"Lord of the Flies" by William Golding

It’s hard to judge a book written so long ago fairly, because it may as well have been written in a different world. There are a lot of things that work against this book. The style of the narration made it difficult for me to be invested in the story and characters. The rapid-fire rate at which characters were introduced made it difficult to track who was who, ultimately boiling down to there only being about four characters that actually did anything which mattered. It made it difficult to feel any sense of investment in the boys and their fate, and left me feeling disconnected; I was a disinterested spectator watching from the sidelines. That is not inherently a bad thing, however this combined with the other factors listed prior hurt my enjoyment of the book.

There are a lot of things that happen in the book, and a lot of them are interesting. There’s a constant sprinkling of interesting, thought provoking details. There is a lot to think about in this book, however much of it is only vaguely explored. It’s also hurt by the base violence which the boys indulge in… not being that shocking by modern standards. Perhaps that says more about us than the book.

I digress. I’m left wondering if this would have a much heavier impact on me five, perhaps ten years ago. Said violent events are nothing before unseen or unread, but they are one of the spots where the disconnected feeling narration actually works in the book’s favor. There is a single, striking moment in the book which I expect will stick with me, though the rest will quickly fade from memory.

Ultimately I am from a world separate of the concerns and fears of the boys. I do not understand the feeling of post-wartime Britain (or in the case of the novel, wartime Britain), the ongoing threat of the Cold War, or the prevalent threat of nuclear Armageddon. I can certainly see how they influence the story, and how these factors spawn a fear of society breaking down into violent savagery, but again it is with the disconnected apathy of an observer.

At the end of the day: the problem with this book is that it is a more interesting story to analyze and dissect than it is to read. There is a lot of value to that— I would not call this a bad book, by any means— but unfortunately as a novel Lord of the Flies has not aged as well as I had hoped.