When Lord of the Flies was published in 1954, it delighted readers and was hailed by the critics. Novelist E.M. Forster said it was “beautifully written, tragic and provocative.” The memory of the Second World War was still fresh. Instead of the hoped-for peace and progress, the Cold War had imposed a new sense of impending danger. The background to the novel is a new, deadlier conflict:
- “There was a sudden bright explosion and a corkscrew trail across the sky … There was a speck above the island, a figure dropping swiftly beneath a parachute, a figure that hung with dangling limbs”.
“Ci furono improvvisamente un lampo e un'esplosione [...] C'era una macchiolina sopra l'isola, una figura che cadeva giù velocemente, appesa a un paracadut, una figura che lasciava dondolare le membra.”
Trouble in Paradise
The story is told in classic fashion by an omniscient narrator. A group of boys being evacuated from a nuclear war are stranded on a desert island. There are four main characters. Ralph is an attractive, athletic boy, a natural leader, though “there was a mildness about his mouth and eyes that proclaimed no devil. Piggy is fat and asthmatic but intelligent, the classic schoolboy victim. He is the voice of reason, with his firm belief that “life is scientific”. Jack, the head prefect at a choir school, has a darker side: “We’ll have lots of rules. Then when anyone breaks them…”. Simon, quiet and sensitive, represents the spiritual side of humanity.
Taking Positions
Desert island adventures have always been popular. But while in most of them the protagonists face danger that comes from outside in the shape of hostile natives or pirates, for Golding’s boys the challenge is different. At first they try to organise themselves as they imagine adults would do. They even have a conch shell so that at their meetings only the one holding it can speak. They agree to light a fire so that any passing ship will see the smoke. Jack and his hunters, there are pigs on the island, are supposed to keep it alight. Their failure to do so leads to the first confrontation and the taking of positions that will decide events:
- “Jack stood up, the bloodied knife in his hand. The two boys faced each other. There was the brilliant world of hunting, tactics, fierce exhilaration; and there was the world of longing and baffled common sense”.
“[...] Jack si raddrizzò col coltello insanguinato in mano. I due ragazzi erano uno di fronte all'altro e si guardavano. Da una parte c'era il modo brillante della caccia, della tattica, dei giochi feroci e pieni di destrezza; dall'altra il mondo del senso comune, con le sue aspirazioni e con le sue delusioni.”
A Master of Style
Golding won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983. He is a master of prose, equally adept at narrative, description and dialogue. The conversations are totally convincing, but then he taught at a boy’s school for many years and had a fine ear for their quirks of speech: Piggy’s “What are we? Savages? What’s grown-ups going to think?” and Jack’s comeback: “You shut up, you fat slug” ring true. The descriptions are full of vivid similes and metaphors, strong verbs that are fresh and alive. Take the paragraph where he describes the fire, which seems to have a life of its own:
- “Small flames stirred at the bole of a tree and crawled away through leaves and brushwood… One patch touched a tree trunk and scrambled up like a bright squirrel. The smoke increased, sifted, rolled outwards. The squirrel leapt on the wings of the wind and clung to another standing tree, eating downwards”.
“Delle fiammelle guizzarono ai piedi di un albero e strisciarono via tra le foglie e i cespugli [...] Una lingua toccò un tronco d'albero e vi si arrampicò su come uno scoiattolo lucente. Il fumo aumentò, cambiò direzione, spirò via in grandi volute. Lo scoiattolo saltò via sulle ali del vento e si aggrappò a un albero in piedi, divorandolo dall'alto in basso.”
The End of Idealism
The book has been filmed three times, the most interesting being the first, directed by Peter Brook in 1963. Filmed in austere black and white with a cast of amateur child actors, it captures something of the feel of the novel. But this is essentially a literary experience. Golding’s view of the way in which what begins as a quest for civilisation degenerates into savagery has been much criticised by those who would like to believe that man is essentially good, corrupted by the world around him. But the discovery of what had happened in the concentration camps had traumatised Western society and made it difficult to cling to such optimistic views. The Lord of the Flies is the rotting pig’s head on a stake, an offering to the forces of darkness. Only one of the boys is able to see it for what it is:
- “At last Simon gave up and looked back; saw the white teeth and the dim eyes, the blood–and his gaze was held by the ancient inescapable recognition. In Simon’s right temple, a pulse began to beat on the brain”.
“Alla fine Simon cedette e riaprì gli occhi: vide i denti bianchi, gli occhi velati, il sangue... e restò affascinato, riconoscendo qualcosa di antico, di inevitabile. Sulla tempia destra di Simon, una vena cominciò a pulsare, sul cervello.”