Lord of the Flies/Headscratchers

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • I'ma start this page off with: the slash. William Golding didn't want the book to revolve around, *ahem*, heavy romance. Hence why he had no girls in the story. Though it's not like I discourage the slash...
    • What exactly bugs you? The fact that there were no female characters? The fact that the slash is very popular with fanfiction? I'm confused on why this bugs you if you don't discourage the slash
      • I apologize for not being very specific. What bugs me is the existence of the slash because some of the plot was designed so that there wouldn't be any. On my not discouraging it, I suppose you can call (it a guilty pleasure/me a hypocrite). Discouraging wasn't the right word in the first place, I'm sure.
  • Another thing: The ending. This book is meant as a Deconstruction of the typical island novel, subverting all the typical tropes it could. The world around the island is at war and Ralph even says several times that they're never going to be rescued. With that in mind, WHY THE **** DOES THE BOOK END WITH THEIR RESCUE BY THE BRITISH NAVY?!?! Deus Ex Machina doesn't even begin to cover it.
    • Because the alternative is a Downer Ending too dark for even the book?
    • This troper's 10th grade English class concluded that the ending's blatant incongruity was a Take That to the numerous "bunch of kids having fun on a deserted island" stories that the book itself was meant to deconstruct.
    • Because if anything, this may just have been a supervised military simulation similar to battle royale. a test to sort out the soldiers from the weaklings. People like Jack will be sent to the frontlines while people like Ralph needs another training regiment.
    • i've always figured that it's too show how quickly the boys become ashamed of there actions as soon as someone is watching. Notice how Jack won't identify himself as the one in charge despite having recently sat on a throne.
      • In addition to this, it shows that they're still boys and therefore very sensitive to the presence of an authority figure.
    • This troper was always under the impression that it's a social commentary. The boys on the island split into two groups. Ralph and his followers believe and practice a form of law-based government, while Jack and his gang are perfectly content to indulge the more violent sides of their natures. Ralph and company have the hope (perhaps unspoken; it's been years since I read the book) that this is a temporary situation, that in an adult world it's the rule of law that is triumphant, and that the barbarism of Jack's faction is not tolerated. Then they get bailed out by the Navy, and it becomes apparent that while Ralph's side seems to support the way the world ought to be run, Jack's way (war, violence, etc.) is typically how things end up after all. This point would be difficult to make with quite the same impact unless the rescue occurred.
    • While the boys have been rescued from the island and the evils it brought out in them, they are now on board a military ship, in the middle of a war, the Adults on the ship they are now on is going to be chasing down their enemies with intent to kill much like the Boys were doing to Ralph just moments before. But this time there will be no one to save the Adults from their evil.
    • The book ends with an image of a cruiser in the distance. The cruiser is a weapon, designed to kill things, much like a spear. It represents the fact that, while Ralph's law-based government is how he sees Britain and such (or saw), that cruiser is going to hunt and kill whoever it's at war with, just like Jack and his tribe were hunting Ralph.
    • I always saw the naval officer's appearence as a stunning turnabout from the air of the novel up till that point. As soon as civilization returns in the form of an adult we see them stop being the ruthless savages that they seem to be and instead we finally see what they really are: iresponsible little boys in need of a firm guiding hand.
  • Why didn't Simon take anything off the parachutist's body? Surely, there could've been SOME equipment on that corpse he could have recovered (i.e. a flare gun, a first aid kit, a gun, a flashlight). And what did he go for? A piece of fabric off the parachute! Also, why the hell didn't he detach the parachute from the pilot? What's the point of untangling the parachute if you're not even going to take it off the poor soul's body?
    • Perhaps he forgot the supplies on him were there or didn't have the foresight. Or, maybe some superstition. They were starting to go mad from being on the island, so his cognitive function wouldn't be the best.
    • Also, Nausea Fuel. Simon's still a fairly sensitive boy, and that's a decaying human body that's moving. Takes a strong stomach just to get close to it.
    • Because you don't rob a corpse. Unless you're a trauma surgeon, a homicide detective or a hardened killer, even touching a dead body goes against everything in you. A british schoolboy isn't going to be desensitized enough to rifle through a dead man's pockets.
      • Sure, just like how he wasn't desensitized enough to think that a pig's head on a stick was telling him that it was Satan.
      • Well, he was the least "beastly" of the boys.
  • This one has always confused me: is the navy officer American or British?
  • I may just be reading too much into this, but Samneric have to be symbolic for something. They're twins, they finish each other's sentences, they share the same name and are always thought of as one person, and they are the only ones besides Piggy to stay loyal to Ralph. What are they meant to represent? Any ideas?
    • Perhaps the large amount of symbolism inside the story is implying they have a value deeper than a simple character, but I have never heard of a good idea for what the two represent.
    • It's possible that Samneric represent some sort of balance; there are two of them, and they are very close-- this closeness could have given both of them something to check themselves against, representing the role of family and duality in stability. Or maybe I'm reading too much into this.
  • The Lord of the Flies itself. Why is it that the Pig's head on the stick was the icon of "the Beast", but not the dead parachutist that everybody though was the Beast? I mean, this was the offering to the Beast, not its shrine! A dead parachutist would invoke a "Lord of the Flies" image, since if you think about it, a fighter pilot with an open parachute potentially looks like a giant fly-like monster, and thus, the Lord of the Flies, which is of course, Satan, and "the Beast" that everyone fears. Maybe I'm a bit Literal-Minded on this, but I think it would have been much more symbolic if Simon's confrontation with the "Lord of the Flies" occurred with the dead parachutist instead of the pig's head. Not to mention, it would make this cover of the book seem a little less...misleading.
    • Well, that would undermine Golding's point that the perceived "beast" was actually harmless. The pig's head was actually placed there by the hunters; the parachuter just ended up landing on the island and the kids turned it into a beast. Golding was trying to say that we are the beast, so making an innocent parachuter the stand-in for Satan wouldn't work quite as well.
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