Lord of the Flies by William Golding
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies” is an excellent novel about the human condition.
Written in 1954, the book tells the tale of a smattering of young boys, aged six to 15 or so? who end up stranded on a deserted island in the Pacific Ocean after their plane gets shot down. With no adults on the island, the boys do what boys will do — shirk their chores, fail to bathe, murder each other. You know, the basics.
The characters start prim and proper English lads and devolve quickly into their base — or should I say primal — selves.
I loved Lord of the Flies in high school and my book club podcast decided to look at it again. We’re all middle-aged men and thought we’d tackle a classic, which I think we’d all read 30 or so years ago.
While in high school, I read the paperback version (followed by watching the 1990 book (more on that later)), this time I listened to the audio book, which I got from Libby. The audio book that I listened to was narrated by Golding himself back in 1977. He would have been 66 at the time but he sounded much older. And bored. I had to listen at 1.15x just for it to sound “normal.” So while I loved the book, I’d definitely recommend skipping the audio version, at least the one narrated by Golding.
One thing that stuck out to me that I don’t recall from before (it has been 30+ years, after all) was the constant use of the word ulalation. I’d think he got a bonus for every time he used it.
But those are minor gripes. Overall, the book is awesome. It stands up 70+ years after it was written. In fact, it stands up so well that Netflix recently released a 4-part series/adaptation that I’ll be delving into soon.
Before watching the Netflix version, I decided to revisit the 1990 movie with Balthazar Getty. I remember loving it at the time. It … did not hold up as well. Or my taste in movies has changed. Feel free to check my review, but the Cliff’s Notes version is that it wasn’t the best.
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