Novel
Lord of the Flies
William Golding · 1954
Synopsis
During a war, a plane carrying British schoolboys crashes on a deserted tropical island, and no adult is among the survivors. Ralph, twelve, and Piggy find a conch; Piggy knows that a sound can be blown from it to gather the others, and whoever holds it has the right to speak. Ralph is elected chief, and they decide that a fire will burn on the mountain so that ships can see it. Jack, who leads his school choir, prefers to organise the hunting of wild pigs. A little boy speaks of a beast in the forest.
Context
Its author read island stories to his children, and said one evening to his wife that someone ought to write what children would really do. He takes the opposite line to The Coral Island, by R. M. Ballantyne, published in 1858, in which three stranded boys found a civilisation, and borrows from it even the names Ralph and Jack. He wrote it from 1951 in a school exercise book, at break times and during his own classes. Refused by several major publishers, the typescript was refused again by the Faber reader, who judged it absurd and uninteresting; an editor who had recently joined took it from the pile of rejections to have something to read on the train. He had the prologue cut, an evacuation during a nuclear war, and the title was found at the publisher's.
Who it is for
About two hundred pages; a single French translation, by Lola Tranec, since 1956.
Prizes and reception
Included on British secondary-school syllabuses, it was adapted for the cinema by Peter Brook, in a film that is the subject of a dossier by the Centre national du cinéma.
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