Lord of the Flies

Title: Lord of the Flies

Author: William Golding

A group of young, adolescent British boys get abandoned on an island to fend for themselves when their plane crashes during an evacuation during the World War. They try to imitate the civilization they come from- initially setting up a democratic system and electing a leader amongst them, and also sharing and allotting specific duties to be performed like sourcing food and setting up smoke signals that can be a sign of call for help to passing ships. But, as looming paranoia about an imagined beast sets in and as rivalry develops, all structures and civilizations break loose.  

Lord of the Flies attempts to paint a theme of the nature of survival, coupling it with the tone of adventure. It also shows how every system and it's activities start with a good deal of positive objectives which eventually get lost in the fight for power and position. The human ego, and the imagined fears in the mind act as a catalyst to unwanted, negative and unnecessary thoughts that ends up breaking even the semblance of a civilized structure that we aim to have. 

In an environment where courtesy loses its meaning, and where the top most of priorities is survival itself, the human brain behaves very differently, even among the innocents. At the end, to understand what the book tries to say in one line, from the book itself:

"We did everything adults would do. What went wrong?”

And, that also explains what did go wrong. Be it good or bad, children learn from what they see in practice, not just by what they listen to. After all, actions speak louder than words. When the whole world is burning waging a war against each other, where tens of thousands civilians and innocents were affected- the boys learn the same thing, too. Their rivalry sends them to the solution that the world showed them: war.

The book is a quick read, and it has very simple language. And, it also doubles as an adventure. Golding is a nobel-prize winning author for his parables on human condition, and one such parable is this classic. The themes of the book are very relevant, especially in today's world! I enjoyed it.