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 The original UKLord of the Flies book cover | |
| Author | William Golding |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Anthony Gross[1] |
| Genre | Allegorical novel |
| Publisher | Faber and Faber |
Publication date | 17 September 1954 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Pages | 224[2] |
| OCLC | 47677622 |
Lord of the Flies is the 1954 debut novel of British authorWilliam Golding. The plot concerns a group of prepubescent British boys who are stranded on anuninhabited island and their disastrous attempts to govern themselves that led to a descent into savagery. The novel's themes include morality, leadership, and the tension between civility and chaos.
Lord of the Flies was generally well received and is a popularly assigned book in schools.
Published in 1954,Lord of the Flies was Golding's first novel. Golding got the idea for the plot fromThe Coral Island, a children's adventure novel with a focus on Christianity and the supposed civilising influence ofBritish colonialism. Golding thought that the book was unrealistic and asked his wife whether it would be a good idea if he "wrote a book about children on an island, children who behave in the way children really would behave?"[3]
Golding, who was a philosophy teacher before becoming aRoyal Navy lieutenant, experienced war firsthand and commanded a landing craft in theNormandy landings during D-Day in 1944. After the war ended and Golding returned to England, the world was dominated byCold War and the threat ofnuclear annihilation, which led Golding to examine the nature of humanity and that went on to inspireLord of the Flies.[4]
The draft of the book was entitledStrangers from Within, which was considered "too abstract and too explicit".[5] The novel was rejected by many publishers before being accepted byFaber & Faber. An initial rejection labelled the book as "absurd... Rubbish & dull".[6] Eventually Golding choseLord of the Flies as the title.[7][8] The title is a literal translation ofBeelzebub, a biblical demon considered the god of pride and warfare.[9][10][11]
EditorCharles Monteith worked with Golding on several major edits, including removing the entire first section that described an evacuation fromnuclear war.[6][5] The character of Simon also was heavily edited to remove an interaction with a mysterious figure who is implied to be a god.[12] Ultimately, Golding accepted the edits, and wrote that "I've lost any kind of objectivity I ever had over this novel and can hardly bear to look at it".[13] The edited manuscripts are available to view at theUniversity of Exeter library.[14]
In the midst of a wartime evacuation, a British aeroplane crashes on an isolated island. The only survivors are boys in their middle childhood orpreadolescence. A fair-haired boy named Ralph and a fat boy nicknamed Piggy find aconch shell, which Ralph uses as a horn to gather the survivors. Ralph immediately commands authority over the other surviving boys using the conch, and is elected their "chief". He establishes three goals for the boys: to have fun, to survive, and to constantly maintain asmoke signal that could alert passing ships. Ralph, a red-haired boy named Jack, and a quiet boy named Simon use Piggy's glasses to create a signal fire.
The semblance of order among them deteriorates as the boys grow lazy and ignore Ralph's efforts to improve life on the island. They becomeparanoid about an imaginary monster called "the beast". Ralph fails to convince the boys that no beast exists, while Jack gains popularity by declaring that he will personally hunt and kill the monster. At one point, Jack takes the boys to hunt a wild pig, including the boys who were meant to watch the signal fire. The smoke signal goes out, failing to attract a ship that was passing by the island. Ralph angrily confronts Jack and considers relinquishing his role as leader, but is persuaded not to do so by Piggy.
One night, an air battle occurs near the island and the body of afighter pilot drifts down in a parachute. Twin boys Sam and Eric mistake the corpse for the beast. When Ralph and Jack investigate with another boy, Roger, they flee in terror, believing the imaginary beast is real. Jack tries to turn the others against Ralph, and goes off alone to form his own tribe, with most of the other boys gradually joining him. Jack and his followers set up an offering to the beast in the forest: a pig's head, mounted on a sharpened stick and swarming with flies. Simon, who often ventures into the forest alone, has animaginary dialogue with the head that he dubs the "Lord of the Flies". The head tells Simon that there is no beast on the island, implies that the beast is actually within theboys themselves and predicts that the others will turn on Simon. That night, Ralph and Piggy visit Jack's tribe, who have begun painting their faces and engaging in primitive ritual dances. When Simon realises that the beast is only a dead pilot, he rushes to tell Jack's tribe, but the frenzied boys (including Ralph and Piggy) mistake Simon for the beast and kill him.
Jack and his tribe steal Piggy's glasses, the only means of starting a fire. Ralph goes to Jack's camp with Piggy, Sam, and Eric to confront Jack and retrieve the glasses. Cementing his rebellious spirit against Ralph's authority, Roger drops a boulder that kills Piggy and shatters the conch in the process. Ralph manages to escape, but Sam and Eric are forced to join Jack's tribe. That night, Ralph secretly confronts Sam and Eric, who warn him that Jack plans to hunt for him.
The next morning, Jack's tribe sets fire to the forest. Ralph narrowly escapes the boys and the fire, and while fleeing, falls down in front of a uniformed adult – a Britishnaval officer who has landed on the island to investigate the fire. Ralph, Jack, and the remaining boys erupt into sobs over the "end of innocence". The officer then expresses his disappointment at seeing the boys exhibiting such feral, warlike behavior, then turns, "moved and a little embarrassed", to stare at hiscruiser waiting offshore.
The novel's major themes are morality, civility, leadership, and the potential for rapid degeneration into chaos in society that all explore the duality of human nature.[4]
Lord of the Flies portrays a scenario in which upper-class British children quickly descend into chaos and violence without adult authority, despite attempts by some of them to establish order and co-ordination. This subverts thecolonial narration found in many British books of this period; for example,The Coral Island.[4]Lord of the Flies contains various references toThe Coral Island; for example, the rescuing naval officer describing the misadventures of the boys as a "jolly good show. Like the Coral Island."[15] Golding's three central characters, Ralph, Piggy, and Jack, can also be interpreted as caricatures of the protagonists inThe Coral Island.[16]
At anallegorical level, a central theme is how the desire for civilisation conflicts with thedesire for power.Lord of the Flies also portrays the tension betweengroupthink and individuality, between rational and emotional reactions, and between morality and immorality. These themes have been explored in an essay by American literary criticHarold Bloom.[17]
Some examples of symbolism inLord of the Flies are the signal fire, Piggy's glasses, and the conch shell, which may be read as representing hope, reason, democracy, and unity, among other interpretations.
The novel also examines aspects of war, as the story is set during awar that has begun before the boys arrive on the island.[18] Although the location of the island is never stated, it is sometimes thought to be somewhere in thePacific Ocean, butJohn Sutherland argues that acoral island in theIndian Ocean is intended, based on remarks by Jack that the plane had stopped off in "Gib" (Gibraltar) and "Addis" (Addis Ababa), presumably en route to a refuge inWestern Australia. In fact, an early manuscript, entitledStrangers From Within, explicitly placed the island nearNew Guinea andBorneo.[19]
As a tale of adventure and survival,Lord of the Flies fits the genre ofAllegorical fiction. It also questions human morality, making it a work ofphilosophical fiction. The novel is styled as allegorical fiction, embodying the concepts of inherent human savagery,mob mentality, andtotalitarian leadership.[20] However, Golding deviates from typical allegory in that both the protagonists and the antagonists are fully developed, realistic characters.
Its first print run of 3,000 copies was slow to sell, butLord of the Flies went on to become very popular, with more than ten million copies sold as of 2015.[5]E. M. Forster choseLord of the Flies as his "outstanding novel of the year". It was described in one review as "not only a first-rate adventure but a parable of our times".[5] In February 1960,Floyd C. Gale ofGalaxy Science Fiction ratedLord of the Flies five stars out of five, stating, "Golding paints a truly terrifying picture of the decay of a minuscule society... Well on its way to becoming a modern classic".[21]
Marc D. Hauser calledLord of the Flies "riveting" and said that it "should be standard reading in biology, economics, psychology, and philosophy".[22]
Lord of the Flies presents a view of humanity unimaginable before the horrors of Nazi Europe, and then plunges into speculations about mankind in thestate of nature. Bleak and specific, but universal, fusing rage and grief,Lord of the Flies is both a novel of the 1950s, and for all time.
Lord of the Flies was included on theAmerican Library Association list of the 100 most frequentlychallenged books of 1990–1999, for its controversial stance onhuman nature and individual welfare versus thecommon good.[23]
The book has been criticised as cynical for portraying humanity as inherently selfish and violent. It has been linked with the essay "The Tragedy of the Commons" byGarrett Hardin and with books byAyn Rand and countered by "Management of the Commons" byElinor Ostrom.[24]
Lord of the Flies has been contrasted with the historicalTongan castaways incident from 1965, when a group of schoolboys on a fishing boat fromTonga were marooned on an uninhabited island and considered dead by their relatives. The group not only managed to survive for more than 15 months, but they "had set up a small commune with food garden, hollowed-out tree trunks to store rainwater, a gymnasium with curious weights, a badminton court, chicken pens, and a permanent fire, all from handiwork, an old knife blade, and much determination" according to reports. When the Tongan boys were found by a ship captain,Peter Warner, they were in good health and spirits and had developed an orderly adaptation to their stranding. When writing about the Tongan event, the Dutch historian,Rutger Bregman, said that comparing the incident to Golding's fictional portrayal made him consider theLord of the Flies as unrealistic.[25]
In a 2025PopMatters reappraisal, cultural critic Charles Switzer stated, "That’s whyLord of the Flies still resonates. In an age when young people face constant pressure to conform, perform, and pick sides — whether online or in real-world social hierarchies — the breakdown on Golding’s Island feels painfully familiar. The fear of being cast out, the seduction of belonging at any cost, the ease with which violence becomes a form of power — these aren’t relics of colonial history. They’re part of the emotional architecture that today’s young people still must navigate."[26]
Lord of the Flies was awarded a place on both lists ofModern Library 100 Best Novels, reaching number 41 on the editor's list and 25 on the reader's list.[27] In 2003,Lord of the Flies was listed at number 70 on theBBC survey,The Big Read,[28] and in 2005, it was chosen byTime magazine as one of the 100 bestEnglish-language novels since 1923.[29]Time also included the novel in its list of the 100 Best Young-Adult Books of All Time.[30]
Popular in schools, especially in the English-speaking world, a 2016 UK poll sawLord of the Flies ranked third in the nation's favourite books from school, behindGeorge Orwell'sAnimal Farm andCharles Dickens'Great Expectations.[31]
In 2019,BBC News includedLord of the Flies on its list of the100 most inspiring novels.[32]
Three film adaptations were based on the book:
A fourth adaptation, to feature an all-female cast, was announced byWarner Bros. in August 2017.[33][34] Subsequently abandoned, it inspired the 2021 television seriesYellowjackets.[35][36]Ladyworld, an all-female adaptation, was released in 2018.
In April 2023, theBBC announced that the British production companyEleven Film would produce the first evertelevision adaptation of the novel, written by screenwriterJack Thorne.[37]
The book was first adapted for the stage and performed in 1984 atClifton College Preparatory School. It was adapted by Elliot Watkins, a teacher at the school, with the personal consent ofGolding (the only stage production so endorsed, as he was dead by the time it was adapted again), who attended the opening night.[38]
Nigel Williams wrote his own adaptation of the text for the stage some ten years later. It was debuted by theRoyal Shakespeare Company in July 1995.[39] The Pilot Theatre Company toured it extensively in the United Kingdom and elsewhere.
In October 2014 it was announced that the 2011 production ofLord of the Flies would return for the 2015 season at theRegent's Park Open Air Theatre ahead of a major UK tour.[40][41][42] The production was to be directed byTimothy Sheader.[40][41]
Kansas-based Orange Mouse Theatricals andMathew Klickstein produced a topical, gender-bending adaptation calledLadies of the Fly that was co-written by a group of girls aged 8 to 16 based on the original text and their own lives. The production was performed by the girls as an immersive live-action show in August 2016.[43]
In June 2013,BBC Radio 4 Extra broadcast a dramatisation by Judith Adams in four 30-minute episodes directed bySasha Yevtushenko. The cast includedRuth Wilson as narrator,Finn Bennett as Ralph, Richard Linnel as Jack, Caspar Hilton-Hilley as Piggy, and Jack Caine as Simon.[44]
A graphic novel based on the book, adapted, and illustrated byAimée de Jongh, was published on 12 September 2024 in 35 countries. The Dutch version of the book was sold out in a day.[45]
AuthorStephen King named his fictional town ofCastle Rock after Jack's mountain camp inLord of the Flies.[46] The book itself appears prominently in King's novelsCujo (1981),Misery (1987), andHearts in Atlantis (1999).[47] His novelIt was influenced by Golding's novel: "I thought to myself I'd really like to write a story about what's gained and what's lost when you go from childhood to adulthood, and also, the things we experience in childhood that are like seeds that blossom later on."[48] In 2011, King wrote an introduction for a new edition ofLord of the Flies to mark the centenary of Golding's birth.[49] King's town of Castle Rock inspired the name ofRob Reiner's production company,Castle Rock Entertainment.[50]
Alan Garner credits the book with making him want to become a writer.[51]
Iron Maiden wrotea song inspired by the book, included in their 1995 albumThe X Factor.[52]
The Camerawalls include a song entitled "Lord of the Flies" on their 2008 albumPocket Guide to the Otherworld.[53]
The collection represents the literary papers of William Golding and consists of notebooks, manuscript and typescript drafts of Golding's novels up to 1989.
The reveal kickstarts the BBC's year-long celebration of literature.
Castle Rock, which King in turn had got from Golding's Lord of the Flies.
