Reading Order
Lord of the Flies Reading Order
Lord of the Flies (1954) by William Golding is one of the most disturbing and most widely read British novels of the twentieth century — a fable of social disintegration in which a group of British schoolboys, evacuated from a nuclear war, crash on an uninhabited island and gradually descend from organized civilization into savagery and murder. Ralph tries to maintain order and keep a signal fire burning for rescue; Jack Merridew and his choirboys turn hunters, paint their faces, and eventually become something hardly recognizable as the children they were; Piggy, the fat, bespectacled outsider, provides rationality until it is silenced; and Simon, the visionary, is killed in a ritual dance before he can deliver the truth he has discovered. Golding wrote the novel as a response to R.M. Ballantyne's The Coral Island (1857), in which shipwrecked English boys behave nobly and overcome their savage environment — a Victorian confidence that civilization is natural and savagery the deviation. Lord of the Flies reverses this: the savagery is inside the boys, latent in all of us, and the island situation simply removes the social constraints that keep it suppressed. The novel's pessimism about human nature — its argument that the 'beast' is not a real creature on the island but a possibility within us — was deeply influenced by Golding's experience as a naval officer in the Second World War. It was rejected by numerous publishers before being accepted, and it has been continuously in print since 1954, read by generations of schoolchildren who have argued about whether Golding is right.
Where to start
Lord of the Flies — the novel is short enough to read in a day or two; the pig-killing sequences and Simon's scene with the Lord of the Flies are the key passages.
Complete Lord of the Flies Book List
- 1Buy
Lord of the Flies
William Golding·1954·The novel — Ralph, Jack, Piggy, Simon, and the beast that turns out to be within them. - 2Buy
The Inheritors
William Golding·1955·Golding's second novel — the extinction of the Neanderthals by homo sapiens; the same argument about human nature in a prehistoric setting. - 3Buy
Pincher Martin
William Golding·1956·Golding's third novel — a naval officer clinging to a rock after his ship is torpedoed; a survival story that is also a theological argument. - 4Buy
The Coral Island
R.M. Ballantyne·1858·Ballantyne's novel of shipwrecked English boys who behave nobly — the book Golding was arguing against; characters named Ralph and Jack appear in both. - 5Buy
Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad·1899·Conrad's novella — the same argument about civilization's thinness and savagery's latency; the colonial encounter as a version of what happens on Golding's island. - 6Buy
The Road
Cormac McCarthy·2006·McCarthy's post-apocalyptic novel of a father and son — the same question about what civilization costs and what survives when it is stripped away. - 7Buy
Battle Royale
Koushun Takami·1999·Takami's Japanese novel of students forced to kill each other — Lord of the Flies's scenario extended to its logical adult-controlled conclusion. - 8Buy
The Spire
William Golding·1964·Golding's novel of a medieval dean obsessed with building a spire — the same obsessive, allegorical quality as Lord of the Flies in a medieval cathedral setting.
Lord of the Flies — Frequently Asked Questions
What is Lord of the Flies about?
Lord of the Flies follows a group of British schoolboys evacuated from a nuclear war who crash on an uninhabited tropical island. They organize themselves initially around Ralph, who is elected chief, and maintain a signal fire in hopes of rescue. But Jack Merridew, the choirmaster, takes his boys hunting and gradually draws the group toward a tribal, violent way of life. Piggy, the rational, intellectual outsider, is increasingly marginalized. Simon discovers that the 'beast' the boys fear is not a real creature but a vision he has — and is killed when he tries to tell the others. Piggy is killed when Roger drops a boulder on him. Ralph alone survives, rescued by a naval officer who lands on the island at the end.
What does the conch symbolize in Lord of the Flies?
The conch is the novel's symbol of democratic order and civilized governance: whoever holds it has the right to speak, and it is used to call assemblies and regulate discussion. As long as the conch's authority is respected, the boys maintain something like civilization. As Jack's tribal authority grows, respect for the conch diminishes; the final destruction of both Piggy and the conch together (the boulder that kills Piggy also shatters the conch) marks the complete collapse of the social order the conch represented. The conch is also the object through which Ralph tries to maintain hope for rescue — it is the call to order and the signal of distress at once.
What does the Lord of the Flies (the pig's head) mean?
The Lord of the Flies is a pig's head impaled on a stick by Jack's hunters and offered as a sacrifice to the 'beast'. Simon discovers it in his forest clearing and has a hallucinatory 'conversation' with it in which it tells him the truth: 'Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill! You knew, didn't you? I'm part of you?' The Lord of the Flies is therefore the symbol of the beast within — the name is a translation of the Hebrew Beelzebub, one of the names for the Devil — and Simon's vision is the novel's central moral insight: the evil that threatens the boys is not external but internal, not a real beast on the island but a capacity within human beings that the island situation has simply allowed to emerge.
What is Golding's argument about human nature in Lord of the Flies?
Golding's argument is pessimistic: human beings are not naturally civilized, and the social order that prevents savagery is fragile, external, and easily stripped away. The novel was explicitly written as a response to Victorian confidence (represented by Ballantyne's The Coral Island) that English boys would naturally behave nobly in a survival situation because they had the inheritance of civilization. Golding, who served in the Royal Navy during the Second World War and witnessed the Holocaust and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, did not believe this. The novel's boys are specifically well-bred English schoolchildren — the most civilized possible — and the argument is that even they will descend into savagery when the external social constraints are removed. 'The beast' is the human capacity for violence and tribalism that civilization suppresses but cannot eliminate.
What should I read after Lord of the Flies?
After Lord of the Flies, Golding's other novels are the natural next step: The Inheritors (1955), about the extinction of the Neanderthals; Pincher Martin (1956), his most technically experimental novel; and The Spire (1964), his novel of a medieval dean's obsession. For the tradition of British allegorical fiction about civilization and savagery, Conrad's Heart of Darkness is the key predecessor. For the survival fiction genre that Lord of the Flies established, Cormac McCarthy's The Road (2006) and Richard Connell's 'The Most Dangerous Game' are significant successors. Battle Royale (1999) and The Hunger Games (2008) both acknowledge Lord of the Flies as a direct influence.
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