If anything, Piggy presents the modern reader with the most problems. He is the epitome of the know-all, the swot, the annoying brat that always has something to say. But he is also the idealist and realist in one. He has few skills, perhaps fewer physical contributions to make to the group’s survival. But he has a technological vision. He is an inventor of ideas, ideas that others, under direction, may realise. Hence he is also the visionary, the philosopher who not only knows what should be done, but also why it should be done. Significantly, his spectacles provide the only technology the community needs since, unbelievably for the period, none of them seems ever to have been a boy scout and so they cannot make fire.
But it is eventually Piggy, for all his analytical and intellectual skills, who seems a total prisoner of stereotypical assumptions. He seems to assume that “British” is a synonym for “civilised” and that all black people are automatically savage. The reader is left in some doubt as to whether these opinions are sincerely held, satirical, representative of the society from which the boy hails or merely hyperbole promoted by the panic of their situation. To some extent, they have to be accepted and dealt with rather like an opera-goer must accept Wagner’s anti-Semitism as historical fact, rather than essential opinion.
Lord Of The Flies has weathered its half century remarkably well, but there are flaws which now seem more obvious than they would have been in the years that followed the book’s publication. The power of the book’s observation, however, remains. It is already iconic, its permanence assured.







Article comments
1 - none
this book sucks!!!!!!!!
2 - Philip Spires
... and so did you, probably, ar some stage.
3 - Naima
As a novel of this autenthicity, there is no sane reason I'm that perspective. It is a classic, with language and structure so much intelligently organized and performed than most literature of today. Instead of littering the internet with your unsupported views and aspects, let us know what it was that didn't satisfy you with it. Or just sit back and gain from all the delicate descriptions as well as frown and exercise your own mind from the phsycological revolutionary displays of humanity.
4 - Dean
love this book
5 - td bond
3 chapters in & I'm thinking only finish the book if I'm given a 25 year jail sentence & have nothing else 2do! Not gripping in the least!