Final post

Hello readers!

The last 100 pages went away fast! It was much easier and more interesting to read the second half of the book than the first one. (Spoilers in the following paragraphs, you have been warned)

The pace really picked up after Jack left the tribe and they had the feast in the forest. I didn’t really expect that the figure that emerged from the forest was Simon. However, he was killed by the rest of the gang in the chaos of the feast. I was surprised that Piggy died later on, since he wasn’t really involved in the fight between Jack and Ralph.

Lord of the Flies was easy to read and there wasn’t really that many characters to keep track of. There was a lot of action in the end, but the start was kind of slow. The ending went maybe a bit too quick. It felt like the conclusion was rushed a bit. I liked that the society of kids seemed to work fine in the beginning, then the whole “society” went haywire and chaos ensured. My predictions were right as Jack betrayed Ralph after a while.

I am not used to read novels, so it was difficult to read between the lines and try to understand the meaning underneath. For example, I had to read the two pages about Simons death three times to actually understand that Simon was the shadow and that the tribe killed the shadow. Overall, I rate the book as a solid 9 on a scale from 1 to 10. The ending was what dragged it down from a 10. If the story didn’t end as suddenly as it did, then it would have been perfect. Of course, that’s only my opinion.

It has been 3 long weeks of blogging. See you soon!

Friday Focus: Social issues

Hello readers!

As we know, a bunch of kids are stranded on a lone island in Lord of the flies. The kids try to establish a working society with laws and a leader, but they fail miserably. The book shows how easy it is for humans to resort to savagery and become violent. In the beginning, they were all struggling for survival and cooperating. There was only one tribe and everyone worked for the common good. As soon as the whole island was explored and things wasn’t as foreign anymore, Jack made a new tribe to compete with the one Ralph and Piggy made. The new tribe took members from the other tribe by promising that they would hunt and feast. Only Jack, Piggy, Ralph and Simon are able to see what is happening with the society. The rest of the kids are simply “following the flow” and are acting like they are on a holiday.

Lord of the flies relates to the subject of social studies by showing what a bunch of kids would do if left alone on an island. Some think that humans are civilized enough to function on their own without a clear leader, but this book shows that as soon as there is no real authority in power they follow their instincts and begin to kill each other. Jack and Ralph are equal in terms of leadership skills and have the same amount of respect from the other kids, so they are competing against each other on who to lead the kids. In the beginning, Jack leads the choir or “the hunters” as they are referred to under Jack while Ralph leads the tribe. After a while, Jack’s lust for power grows, especially after they kill their first pig. In the end, the whole book is a fight between Ralph and Jack for authority and power. Jack tries to take over Ralph’s tribe, but fails miserably every time since he doesn’t have the majority with him. Instead, he creates a new tribe to steal members from Ralph’s tribe and slowly creating a majority by promising food and no rules for those who join. The fight between the two tribes result in the death of Simon and Piggy. In the end of the book, when the naval officer comes and asks “Who’s boss here” (Golding, 224), Ralph says he is the boss since he is the first to meet the officer. Then power is transferred from Ralph to the officer, who is a grown up. Order is restored and the kids stop fighting since they are in the presence of a grown up.

The book shows that even though the kids have had a good adolescence so far and are from Britain, they resort to their instincts when they are left alone without a clear leader. As soon as the naval officer shows up, the fighting stops since a grown-up has arrived on the island and the kids respect him. 

So far

Hey readers! 

Today, I have reached page 94 and there are finally some action. The kids have agreed to light a large fire on top of the island to signal possible boats that they are in distress. They build some shelters and there are a lot of meetings, where they discuss what should happen next. However, the things they talk about never happen because the kids have a short attention span and goes hunting or bathing instead. Only Ralph and Simon manage to get things done. Later, the fire dies out because Jack takes the kids that are responsible for the fire out hunting for a pig. They manage to kill a pig, put there is a ship on the horizon that steams by without knowing that they are on the island. Ralph is furious since it could have been their ticket off the island and Jack disobeys his order. Then a kid says that there lives a monster on the island. Ralph says that it is only his imagination and that there is no monster on the island. The “littluns” still insist on that there is a monster, even though all the older kids says that there is no monster. In the end, they spend the night arguing about what kind of monster there is and if there are ghosts too.

There are some indications that there is a nuclear war raging, so a creature mutating into a monster is possible. However, it is highly unlikely. I think that the kids are overreacting on something natural and that the monster is a tree or something. It is interesting that Jack is still disobeying Ralph. I still think that Jack will break off soon and start another tribe, but it seems like his main plan is to overthrow Ralph by making the kids trust him. I’m really excited about the next pages. Until next time!

Characters in focus

Hey readers! 

Today, I will focus on the different characters in Lord of The Flies. The main character is Ralph and he is one of the oldest and most capable of the children. He and piggy was the first to gather the rest of the kids and establish a society. Unlike the rest of the kids, Ralph delegates tasks to the rest of the kids to get things done. However, he is actively counteracted by a kid named Jack. Jack pulls away the small kids from their duties to go hunting, which yields little to no food. There is a conflict growing between Jack and Ralph, since they both are leader types that have different points of view. Jack thinks it is more important to survive than to be rescued.

The second kid we get to know is nicknamed piggy against his will. He is an overweight boy with glasses. The glasses later come in handy to start a fire. Although he is smart, he is kind of useless on the island. The third kid, and the antagonist is named Jack. He nominated himself as leader for the tribe, but Ralph won the vote. Now, he is sort of a second in command. I don’t think that he is happy being second in command, so he will most likely gather a group and break away from Ralph. I’m sure he will gather some of the older kids, since he despises the small kids nicknamed “littluns”.

The rest of the characters are mostly unnamed. They are a combination of littluns and biguns who are running around hunting and bathing. There are some biguns who are capable of building huts, but they are easily distracted and often wander off hunting instead.

The next blog post will focus on what has happened in the book so far. Later! 

From page zero to page fifty

Hey guys!

Today, I will write about what I have read so far in the book and what I anticipate will happened next. I have read about fifty pages and it is getting interesting. A group of boys has stranded on an isolated island somewhere in the ocean. The plane they were on crashed into the island and there are no grown-ups alive after the crash. The first two people we get to know about is Ralph and a kid nicknamed Piggy. After a while, they manage to gather the rest of the kids by blowing in a shell of some kind. The kids agree to create a sort of tribe with Ralph as the leader. Jack, another kid who was nominated as leader, challenges the decision to elect Ralph as the leader. However, the other kids feel like Ralph should be the leader because he found the shell. Ralph gathers three people for a scouting party to see if the island really is an island. They get to the top of a large mountain see that there is ocean on both sides. Some kids claim that they found some sort of monster on the island, but I think they are overreacting, even though there are indications that there is a nuclear war raging.

I think Jack is going to betray Ralph later in the book. Jack isn’t happy with Ralph’s leadership, so he will do something about it. I’m unsure if he will get support from some of the other boys. If he does, then there will be some sort of fighting between Ralph and Jack. Surely, the society they have will crumble if there is fighting on the small island. Last, but not least, will they be rescued? I think they will be stranded there for a long time and there it is possible that they will all die on the island. The only way to find out is to read more of the book. 

Hello readers!

This is my first post on my first book blog. I am confident that I will learn something from this blogging challenge, although I’m not fond about blogging at all. Now, let’s get started. The book I will read during the next four weeks is Lord of the Flies by William Golding. Golding was born in 1911 and served in the Royal Navy during the second world war. Wikipedia states that “He fought and was briefly in the pursuit and sinking of the German battleship Bismarck. He started writing books after the war. Lord of the flies was his first book ever published and has been critically acclaimed, especially in the late 90s. Later in life, he was awarded the Nobel peace prize and the booker prize in 1980. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 1988. Golding died unexpectedly of heart failure in 1993.

Besides writing books, Golding worked as a schoolteacher in Salisbury, Wiltshire. The subjects he taught were philosophy and English. Golding and the chemist Ann Brookfield on the 30 September 1939.

I have high expectations for this book since it has been awarded several awards, has been cinematized three times and is regarded as a classic. I have already read about fifty pages and it is looking promising. I will write more about the book in my next blog entry.