Lord of the Flies

God, I am horrified.

This book is considered one of the modern classics and is a common reading recommendation in high school. Whether this book should be recommended or not is not the question. The question remains — what can we teach the children by this book.

The fundamental outline of this book is simple — a group of people stranded on an island, in this case a bunch of school children.

Initially they manage to come together, join hands and choose a leader to establish order. The whole thing starts falling apart, mostly due to smaller kids not helping with communal work like hunting, building shelters or collecting water. The issue with older children was scarier, which we usually find in most adults — ego and thirst for power.

Their leader Ralph has a series of setback from another “I am manly” Jack who is the leader of the hunters, who challenges Ralph’s leadership at times when it was most needed. Ralph and the nerd “Piggy” were the two most level headed on the island who used their brains to think ahead in time, their strategy for survival, getting rescued and keeping the people together. As usual keeping people together is hard when you have to face a militaristic minded, “My way or highway” minded people like Jack. Jack wanted to be the leader and was visibly pissed when the children chose Ralph over Jack. Yes, cry me a fucking river.

Jack wanted to be the leader, he led a silent rebellion, formed his own tribe, split the children into groups, leaving them to decide using “Us vs them” thinking. His behavior of acting like a ruthless person who was a “true man who hunts” pushed other children towards the savagery mindset. Terrible deeds were committed, lives were lost and the population was left terrified of the beast. Yes, you got that right. Jack used a boogeyman to hold his power, though in this case he didn’t know that the threat wasn’t real. Why does leaders using boogeymen to preserve their power sound so familiar? Color me surprised.

Though there is a better ending to this barbarian society, “All’s well that ends well” isn’t a phrase you would like to use. You might at times want to punch those children for making you feel low or at times you would wish to punch the author William Golding for writing this book and making you disappointed in humanity especially children.