Pop*Ledge: LORD OF THE FLIES

Lord of the Flies is the first novel by Nobel Prize-winning author William Golding. Published in 1954, the book portrays a group of British schoolboys stuck on an island and their descent into savagery. In 2005, the novel was chosen by Time magazine as one of the one hundred best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005.

In the book, a British plane crashes on an isolated island with the only survivors being male children below age thirteen. Two dominant boys emerge: Ralph and Jack, the head of a choir group that was among the survivors. Ralph is voted chief and asserts two goals: have fun and work toward rescue by maintaining a constant fire signal. For a time the boys work together while erecting shelters, gathering food and water, and keeping the fire going. Jack organizes his choir group into the group's "hunters," who are responsible for hunting for meat and maintaining the fire.

The boys also find a conch shell that, when first blown, calls the children to an assembly. The boy agree that only the boy holding the conch may speak and it should be passed around to those who wish to voice their opinion. The conch symbolizes democracy and civility and order within the group.

Order quickly deteriorates as the boys turn lazy and idle. At one point, Jack summons his hunters to hunt down a wild pig, leading a ship to miss them when the smoke signal is not maintained. Around the same time, many begin to believe that the island is inhabited by a monster (“the beast”). After Ralph and Jack falsely confirm the beast's existence, the children split into two groups: Ralph's group focuses on preserving the signal fire and Jack’s focuses on hunting.

Jack's tribe gradually becomes more animalistic, blindly murdering a fellow child who they mistake as the beast. Following the murder, they raid Ralph's camp to steal a kid’s glasses to make a fire. Ralph's tribe attempts to get the glasses back and in the ensuing confrontation another child is murdered.

Following the conflict, Jack leads his tribe on a manhunt for Ralph. During the pursuit the island foliage is set ablaze, which has the unintended consequence of attracting the attention of a nearby warship. A naval officer lands on the island, bringing the children's fighting to an abrupt halt. In the final scene, although now certain that he will be rescued after all, Ralph cries.

The title of the book is a reference to Simon, a part of Ralph's tribe, who finds the head of the hunters' dead pig on a stick, left as an offering to the beast. Simon envisions the pig head, swarming with scavenging flies, as the "Lord of the Flies" and believes that it is talking to him.

Lord of the Flies initially sold fewer than three thousand copies in the US, but soon became a bestseller and by the early 1960s was required reading in many schools and colleges. In recent years, the television series Lost has drawn many of its initial plot devices and themes from Lord of the Flies.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_of_the_Flies