Multiple Reading Personalities

“Bollocks to the rules! We’re strong – we hunt! If there’s a beast, we’ll hunt it down! We’ll close in and beat and beat and beat –!”

Lord of the Flies was a re-read for me (“duh!”, thinks the American reader, “you read it at school!” — well no, because for one reason or another, it has not gone over to French culture as a “must-read”, more as a secondary choice most people have probably never heard of; but its influence in American pop culture is so pervasive, I heard about it one way or another a few years ago. It’s been love since).

Of course, it’s also the stuff nightmares are made of. The bastion of the “bad guys” – or rather, where the boys retreat when the “lord of the flies” (devil) takes over their psyche – is called Castle Rock. I’m no Stephen King scholar, but it seems fitting that it would be the heart of darkness in King’s books (which a quick wikipedia check just confirmed is an intentional homage on his part).

The story in itself is quite simple: a group of schoolboys gets stranded on a desert island during an unnamed war. The island offers plenty to eat (lots of fruits, some fish, an indigenous race of pigs), the weather is forgiving, and there even is a promontory on which to keep a fire to call for help. Surely, as the officer who will ultimately rescue the boys states, “a pack of British boys” would be “able to put on a good show” there?

Well, of course not – and the reason is exactly that we are talking about a “pack” much more than we are talking about a society. The annoying intellectual of the band, Piggy, tries to force the other boys to create one, with rules, a parliament and a project (rescue): the respect he gains for it is manifest in his nickname, and all he gets for it is death. The good intentions of the early days, championed by a truly civilized boy named Ralph, are rapidly forgotten: the lack of personal consequences for disobeying the rules (no grown-ups, a forgiving nature), a power-hunger and demagogic rival to Ralph’s authority (Jack) and the fear of unnamed monsters will soon bring chaos to island. Three boys will ultimately die: Piggy, first mocked, then stolen from, and finally executed; Simon, a boy who seems to embody the spiritual much in the way that Piggy embodies the intellectual (just as Piggy has his weaknesses – pedantry, physical laziness and self-importance, Simon has his  – trances resembling epilepsy, inability to communicate, shyness – but he sees through the illusion of the monster); and a third, unnamed little boy with a mark on his face who is so forgotten at the end that even Ralph will not mention him when telling the officer how many boys died on the island.

The two main reasons I love this book are the terrifying ring of truth of the story and the sharpness of the writing. The starting situation has been treated, over and over again, in an idealized boy-scout manner for young boys dreaming of adventures and independence; Golding tells us what would happen if we were really left unchecked (note that his view of human nature is even more pessimistic in that he doesn’t seem to consider that we get civilized as we age: the older boys are the ones waging war on the island, and beyond it the world of adults is at war too). One of my cousins evoked The Drifting Classroom, a Japanese manga, as pushing the cruelty much farther, making Golding look tame by comparison. I have ordered the first two volumes in the series so I can judge for myself, but I’ve noticed that they are labeled as “horror”, meaning that I expect them indeed to push things further, but probably not to have the same horrifying feel of reality.

The writing I mentioned as just lovely: no verbosity, every sentence feels tight and necessary – yet there is no dryness to it. Too often I find the modern paradigm of “cutting the fat” to lead in less gifted writers to books dessicated as beef jerky, all nerve and no depth(1). None of this here: Golding uses ample narrative ellipsis (doesn’t tell us every single detail of every day, which can sometimes make the descent into savagery feel rushed), but takes the time to work in scenes of intense sensory flavor and symbolic potency. I’m not sure why his other books are not as famous as Lord of the Flies, but I will certainly put more on my reading list!

(1) note: I love beef jerky, and yes it can be argued that good beef jerky has depth of flavor. But that’s the simile that came to mind, so there! :)