Reading Lord of the Flies - by Peter

I'm reading Lord of the Flies for about the sixth time now. The first time I read it was when I was in high school. I can't remember exactly when, perhaps when I was about 14 years old, in the third year of high school. It's a book that many children have to study in school, although some schools and libraries ban it because of controversial issues. That seems weird to me. I can understand that there are things in Steinbeck's novel Of Mice and Men that would upset some people, but with one exception, it's not so obvious what people might object to in Lord of the Flies. The American Library Association publishes a list of "Banned and/or Challenged Books from the Radcliffe Publishing Course Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century", and most AEP novels are there (2009). At least the Lord of the Flies entry is much shorter than that for Of Mice and Men. Poor Steinbeck - both of his most famous novels are very unpopular with some groups! 

Back to Lord of the Flies. Like most novels I was forced to read in school, I enjoyed it a lot more when I read it later. I guess I know the story pretty well now, but I'm enjoying reading it again. One thing I've been noticing this time is how very well Golding leads from one chapter to the next and foreshadows what will happen later. There is an obvious example at the very end of chapter 5, which were all reading this evening, that leads to chapter 6, in a rather depressing way. And that the novel is depressing is one thing some people complain about: perhaps they think that nice but false fantasies are better than honesty or reality. 

I've actually read a bit past chapter 6, and a new detail I hadn't noticed before is that in chapter 8, the Lord of the Flies very bluntly tells us exactly what horrifying event is coming up in chapter 9. It's a short comment, but it still surprised me reading it this afternoon that such an important detail had escaped my notice every time I'd read the novel before. This careful plotting of his story and consistent foreshadowing and repetition of symbols and motifs is done so skillfully that unless you look for it, a lot is easy to miss, as in my example above, and Golding does it at so many levels that there is always something new to appreciate when you read the novel again. Although I know the story well, it's not at all boring to be reading it again, and, as with all great literature, I'm sure that when I read it again in the future I will discover more in it to make it just as enjoyable as this time.  If this is your first time reading it in English, you might not enjoy it much more than I did the first time when I was in school, but give it a chance; if you read it again, you might like it even more. 

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References

American Library Association. (2009). Banned and/or challenged books from the Radcliffe Publishing Course Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century. American Library Association. Retrieved January 20 from http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/oif/bannedbooksweek/bbwlinks/reasonsbanned.cfm