expressed the messages that humans are intrinsically evil and fight for dominance without morals when society breaks down in a way that doesn’t echo the ideas of Social Darwinism and ethnocentrism. I also felt like the book became repetitive and at a certain point you could see exactly where the plot was going and the meanings of the symbols were exceedingly clear. I would give it two stars.