After their plane crashes, a group of English schoolboys must find a way to survive on an uninhabited island. There's plenty of fruit and water and beautiful beaches. They organise themselves and hold disciplined assemblies and elect Ralph (the tall, good-looking one) as chief. Piggy (the fat, asthmatic, figure of fun who is nevertheless rather clever) is his wise counsellor and Jack, the leader of a group of choirboys, appoints him and his as hunters. But boys will be boys and, as the days go on, their civilisation slowly slips away, destroyed by rivalries between them and their irrational fears.
This absolute classic might seem somewhat dated now. (it was first published in 1954). There are no female characters, nor any from an ethnic minority; there is an colonialist presumption of British superiority, and there is one use of what has become an unacceptable derogatory insult. The title's reference to Beelzebub, a devil, is unlikely to be spotted nowadays. But the fundamental truth this book demonstrates is that humanity's flaws (tribalism and the instinct for violence) is likely to wreck any paradise. The final scene might be worthy of an ecothriller (indeed, the author was a friend of James Lovelock and is credited with suggesting the name of Greek goddess Gaia as the personification of the Earth).
The book has wonderful descriptions of the island but its impact comes from the way it chronicles the slow, relentless slide from civilisation to barbarism and the horrific happenings at the end.
The pacing is perfect. The first attempt to hunt a pig is at the 25% mark, the discovery of the 'Beast' is at the 50% mark and the first irredeemable sin is at the 75% mark.
There are references to other novels; Robinson Crusoe is obvious, but the key reference, mentioned several times, is to The Coral Island by R M Ballantyne, an 1857 novel still popular with children in the mid-1900s, which describes the adventures of Ralph (the narrator), Jack and Peterkin who have been shipwrecked on a desert island which provides both fruit and pigs.
This was the author's debut novel; he won the Nobel Prize in 1983.
Selected quotes:
- "The silence was so complete that they could hear the fetch and miss of Piggy's breathing." (Ch 2)
- "They walked along, two continents of experience and feeling, unable to communicate." (Ch 3)
- "They accepted the pleasures of morning, the bright sun, the whelming sea and sweet air, as a time when play was good and life so full that hope was not necessary and therefore forgotten." (Ch 4)
- "The darkness and desperate enterprise gave the night a kind of dentist's chair unreality." (Ch 7)
- "I'm not going to play any longer. Not with you." (Ch 8)
- "Dartmoor was wild and so were the ponies. But the attraction of wildness had gone." (Ch 10)
- "And in the middle of them, with filthy body, matted hair, and unwiped nose, Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy." (Ch 12)
Brilliant writing. The novel at its best.
October 2022; 223 pages
Other books written by Nobel Laureates, and reviewed in this blog, can be found here.
Golding won the Booker Prize (for Rites of Passage) in 1980. Other Booker Prize winners can be found here.
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