Lord of the Flies: The Quintessential Overlake Book

As a new freshman, I may not have that much experience with Overlake, or with common courses, or anything like that, so I was kind of stumped on which book to review that would tie into Overlake's 50th anniversary. So, I went to Army, as I figured he would be the one who would know the best. Army decided on the quintessential Overlake book in a heartbeat, which just happens to be the story the freshmen just finished: William Golding’s "Lord of the Flies".

"Lord of the Flies" is the shocking story of a group of British middle schoolers stranded on a desolate island in the 1950s with no adult supervision. The story follows Ralph, the elected leader of the group, as he tries to maintain order on the island. Ralph is accompanied in his efforts by Piggy, the portly, genius boy, and Simon, the calming force on the island. On the other side is Ralph’s rival Jack, fighting against Ralph’s pushing for order, and pushing for chaos and savagery. The boys manage to keep order for a while, but slowly their makeshift civilization begins to disintegrate. They begin to believe in a “beast” on the island, watching them, which causes tensions to rise. Eventually, Jack splits up and starts his own tribe, with him as chief. The tribes disintegrate into chaos, setting the island on fire in the process, in the end getting rescued by a British ship.

Personally, I didn’t love reading "Lord of the Flies". I like having build up in books, but I am a person who likes stories that you can’t put down, that move quickly. The novel just wasn’t fast enough for me. The description went on for pages, and when there was conflict or action, it was interrupted by more description. At the same time, through all of the description Golding managed to set a very clear tone and idea of the atmosphere of the island which made the experience of reading the book much more rich.

Now, while I know I said I didn’t like reading the book, that doesn’t mean I didn’t like "Lord of the Flies". First off, it was brilliantly written. When reading books you often come across a protagonist, an antagonist, and a couple necessary side characters, but then side characters will be piled on top of everything else, simply making things more confusing. However, in "Lord of the Flies", every single character adds something. Mostly because every character symbolizes something different, which leads into the main reason I love "Lord of the Flies". Everything is there for a reason. Because there is so much symbolism, everything that is there is there for a specific purpose. As someone who really enjoys to write, I can appreciate how incredibly difficult writing this book must have been. There are no bells and whistles. Everything has its reason for being there, and the characters are all added carefully to paint Golding’s message of the evil of man. Lord of the Flies will forever be a timeless classic, at Overlake and in the literary world.