All at once, Robert was screaming and struggling with the strength of frenzy. Jack had him by the hair and was brandishing his knife. Behind him was Roger, fighting to get close. The chant rose ritually, as at the last moment of a dance or a hunt.
"Kill the pig! Cut his throat! Kill the pig! Bash him in!"
Ralph too was fighting to get near, to get a handful of that brown, vulnerable flesh. The desire to squeeze and hurt was over-mastering
6 comments:
Lord Of The Flies -- William Golding
Wow, was this a big deal when it came out. I guess because it confirmed the dark view of humanity which all the sophisticates wanted confirmed. Probably more to it than that but that's all I took away from it, not the book itself, the huge todo that was made of it. In other words we're all incipient fascists who must be kept under tight control by the elect, or the anointed as Thomas Sowell called them.
It was a very insightful and prophetic work.
We see it every day ric.
Even here at Lem's Levity.
I think it talks about original sin and man's base instincts and how the thin veneer of civilization is the only thing protecting us from the depredations of the savages on the Oakland Subway.
Except Golding made sure that the choir boys were the bad guys.
and the British naval officer who rescues them at the end - we're supposed to see him as a hypocrite bad guy because though he lectures the boys about their unbecoming descent into savagery he only got there because of the big floating war machine. Boooo.
Lord of the flies = Beelzebub
What you got here is a rebuke.
A rebuke! I tell you.
A rebuke to an earlier book that became popular and depicted a similar thing, a book for boys, except everything turns out tropically marvelous and the boys all do well. This work is mentioned a few times in LotF and there is overlap in the names of three main characters. The Coral Island by Ballantyne.
I just had another one of those super visual flashback things. And this one was hard. I'm ten and I'm sitting in the living room of a house in a foreign country and we don't own any of the furniture, everything about the whole situation is build-in temporary, the book in my hands is from a brand newly build but eminently temporary library on a sprawling military base; Island of the Blue Dolphins.
Trippy.
*high pitched ventriloquist's voice* "That's very childish, Chip.
Shut up. I was a child.
Now, since you enjoyed reading Lord of the Flies so well and now that you know the whole f'k'n thing is rebuke to a rosier perception of humanity, you'll certainly be interested in reading what caused such a caustic harsh sharp acerbic reaction. If only to ridicule it.
Two bucks on Amazon plus shipping for a new copy in paperback.
But that 'ridicule it' sentiment reminded me of another book you might be interested in. "Why Reading Literature is Bad for You By Peter Thorpe.
He's a professor of Literature at C.U., Boulder. His book is a screed about masters students in literature and other professors. He notes they develop certain bad characteristics unique to their pursuit. He flatly doesn't like the people he works with and tells them so in his book. And that makes Peter Thorpe a dick. But it's still an hilarious book.
Ridiculing a boy's novel would fit one of Thorpe's categories. Thorpe makes some excellent points that serve as things to look out for even if you're not getting your masters in literature.
Here, you can buy it on Abebooks.
Recommended. You'll enjoy its bitchy tone. As if Peter isn't one of the bitches he's bitching about.
By the end of it you're happy to avoid meeting any of them.
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