This is a review of lord of flies released in year 1954 by William Golding. This is his first book that seems to be based on or reference a book from 1858, The Coral island, (which is stupidly mentioned at the end of the book).
The book tells a tale of about 10 kids that are trapped on a tropical island and of their shenanigans. Other than that the book has no real story, it just tells about these children messing around and being unintelligent. And because of this the story is quite lackluster and uninteresting.
Another huge problem the book has are the characters. Only about 4 of them are relevant, others are just there to be the background. One of them is also supposed to be a dramatic early death but it's quickly forgotten by both the reader and characters. Not just that the characters are incredibly stereotypic and unrealistically written, which is shown by their actions. The kids at the beginning act incredibly happy about being on the island even though they're there alone and survived a crash landing to arrive there, a normal child would be terrified and not acting like the whole situation is whimsical. This makes it look as if they were written by a man who remembers his childhood as a playful fantasy and knows nothing else about children. They're like some of those unrealistically perfect kids in movies, except the author tried to make it a bit dark by making some of the kids kind of insane, which is fine considering they spend quite a long time on an island but them slowly ''losing it'' is never really shown properly. Some of them are just kinda *******s and some of them just stay sane. This really gives an idea of the author trying to prove something, like people being evil from within, but it just ends up being some idiots slaughtering others for the heck of it since theyre *******s. This never really resonated with me since they really had no reason to kill. I never thought the character causing the whole mess was going insane, like he slowly started becoming bloodthirsty. So it was never justified. It was just one kid who was messed up from the get go causing it. Which isn't as interesting as the guy slowly going insane and then killing somebody. It was plain and predictable.
The kids are pretty much the only thing causing different events and quite often aswell. They mess around alot, do stupid things and fight alot. Some if it being kind of inconsistent, for an example the kids cause a huge fire at the beginning of the book but its quickly forgotten and i dont recall a single moment afterwards of them bringing up the burned part of the jungle again. It makes you think that the forest regrew again or something. Overall the whole jungle areas are a bit inconsistent. The other main areas are a mountain peak and a beach area.
The kids also cause alot of unneeded things that feel like a huge waste of time and don't bring anything interesting into the mix. The worst part of the book is when about atleast 50 pages are spent on the kids believing in a monster existing on the island which is incredibly boring to read through. Not only that but the kids dont do anything about it at first and just let it draggg onnn.
Overall it's a pretty dull and pretentious book. It tries to be all mature about it's pretentious hidden meanings when the book could only hold the interest of a child.
