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Lord of the Flies is a 1954 allegorical novel by William Golding. The novel discussed

ideas about the inherent cruelty of human beings when social rules do not bind them. The

author created this work in the Cold War period, and under its influence, he chose a virtual

war background as the beginning of the story. It was inspired by Scottish writer R. M.

Ballantyne's The Coral Island: A Tale of the Pacific Ocean (1857).

As the author Golding's first work, the book has won several awards and received

wide acclaim, and often appears as a must-read in school. Even if they don't like it, most

teenagers should have read this book.

The story mainly tells the story of a group of children who are stranded on an island

because of a plane crash. There are no adults and no rules on the island in the story. At the

same time, these children cannot tell right from wrong because they are still young. In such

an environment, they gradually returned to following their nature to decide things, thus

revealing the author's thoughts and feelings that the author wanted to express the inherent

evil of human nature.

In the book, we can see that different children have different reservations about the

degree of civilization. While stranded on the island, they attempted to build a new temporary

civilization but ultimately could not sustain it due to their savage nature. The various

descriptions of the environment and objects in the story have symbolic expressions worthy of

in-depth consideration by readers. Their existence has witnessed the transformation and

growth of the characters on the island. There are also a few fragments of this story with

religious symbols, which are using religion to guide the theme of the story.

The children on the island did not all give up following the rules, leading to many

conflicts and differences among the children, and eventually split into two groups of children.

Jack and Ralph, as the two oldest children, represent the two groups of children of

civilization and barbarism respectively. Contradictions and the remnants of wildness have

had dire consequences on the island. Fear is such a helpless and isolated environment also

became the catalyst for it all.

For readers, this is a book worthy of in-depth understanding and thinking. The author

has in-depth thinking and handling of the psychological changes and environments of the

characters in the book. It is more suitable for slightly older readers, as the book can be a

little boring for readers who don't want to think about the meaning of the book. The author

has described the environment in detail, and the progress of the plot is also slightly slow, but

the book itself is not long, and almost any fragment in it is a meaningful description.

Teenagers my age, are old enough to think about the meaning behind this book, but

whether they like it or not is a matter of personal preference. Its story is still full of

foreshadowing, metaphors, and exciting plot ups and downs.

Check out Lord of the Flies from NBPL!