Lord of the Flies is a novel by the English author William Golding. The novel, published in 1954, was primarily responsible for Golding’s receiving the Nobel Prize in literature in 1983.
The novel tells the story of a group of schoolboys stranded on an uninhabited island after an airplane crash that kills all the adults on the plane. Only the children survived. The boys had been evacuated from England because of a nuclear war. Early in their stay, the boys try to create their own society with rules and with an outward appearance of order. But many among them gradually lose all moral purpose and develop savage ways, including primitive rites and even murder. Ultimately, the boys divide into two groups, hunters (doers) and fire-keepers (thinkers). But the two groups soon begin to fight, and the breakdown of order becomes almost complete just before the boys are rescued by a British naval officer.
Lord of the Flies is an exciting adventure story that deals with the conflict between natural and civic instincts. The work is also a moral fable that reveals how dangerous and destructive human beings can become unless they are restrained by reasonable codes of behavior. The book’s title refers to the English version of the name of the demon Beelzebub in ancient Jewish literature.
See also Golding, William.
