Lord of the Flies/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Complete Monster: Roger. Early on he was tormenting the "littluns" for fun, throwing rocks at them. In the end, Roger pushed Piggy to his death by rolling a massive boulder on him. He becomes Jack's self-appointed witchdoctor. And then there's the "stick sharpened at both ends", implying that they would kill Ralph, cut off his head and put it on a stake, as they did with the sow, or even worse, kill Ralph by shoving the stick through his mouth/ass and out the other end.
    • Jack's hardly better
  • Draco in Leather Pants: Jack Merridew, according to Google Image Search, even though he is said to be ugly in the novel.
  • Family-Unfriendly Aesop: The book was written just to say Humans Are the Real Monsters and Hobbes Was Right, a Take That to all the Rousseau Was Right works of the time.
    • Some have read it as a slightly friendlier Aesop against the racial stereotypes of the era, showing that under the wrong circumstances even British schoolboys fall into savagery just as easily as any "inferior" cultures.
  • Fanfic Fuel: None of the boys' pasts is revealed in the book, nor is their fate after the island. And all those little boys running around leaves room for Slash Fic writers to go crazy...not that this troper agrees with that.
  • Freud Was Right: Spearing a mother pig. Oh, so much.
  • Ho Yay: Simon and Ralph. But then again, with a book about a bunch of boys stranded on island for a period of time, Ho Yay is inevitable
    • Jack and Ralph earlier on in the book.
      • Which only escalates into Foe Yay as the book commences.
    • The suggestive language (especially regarding the conch and blowing thereof) doesn't help either.
      • And lines like "Do you have a ship in your pocket?"
      • Don't forget how they use the term "do you" to mean "kill you" (because I seriously doubt that the LOTF wanted to "do" Simon in the way the language may suggest).
  • Magnum Opus: It's Golding's best-known work by far.
  • Memetic Mutation: "Sucks to your ass-mar."
  • Moral Event Horizon: The frenzied, hysterical killing of Simon by Jack and the other boys comes dangerously close to it. It's finally crossed (and in a very symbolic way) when Roger pushes a massive boulder down on Piggy, sending him flying off the cliff and to his death.
    • Oddly enough, the killing of a sow, with metaphors to make it sound like gang rape, is supposed to be the first indication the horizon has been crossed, or was about to be crossed pretty soon.
  • Narm: Piggy's death in the 1960s film.
    • In the 90s film as well. Especially the way Ralph screams "NOOOOO!" before he gets killed, and that deadpan pause after his head gets crushed.
    • The tribal dance around the fire in the second movie. The gratuitous slow motion didn't help, either.
    • Let's not forget that, with no dialog, the Lord's big scene in the '60s movie becomes, essentially, Simon having a Staring Contest with the head.
  • The Woobie:
    • Simon. Oh God, Simon.
    • Piggy. He actually hates that nickname, but even Ralph insists on calling him that. We never learn his actual name. Plus he's asthmatic, nearsighted, and almost only valued because his glasses help create the fire. While he may be a Non-Action Guy, he (unlike Ralph) actually does Dare to Be Badass and confronts Jack and his vicious tribe. A pity it didn't save his life...
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