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Lord of the flies is one of the books recommended for my English exam: in the second part of the writing I can answer a question about the recommended books, so I wanted to have the chance to do it if I see that the other questions are uninspiring (and they usually are!).
Lord of the flies is the story of a group of children who end up alone, without any adults, in a desert island after an airplane crash. There are many “littluns”, 6-year-old children, and the main characters of the book, who are boys of over 12 years old and are the ones who represent the different aspects of human nature. Piggy is the reasonable one, physically weak but with a lot of practical ideas; Ralph is chosen as the leader of the group and is strong and charismatic; Jack is the other alpha male that at the beginning is happy to lead the group of hunters, but when he realizes that he is the one who is able to bring meat to the others, then wants more leadership within the group.
The book tries to show us that human beings are evil and bad workers just because our nature is like that, but this brings up more questions than answers – what would have been the fate of humankind if we are hadn’t been able to cooperate with each other in a tribe? I really think that we wouldn’t have survived beyond the Paleolithic.
When I read it in English, I looked for information about the book in Wikipedia, and I realized that I had missed a lot about things of the story, for example the fact that one of the boys represents religion and mysticism, so I read it again in Spanish and I didn’t get the point either. I just noticed another thing that didn’t convince me: the lack of guilty in the boys when they become savages and kill the ones that the day before were their friends, which takes me back to the other point about the survival of humankind. Besides, they should have been working together because they had a common enemy to fight against: “the beast”. Not to mention that no one looks after the littluns, and I don’t know much about little children, but I suppose that at that age you can hardly survive by eating the fruit you find in the forest.
To summarize, I suppose I didn’t like the book because I don’t want to think that we are like those boys on the island. Otherwise, I think this is a good book to discuss.
Keep calm and read 20 books in English: 13/20
Classics: 6th and 7th/10
Literary exploration: Dystopia
From Isi 