How Lord of the Flies was rescued from the reject pile | BBC Global

William Golding's novel Lord of the Flies was first published on 17 September 1954, and is now recognised as a classic.

In History looks at how Golding's story of English schoolboys and their descent into barbarism narrowly escaped being thrown in the bin.




#bbc #books #authors

[treefarm]

Golding gave a talk to our school in Pottstown, Pa, in about 1961. I still have my signed copy of The Inheritors. That and Lord of the Flies are both good books, but scary to myself as a 14 year old.

[cherylwest]

I taught Lord of the Flies to my 9th grade English classes in the 1980s and they loved it. The final project was to make either a 2D or 3D replica of the island with all the mentioned locations on it. The results were fabulous. The Lord of the Flies is the sort of book that gets kids interested in reading. Another is Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye.

[luckystarship]

Lord of the Flies and Animal Farm equipped me for life. Both brilliant books.

[milesknightestrada]

We *NEED* to see this documentary in full.

[kevindavidwalsh]

I recall studying it at school in the mid-1970s. The central theme of a group of boys on a tropical island reverting to primitivism and barbarity underscored by the final rescue by a battle cruiser bristling with guns. This is a moral tale of the world in microcosm. Written in 1954, in the aftermath of world war and in the shadow of the mushroom cloud, Golding had every reason to see through the thin crust of civilisation. The story of the death of Piggy and the shattering of the beautiful conch that symbolised democracy and the rule of law is deeply moving. This is a book that speaks to all ages and is profoundly thought-provoking and disturbing. It offers a bleak view of humanity that we most certainly do not like and certainly have no wish to share. But if we want to dispel that bleakness, we each and all of us have it within ourselves to do that by living good and decent lives according to the angels of our better nature, as Abraham Lincoln once rightly pointed out.

[kaze]

Listened to the audiobook where golding read aloud. After the book, he did a Q&A of commonly asked questions he wanted to address. Extremely interesting perspective

[werdnarotcorp]

Shame no editor picked up on the error in using Piggy's glasses lenses to create fire since he was short sighted and the lenses were concave not convex.

[rhiannonl]

Read it as part of school English curriculum in Canada. Reread it years later. Excellent book.

[oliverbrownlow]

About a decade after LORD OF THE FLIES was published, there was a real-life case of a group of schoolboys who were shipwrecked on an island for over a year, and they did very well.

[HighWealder]

Made a very deep impression on me.
Don't forget that it is also a mocking interpretation of Coral Island.

[RinpochesRose]

Look at those young lads sitting round a table discussing a book they’ve read. It’s like a timecapsule to a fictional world when you watch it in 2024

[patrickmckay]

GREAT NOVEL, AND PLAY...TRULY A 20TH CENTURY MASTERPIECE WORTH ITS WEIGHT IN ANY NUMBER OF ARCHAIC PERIOD PIECES.

[titusmccarthy]

"Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart, and the fall through the air of a true, wise friend called Piggy." - William Golding, Lord of The Flies. 1954.

[martm]

My greatest literary hero. Thanks for posting. Where can we get the full documentary?

[iansmith]

The book represents a very dry philosophy. Not a very charitable appraisal of the inherent nature of people. As unpalatable as it is to some, it is nevertheless a work of tremendous potency & truth.
It’s a coal black view of humanity, a great novel.

[charlessmyth]

A book that I know of, yet have yet to read :-)

[niriop]

People were attacking Golding and Lord of the Flies a few years ago with the release of that book by Rutger Bregman.

But Bregman erred in comparing a fictional scenario to a *singular* similar scenario from reality (a situation involving a tiny cohort of boys marooned in the South Pacific), and not grasping the finer philosophical and psychological points of Golding’s narrative.

Also, the intervention against Golding by N.K. Jemisin was especially intellectually dishonest and foolish.

[tsugaru_solos]

I see the Lord of the Flies story acted out in real life America every day.

[sannefridolin]

It is interesting, that the world they created on the island, was a world only inhabited by boys. And the result was abandonment of the rule of law, and killing off science (Piggy). What if there were a group of girls abandoned, or a mixed group? As to the point of reverting to a more savage state: i had an eery vibe of that at burning man, many years ago, where late at night a group of men, ritually marched through the desert, to the sound of drums carrying a large (constructed) bull, which then had its throat slit and wine poured out of the wound. People could pass beneath and drink the wine, before the bull was set on fire. I had a feeling like all of the participants had entered a long past time, that they had almost instantly channeled a sort of savage memory they did not know existed in them. Our "civilization is just a thin veneer, that can be stripped away in certain circumstances. January 6 come to mind, Gaza, Sudan,

[lamusica]

Imagine if at school we'd been taught the uplifting true story of a group of boys who survived a shipwreck rather than the fictional one written by an alcoholic