The novel starts off with the description and background information of the main characters and the atmosphere around them. The reader is forced to read the rest of the novel and find the answers to the questions they have after reading the introduction. It is set on a deserted island which ... Read review
Lord of the Flies , William Golding's classic tale about a group of English schoolboys who ... more
are plane-wrecked on a deserted island, is just as chilling and relevant today as when it was first published in 1954. At first, the stranded boys cooperate, att...
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Lord of the Flies, William Golding's classic tale about a group of English schoolboys who ... more
are plane-wrecked on a deserted island, is just as chilling and relevant today as when it was first published in 1954. At first, the stranded boys cooperate, atte...
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Lord of the flies
Advantages: good story Disadvantages: Quite long when reading is school.
The novel starts off with the description and background information of the main characters and the atmosphere around them. The reader is forced to read the rest of the novel and find the answers to the questions they have after reading the introduction. It is set on a deserted island which is very effective because the characters can not escape and have to stay with those characters they don't like or characters who bully them. The setting is also ... ...survive? Some of the characters are also described with light and colour to show the mood and atmosphere around them. The opening chapter also gives hints on the conflicts between the characters. Golding has used symbolism to guide or warn the readers of what might happen next in the novel.
The first and the most important character introduced is Ralph. He is described as "the fair boy" and was wearing his school uniform ... more
The novel starts off with the description and background information of the main characters and the atmosphere around them. The reader is forced to read the rest of the novel and find the answers to the questions they have after reading the introduction. It is set on a deserted island which is very effective because the characters can not escape and have to stay with those characters they don't like or characters who bully them. The setting is also very important because it raises questions like will the boys survive? Some of the characters are also described with light and colour to show the mood and atmosphere around them. The opening chapter also gives hints on the conflicts between the characters. Golding has used symbolism to guide or warn the readers of what might happen next in the novel.
The first and the most important character introduced is Ralph. He is described as "the fair boy" and was wearing his school uniform when the plane crashed into the island. Ralph initially feels free on the island because there are no rules and it was every boys dream in that time to go on expeditions and adventures "The delight of a realised ambition overcame him". In contrast to Piggy he is physically fit, healthy and attractive. Golding has used foreshadowing in this novel which helps us give hints of the killing of Simon and Piggy later in the novel. Also Ralph is associated with gold and light which tells us that he is on the side of good and might be the chief. He may represent democracy. Ralph's father is a "commander in the navy" which suggests that he is from a wealthy family. When he is happy he says phrases like "wacco, whizzoh and smashing" and does a hand stand which shows his childlike qualities which soon disappear as Ralph becomes increasingly disillusioned.
The second character introduced to the readers is a "fat boy" called Piggy. Piggy is a total contrast to Ralph in terms of his appearance and background. He is physically not in shape; he has asthma, and depends on adults for supervision and protection from other kids. His "dad's dead" and he doesn't tells about his mother probably because she might have left him. He "lives with (piggy's) my auntie". "She kept a sweet-shop" which may explain why piggy is over weight and because he "used to get ever so many sweets". Although Piggy and Ralph appear to be very different characters at first and Ralph makes it clear that he doesn't respect Piggy initially, as the story develops it becomes obvious that Piggy and Ralph do have a lot in common. Piggy is presented as an outsider because he is different from others. This is shown when Ralph tells the others that his name is Piggy and because of this "A storm of laughter arose and even tiniest child joined in". He is also an outsider because the readers don't know his real name and this prepares us for Piggy's death later. He is persuaded while he is on the island and in same way lives and dies as a pig.
Piggy is very good at thinking and so gives ideas to Ralph. Ralph finds the conch and Piggy gives the idea to Ralph to blow it so "we can use this to call the others". This shows that Piggy has very good ideas. The conch is a symbol of democracy and Ralph as the chief made the rule that who ever wants to speak to the others he has to hold the conch . It is a bit like who ever holds the conch has the freedom of speech. It is a symbol of civilisation and social equality.
The most terrible character introduced is Jack. He is described as, 'tall, thin and a bony' and he has red hair. His face is freckled and "and ugly without silliness." The colour of his eyes is blue. Unlike Ralph, Jack is first described as an animal "the creature was a party of boys" and 'something dark was fumbling along'. The colour black is used a lot of times when Golding described Jack "Beneath the black cap" and "by black cloaks" because it is the colour of evil and darkness. This tells the readers that later in the novel he would do bad things. He is also represented with red which is again the sign of danger "his hair was red". Jack is rude to others for example he tells Piggy to "Shut up fatty" and he thinks he is the king or chief. He gives orders to other people saying imperative verbs (especially his choir) "Choir! Stand still!" and "sit down". He doesn't appreciate beauty, and is only interested in what he can use for survival or of for power. For example he says to Ralph "Green candles….we can't eat them". In this chapter Jack is in charge of the choir, and makes them a hunting group "Or hunters" which means being wild, killing animals and may be humans. He competes for leadership but he loses "With dreary obedience the choir raised their hands". Before crashing on this island Jack was in a school where rules were followed by every student and song had a value "I can sing C shape" (probably a religious school). He was also "chapter chorister and head boy" of the school and had a choir. At first Jack is not happy about being on the island because there are no grown ups which means no rules and regulations. The first words that he speaks are "Where's the man with the trumpet?". This tells us that he is obsessive about no grown ups on then island. At the end of the novel Jack becomes the leader of most of the boys. Golding has prepared us for this by presenting Jack as a dominating leader of the choir whom he chooses to be hunters and as a character with no concern for others. He is power hungry and there is a conflict with the other boys mainly Ralph and Piggy. He makes his shelter on a rocky shore which is shaped like a castle. Later in the novel Piggy is killed by Roger in this rock castle. Over here Jack is the king as he has the most power "Jack rose from the log that was his throne". He tries to persuade others to join his tribe by saying "I gave you food…and my hunters will protect you from the beast" to gain more strength and power.
After Piggy a few same aged boys are introduced including two boys called Sam and Eric. They were twins and are about seven years old. They become one character with one identity because they are some times called "San n Eric" and "Samneric. They shock and confuse others by doing things at the same time "they breathed together, they grinned together". The littluns are led by Jack after Piggy's death because they are unable to make decisions for themselves .Near the end they are forced to work as guards for Jack's tribe.
One of the main characters is Simon. He is described as "a skinny, vivid boy, with a glance coming up from under a hut of straight hair that hung down, black and coarse". He is vulnerable, sensitive to his environment and to beauty and Jack has no sympathy for him. Simon is seen as prophetic, he makes predictions about the future and later he is the only one who realises that "the beast" is evil and is inside them. They realises that the boys have mistaken dead parachutists for the beast but before he could tell any one else he is torn and stabbed to death because he is mistaken to be the beast by Jack and his tribe. His last words were about "a body on the hill" which is a biblical reference. He is also an outsider. His death is described as "a death of an animal by an animal tearing of teeth and claws". It is described in this way to show how savage and uncivilised the boys have become compared to what they were when they arrived. Just before he is being killed Simon is referred to as a "thing" and a "Beast" because Golding is writing from the other boys' point of view.
Another character is Roger. He is from the Jacks choir and is described as "there was a slight, furtive boy no one knew, who kept to himself with an inner intensity of avoidance and secrecy. He muttered that his name was Roger and was silent again" .Near the end of the novel he becomes increasingly sadistic and kills Piggy and destroys the conch which means the end of freedom of speech on the island.
In the first chapter after the main characters are introduced Jack, Ralph and Simon explore the island to make sure that it is an island "three of us will go on an expedition and find out". And on the way back to the others Jack tries to kill a pig but fails. When Jack raised his arm in the air "There came a pause, a hiatus, the pig continued to scream". There is no information given about Jack's parents or background. Further in the novel Ralph is left alone with Piggy and the littluns would be left alone and Jack and the others would make their own group and fight with Ralph and kill Simon and Piggy.
An island has been used as the setting for this novel. This is partly because characters are trapped there which automatically creates tension and conflict. The reader will want to know whether the characters work together or whether they will compete with each other or split up. They also want to know whether the characters will survive and, of course, whether they will ever be rescued from the island or find a way home. The word scar is usually applied to damage on human beings and Golding has personified the island by saying "the long scar smashed into the jungle" which in reality is the mark from the plane crash. This shows that the humans have caused damage to the island even before the novel has begun. The island is a microcosm of the wider world. It replaces the war on a smaller scale. The three boys on novel the whole island is lit on fire by Jack in order to kill Ralph but the smoke form the fire saves them by attracting a navy ship (Irony) . This suggests that where ever humans go they take destruction with them.
The expeditions to find out that were they on an island or on a place that had adults turned in to destruction of the island like the humans in the war. "The great rock…smashed a deep hole in the canopy of the forest." And they said "like a bomb" and at the end of the signs that show all is not well on the island and hints of the problem to come are "a bird, a vision of red and yellow, flashed upwards with a witch-like cry" This shows that the things on the island looks beautiful and nice but are actually sinister. Another example of this is "skull-like coco-nuts".
The main themes that are raised in this novel are civilisation v savagery, violence, law/rules, survival and conflict between the characters.
The first chapter does prepare us what happens later and also at the same time attracts the reader to read on more to find the answers to the questions they had in the first chapter. I think that the first chapter uses a lot of symbols and colour codes to help us have the correct concept and background information for the character. Golding raises tension in the first chapter through the conflicts and differences between the characters and through introducing the theme of survival. This grabs our attention and makes us want to read on.
Overall i will give it 5 stars because it was very interesting. if you like the novel then you will also the film because it has almost the same story, characters and same events take place.
Thanks for reading my review which was also my GCSE english coursework. i hope you found it helpful.
Advantages: Chilling, eerie, well written modern classic Disadvantages: Quite creepy, crap ending.
...rule them all'''
The Lord Of The Flies was the obvious choice for me. Why not? It's one of those books that everyone knows but doesn't all at the same time. Many have read it, many have heard the jist of the story and seen a million and one parodies (The simpsons one springs to mind). So I decided it was finally time to do it the honour of reading it. That and it had a very pretty orange cover with lots of little tribal stick figures on it. It's ... ...wise) being quite thin, therefore more appealing when I'm looking for a quick read.
As for the price, I got my copy for £7.99, brand new and shiny from Waterstones. I had to break my budget since it wasn't in their 3 for 2 offer and after seeing on the cover that it's a winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, it just encouraged me to spend all my hard earned cash. You can't ignore a NOBEL PRIZE WINNER!!! '''Worlds Quickest Rundown'''
Since it's ...
ryanando 30.07.2008
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Lord of the flies - William Golding
Advantages: An enchanting tale of a group of young boys' loss of innocence Disadvantages: None
Unlike many others who have reviewed this book, I was not forced to study it at school. My sister had trouble studying it for her GCSE examination set text so I agreed to read it and help her with it; and as I remembered enjoying it I thought it’d be worth buying for another read!
PLOT SYNOPSIS
A plane evacuating a bundle of schoolchildren from the horrors of the Second World War crashes into a desert island: the pilot dies and subsequently the ... ...The first character we are introduced to is Ralph; a confident, well built, tanned twelve year old. Immediately after, Ralph encounters a short fat boy. Together they celebrate the absence of any adults, free to roam around the idyllic island. Being a naturally trusting character, the fat boy almost immediately confides his nickname the children from his school had given him: ‘Piggy.’ Ralph laughs and mocks him but Piggy insists that Ralph keep it ...
carly_pussycat 27.08.2004
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Lord of the flies - William Golding
Advantages: Superbly written, imaginative detail Disadvantages: May have been over analysed in schools
...has both read the book Lord of the Flies and watched the TV series Lost could not help to notice the similarities. Being that William Golding wrote Lord of the Flies in 1954 he is considered to be well beyond his time in his writing. I first read this book for my GCSEs and have read it again and again since, having much more enjoyment reading it for pleasure than analysing every single sentence.
The Author
**************
William Golding was born ... ...Literature at Oxford. He wrote twelve novels in his career as well as many poems, plays and essays. His first peice of writing was published when he was just 23. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983 and died 10 years later.
The Characters
******************
For me there are four main characters in this book and then two seperate groups of secondary characters, I have also compared them against characters in Lost for those who ...
maz2909 24.01.2006
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Lord of the flies - William Golding
Advantages: Can be analysed on many different scales. Disadvantages: Can be seen s as simplistic and boring if the true menaing is not understood
...you can definitely do with Lord of the Flies.
On the simplest level, it can be taken as a story of bullying, where one child takes power of the majority and then picks on the weak one who always speaks his mind and seems to stick out like a sore thumb. On a deeper level, it looks at the possibility that most people, despite the fact they have come from civilised societies, can turn in to a savage brutal beings. Further more, when this brutality ... ...or logic reason. Hence, Lord of the Flies is one of those books which not only an individual can relate but can also be related to a nation.
Later on in the story when the bully has fully formed his group of followers and taken them aside and created his own 'tribe', he informs then that there is a beast which they need to kill. This beast is a metaphor for evil, is represented in the book by the head of a pig. The interesting thing about this point ...
thuha 11.02.2006
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Lord of the flies - William Golding
Advantages: a real modern classic with a moral Disadvantages: the school connection puts a lot of people off
...teachers!), is the island setting. Lord of the Flies has a strong connection with an earlier novel, Coral Island, by R.M. Ballantyne. In this novel a group of boys set up a civilisation and overcome numerous difficulties. Golding obviously felt that this view of human nature was false, and so in Lord of the Flies the boys have everything they need to survive but their society still falls apart.
This can also be seen as a damning denouncement of ... ...to believe the brutality of Lord of the Flies, but this novel was written after experiences during the war in which, according to Golding, such brutality did occur. The message is still valid today, so don’t let the school connection or age of the book put you off.
(I think this opinion may actually be longer than the report I wrote at school – and quite, frankly, this is more than long enough!) ...
Calypte 17.08.2001
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Lord of the flies - William Golding
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Advantages: The voicing and expression of pertinent and profound observations of childhood Disadvantages: The shock from Potter's revelations about the inate potential for evil within the youngest of children
television production that Potter concentrated his efforts on, as he stated this medium gave him 'greater flexibility than the stage with the progressive camera narrative.' No author before (perhaps bar WilliamGolding's 'Lord of the Flies') has presented an audience/reader with such a challenging interpretation of the society in which we live as Potter does here. He clealry dables with the Augustinian concept of original sin to show how even the seemingly innocent and virtuos are ultimately corruptible. The inner evil that resides within the children as they murderously seal the final fate of their companion Donald as they lock him in the torched barn, serves as a poignant metaphor of the inherant seething evil that is supressed behind the outward shell of adult acquired decency, with which these children are yet to be ingratiated by, and to ...
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Product details
Type
Fiction
Genre
Modern Fiction
Title
Lord of the flies
Author
William Golding
ISBN
0333404092; 0571084834; 0571191479; 1573226122
Manufacturer's product description
The tale of a party of shipwrecked schoolboys, marooned on a coral island, who at first enjoy the freedom of the situation but soon divide into fearsome gangs which turn the paradise island into a nightmare of panic and death.
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