The Lord of the Flies
The original UK Lord of the Flies book cover
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| Author | William Golding |
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| Cover artist | Anthony Gross |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Allegorical novel |
| Publisher | Faber and Faber |
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Publication date
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17 September 1954 |
| ISBN | (first edition, paperback) |
| OCLC | 47677622 |
Lord of the Flies is a 1954 novel by Nobel Prize-winning English author William Golding. The book's premise focuses on a group of British boys stranded on an uninhabited island and their attempt to govern themselves, with disastrous results.
Published in 1954, Lord of the Flies was Golding's first novel. Although it was not a great success at the time—selling fewer than 3,000 copies in the United States during 1955 before going out of print—it soon went on to become a best-seller. It has been adapted to film twice in English, in 1963 by Peter Brook and 1990 by Harry Hook, and once in Filipino (1976).
The book indicates that it takes place in the midst of an unspecified nuclear war. Some of the marooned characters are ordinary students, while others arrive as a musical choir under an established leader. Most (with the exception of the choirboys, Sam, and Eric) appear never to have encountered one another before. The book portrays their descent into savagery; left to themselves on a paradisiacal island, far from modern civilization, the well-educated children regress to a primitive state.
Golding wrote his book as a counterpoint to R.M. Ballantyne's youth novel The Coral Island, and included specific references to it, such as the rescuing naval officer's description of the children's pursuit of Ralph as "a jolly good show, like the Coral Island". Golding's three central characters—Ralph, Piggy and Jack—have been interpreted as caricatures of Ballantyne's Coral Island protagonists.
In the midst of a wartime evacuation, a British aeroplane crashes on or near an isolated island in a remote region of the Pacific Ocean. The only survivors are boys in their middle childhood or preadolescence. Two boys—the fair-haired Ralph and an overweight, bespectacled boy nicknamed "Piggy"—find a conch, which Ralph uses as a horn to congregate all the survivors to one area. Due largely to the fact that Ralph appears responsible for bringing all the survivors together, he immediately commands some authority over the other boys and is quickly elected their "chief", but he does not receive the votes of the members of a boys' choir, led by the red-headed Jack Merridew. Ralph establishes three primary policies: to have fun, survive, and to constantly maintain a smoke signal that could alert passing ships to their presence on the island and thus rescue them. The boys create a form of democracy by declaring that whomever holds the conch shall also be able to speak at their formal gatherings and receive the attentive silence of the larger group.
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Wikipedia