Lord of the Flies is William Goldings' chilling and captivating drama about trying to survive on a tropical island. However, when the group of small boys find themselves self governed, surviving isn't their only problem. Although when their plane first crashes on the South Pacific island, they start out civilized. However, madness soon starts taking hold of them, first with the rumor of a monster started by the young children, that soon the older boys start to fear. Jack, a controlling sort who thinks he should be leader and is in command of the largest faction of boys, a quire who was on the plane, becomes bloodthirsty and on the island and stops following orders from Ralph, their elected leader. Jack only wants to hunt, and pulls all of his quire members away from the smoke signal and goes off pig hunting. Tensions rise between Ralph and him until he finally breaks off and makes his own splinter tribe of murderous savages. On their first night as a tribe, they commit a murder. Ralph is left with a small tribe and is soon all alone, with one member of his tribe murdered in cold blood and two others captured and tortured. Ralph is being hunted and the island is being razed to the ground, unless he is saved in the next ten minutes, Ralph will wind up with his head on a pike in the jungle.
The classic, Lord of the Flies is extremely well written. The island itself is almost as much of a character as well as a setting. Also, Golding has cast a new light on the survival story and has said something powerful about our underlying selves. I would recommend Lord of the Flies to anyone over ten. Although sometimes creepy and ominous, the book is a good read and leaves you with a chilled feeling of, ‘what if'?