Lord of the Flies: A Beautiful and Desperate Book | Lord of the Flies: A Beautiful and Desperate Book

"A beautiful and desperate book"

Lord of the flies is a book with multiples faces that appear gradualy during the reading sometimes very clearly and sometimes a bit more hidden. Besides, each face has an opposite or a complementary even when it's difficult to see. One of these opposition could be on the one hand beauty and on the other hand hopelessness. That's what we're going to see throught different point of view, in what way could this book be beautiful and in another way how it could be desperate and also which element represents one of these visions and perhaps some of them could represent both.

Beautiful is certainly not the first adjective that comes to mind when thinking about Lord of the flyes because it's not the first feeling that appear. How ever the beauty is bounded in this whole story. To each place and in the behaving of some character, in the values they want to keep and to protect, not in the same way of course but definitely present.

The island, at the beginning, is described as the paradise: it's luxuriant, the sun shine, the water is hot and clear "Within the irregular arc of coral the lagoon was still as a mountain lake[...]shadowy green and purple" p. 12. Everything seems perfect to enjoy the stay. Nature shows the best it can offer. Children are very happy to be here! A beautiful vision of innocence.Nothing to care about, no rules to follow. It's the beginning of human being.

We can also see at the begining of the book, and it's pretty incredible for young children, organisation appears. A leader is elected and gives some rules. It's the best part of the human develloppement: respect, organisation, take care of the other, Ralph is the leader of this movement. But it won't work for a long time.

You can read the whole book like a normal story but you can also see that the evolution from the children is a great picture of the human developpement. Golding stuck to each detail of the evolution of a basic human sociecty from the beginning. It's like another world where everything goes faster. Some characters represent the beauty of the human nature. Ralph, Piggy, Simon have this kind of beauty in their attitude, in the way they try to stay civilized, to do their best to be rescued and to care about every one." after all we aren't savages really and being rescued isn't a game "p.170. Interessant to see that they will try till their death.

That's what happens to the good part of human nature in Golding world. Try to help the others but don't hope to receive anything else than death.

Besides it's not really suprising when you know that this book has been written during the second world war and that human identity has never been so disturbed: what is a human ? a creature that can kill millions of his pair in an industrial way, how is this possible ? A question that has not found an answer yet.

And that's all the desperate face that comes opposite to this part of human nature killed by this huge other part that obbeys to the beast that is in each of us. It's clearly explaned in the book. The "beast" is really important because it frightens the children. They're frightened for nothing because there is no beast on the island. Golding shows us another important face of the human nature: we're offen frightened for nothing. " Things are breaking up. I don't understand why. We began well; we were happy. And then-- ...Then people started getting frightened. P.82" That's all the trouble with foreigner and this kind of stuff. As if some evil creature or power tells how to act. People are just frightened when there is no reason to be. They don't understand that every fear comes from us not from the outside, from the other but from themselves ! Simon in the story understands it and he is the only one. " What I mean is... Maybe it's only us.'... Simon became inarticulate in his efforts to express mankind's essential illness."p.89.

And the situation evolves in the book just like it has evolved during the second world war. The most part of the children become savages. Not at the beginning of course but Jack has more and more fellows. They just want to have fun, to eat meat, to hunt and more than everything they want to kill. Nothing human stays but as I said before: do we really know what is a human "

Children are more beast than anything else. Civilisation will flee their mind during the story and they will lose their identity. "The mask was a thing on its own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-consciousness." Jack is the leader of this movement, playing on fear of the other boys. He represent all of the violent face of the human nature. That's the way this book is desperate and also the human way is desperate: The group of Jack takes the leadership, they are stronger and they rule the world the way they want it to be.

"Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of a true, wise friend called Piggy " p.202. Ralph has lost his innocence and learned about the evil that is bounded within all human beings. He feels no joy when he realised that he is safe because he has seen what a human can do, what is the reality of the world even at the heigh of civilizazion. It's horrible but I hope Golding has seen the worst that the world can live, the worst that human can do and that will never happen again. That's why this is a desperate and beautiful book. The author has had the gift to bring us the history of the world not in the horrible way we know it but with a wonderful story. Lord of the flies is the memory. One of these book written for us not to forgot.

At the end of the story a little part of the "good" human nature is saved but what is the price for what happened ?