Piggy
A small crowd of British schoolboys find themselves on a deserted tropical island. It is a little unclear how they got there. Perhaps there has been a plane crash. At first it all seems like a spiffing adventure from "The Boy's Own Paper" but it isn't very long before a kind of dark collective madness emerges.
This is the core plot of "Lord of the Flies" by William Golding. It was his first novel. He wrote it in the early nineteen fifties with his wartime naval experiences fresh in his mind. He commanded a landing craft during the invasion of Normandy. The book was also a deliberate riposte to "The Coral Island" by R.M.Ballantyne (1857).
Ralph
I first read "Lord of the Flies" in the summer of 1966 when I was twelve years old - the same age as the lead characters in the novel - Ralph, Jack, Piggy and Simon. It brought me to the sudden realisation that fiction could be much more than just story-telling. It could arrest you. It could have underlying meanings. There could be symbolism and artistic ambition and language could be crafted to create both beauty and horror.
In short, it wowed me as no other book had done before. And I am convinced that that powerful early reading experience played a big part in determining my academic career and the paid work that stemmed from my education. Pursuing English Literature at university led to me becoming an English teacher.
So yes - "Lord of the Flies" has always been seminal in my memory. Consequently, I was very curious about the BBC TV version of the novel that was screened in four parts last month. Frankly, I expected to be underwhelmed.
Simon
Filmed in Malaysia in the summer of 2024, the BBC version was directed by Marc Munden with a script devised by Jack Thorne. It was a huge team effort and there was passionate commitment to the project by all the talented specialists who had been signed up. In addition, the boys who played the main parts were very well chosen. Some of them had had no previous experience of acting.
There were four episodic "movements" in the show titled "Piggy", "Jack", "Simon" and Ralph".
The disturbing make-up, the often jarring music, the cinematography and the attention to detail impressed me greatly. These elements really lifted the drama. It wasn't as if Marc Munden and Jack Thorne were trying to faithfully replicate Golding's novel on screen but they were aiming to be entirely true to his vision, understanding deeply what this famous book was all about. They brought out the darkness, the terror and ultimately the sense of hope.
I thought it was terrific.
Jack
I loved teaching Lord of the Flies. I also found the book itself so terrifying that I'm not sure I'd be brave enough to see this new production since it sounds like such an accurate version of Golding's vision!
ReplyDeleteGo non, be brave Marty! (That's if you can locate the BBC version)
DeleteI read this as a set book for my English Literature O Level so must have been about the same age that you were when you read it. I do remember that it had a great impact on me, totally absorbing but also terribly disturbing. It is that lingering memory of a feeling of horror that has so far prevented me from watching this dramatisation.
ReplyDeleteIt could be cathartic for you... facing The Beast.
DeleteThe Lord of the Flies was included in one of my English literature courses at university, if memory serves me right probably in the first year, and in that case when I was 20. I think I may also at some point have seen an earlier film version, as I also seem to have certain visual memories of it - but I'm not sure. Sometimes even just reading can make memories take that form!
ReplyDeleteI think that every time we read fiction we create films in our heads.
DeleteI hope we get to see the newest BBC version here in Canada. I just finished reading "The Wager", about a shipwreck off the coast of Chile in 1740. A similar sort of madness appears.
ReplyDeleteDo they have televisions in Canada Shammy?
DeleteI'm hoping we will get a shipment soon.
DeleteI encountered this book at a similar age. In year 7 I was in a school play based on it, though I think I had already read it, as I had the R M Ballantyne, the year before. I am still friends with the English teacher who directed the play. The script (produced without consent, so copyright busting - the title was discreetly "The Beast") was probably cobbled together by him based on the film. I think you might be able to guess which character I played....
ReplyDeleteYou would have made the perfect Jack.
DeleteWe were shown this film when I was at secondary school. I found it deeply disturbing. I could not watch if you paid me a million.
ReplyDeleteHow about two million?
DeleteI read that book as an adolescent as well and I remember liking it, despite the dark turn of the plot. I'm not sure I fully understood the points it was trying to make about the basic nature of humans, though. I just read it on my own rather than in a class, and I probably could have benefitted from some discussion and analysis! (I feel this way about "Animal Farm," too. Of course I understand NOW what the points were supposed to be but I'm not sure I absorbed all that as I was reading.)
ReplyDeleteIf you were a character in Lord of the Flies, I think you would be Simon.
DeleteI watched it a few weeks ago. It took me back to my O-Level English studies!
ReplyDeleteSounds like you watched it all the way through.
DeleteI read this as a teenager and, having recently revisited other books from that time in my life (Fahrenheit 451, Animal Farm), decided I want to read it again. I've put it on my wishlist at my digital library.
ReplyDeleteI have no idea what a digital library is Kelly. Do they store fingers there?
DeleteWilliam Golding was teaching in a boys' grammar school in Winchester.
ReplyDeleteHe read Ballantyne's Coral Island and knew this was not how boys behaved.
The Inheritors examines the violent behaviour of Homo Sapiens to Neanderthals.
Golding said he was an Egyptian at heart. He wrote fiction on ancient Egypt.
Read The Spire, Free Fall, Darkness Visible & the trilogy To the Ends of the Earth.
He saw active service in Dunkirk in WW II and struggled with lifelong depression.
He never taught at Winchester. He taught at Streatham, Maidstone and finally Salisbury.
DeleteI knew he lived in Salisbury, Neil. So why did I write Winchester ?
DeleteMelvyn Bragg interviewed him and said he had just come out of one
of the longest spells of depression.
If the cost of his gift was this mental affliction then the cost was too high.
I read Lord of the Flies at around the same age as you, and it's haunted me ever since. Like Steve, I read it on my own because I was prodigious reader. By the time I was taking Honors English in middle school and it was assigned, I'd already read it.
ReplyDeleteThis looks like a good adaptation. I'll look out for it.
If. like me, you have been haunted by "Lord of the Flies", I hope you will be able to access this TV rendition Jennifer.
DeleteI know I read the book but the detail is lost in my mind now. I'll look out for the series.
ReplyDeleteI read the book years ago, but not in school, I don't remember much about it but remember I didn't like it much.
ReplyDelete