lord of the flies manuscript notes (FULL CHAPTERS 1-12)
so as most of you probably know, i went to exeter to read the original lord of the flies manuscript. i was there for a few days because that thing was LONG. like genuinely long as hell rip.
anyway, i thought i’d post my findings here because there are some really interesting differences between the manuscript and the final novel.
quick disclaimer: this is going to be very long and i cannot post direct quotes from the manuscript, so i’m just going to summarise what happens and go chapter by chapter. also golding’s handwriting was fighting for its life in places, so there may be tiny details i misread or missed. i did my best though 😭
there were basically two main things i looked at. one was a laminated set of around 200 photos of the original handwritten draft of strangers from within, which was the original title. this was from around 1951 to 1952 and the actual manuscript is too fragile to be opened now.
there was also a 1954 typescript with written edits from charles monteith, which was honestly very cool to see.
anyway, i’m just going to put my notes down below in bullet points and we’ll see how this goes lol
(creds to @battyshari707 and @star-conch for the blinkies!)
chapter one
golding originally seems to have written “children” at the beginning before crossing it out and replacing it with “boys”. so that could suggest that, at a very early stage, the story may have included both genders rather than just boys.
we also get way more detail about the plane. it’s given a name, brab iii, and there’s this really long opening section about its route, including places like winterslow, gibraltar, tobruk, addis ababa and bombay. new guinea is also mentioned, which seems to be where they were flying over when they were attacked by the “reds”.
there’s also a much darker implication around the crash. an unnamed child pulls a lever and some of the children escape, but it’s heavily implied that the adults and the other trapped children slowly burn to death. so yeah. cheerful start 💀
ralph immediately starts exploring because he remembers that this is what boys do in the coral island. lmfaooo. he keeps bringing it up and daydreaming about how glamorous the whole adventure is going to be, even while piggy is trying to point out that nobody knows they’ve crashed.
piggy’s accent is much more exaggerated here. his h sounds are often dropped, so it’s a lot more obvious that his speech is being used to mark him out socially.
ralph also really really dislikes piggy. like a LOT. he seems embarrassed by him because piggy does not fit his fantasy of what island adventures are meant to look like. ralph wants the coral island and instead he has piggy, which he is clearly not coping with 😭
the littlun johnny is called jamie here for some reason and he seems much shyer than he is in the finished book.
samneric also come across as a bit meaner toward piggy. they laugh in his face and generally seem more openly hostile than they are later on.
piggy is much more obviously scared of the choir. he notices that they have friends and a group around them, and there’s this strong sense that he feels both shame and yearning because he wants that kind of security with ralph.
roger gets a bit more description too. he is described with olive skin and also as having a greyish complexion.
weirdly, simon gets the “shock of black hair” description that i usually associate more with roger.
ralph also immediately casts simon as the peterkin figure from the coral island. he gets really excited that there is a jack and then basically looks at simon and thinks, okay, you can be peterkin then. extremely normal behaviour from ralph as usual.
chapter two
not loads changes here tbf. golding clearly knew what he was doing with this section already.
ralph still frames the island through adventure stories. he tells the boys about the island books he has read and, of course, brings up the coral island again because apparently we cannot escape it.
piggy is in actual physical pain when the boys take his glasses, which is interesting because it feels much more intense than in the finished version.
roger is also noticeably more bitter here. he talks a bit more than he does in the final novel, but nobody really acknowledges him or interacts with him. he is just sort of there, resentful and ignored. nobody is messing with roger even this early on 😭
chapter three
ralph seems really disappointed in both jack and simon because neither of them lives up to what he expected from the coral island. he is clearly becoming disillusioned with the reality of how boys actually behave on an island, but he does not really have the words to explain why yet.
simon has a very strange scene here. icl, it took me about 30 to 40 minutes to decipher because golding’s handwriting was awful lmfao, so this part might be slightly off.
basically, simon goes into the forest and we get a lot of his thoughts about the other boys. he explicitly loves ralph and jack a lot, and we learn that he is only nine years old. he also has epilepsy and is presented as both physically and emotionally fragile.
he clearly admires ralph’s authority and thinks about him very tenderly. he also seems to admire piggy, roger and maurice, and overall he just kind of loves everyone lol. but his love for ralph is especially obvious.
simon then reflects on jack’s fear of the beast and believes that everyone has been deceived by something. after that he gets hungry and finds fruit near the scar, which is when things get very weird.
he senses some kind of person or presence forbidding him from eating the fruit. this sends him into a whole spiral about morality on the island and the boys’ behaviour. he nods as though someone is there with him, thinks about his own closeness to death because of his epilepsy and then enters this strange altered state.
then he starts dancing.
yes. dancing.
he laughs, tilts his head up and seems to realise that something is no longer forbidden, although i couldn’t fully make out what that “something” was. after this he goes down to the beach, calls an assembly and starts dancing again. help.
the littluns watch him and jack and ralph basically stare like ??? but then everyone joins in. then jack tells everyone to race and simon starts properly freaking out. he screams, gets really upset and turns to ralph as though he expects ralph to save everyone.
but ralph joins in too.
so simon is left defeated and really sad. genuinely rough stuff.
chapter four
roger is very odd here. he gets two quite drawn out scenes.
the first is the stone throwing scene with henry, who actually has a surname here, williams. roger has this recurring motif where he looks around before doing something cruel. he seems to be in some kind of pain while following henry, but after throwing the stones his head falls back, his eyes flutter, he gasps and he goes grey.
so um. yeah. make of that what you will 😭🙏
jack also does not ask roger or anyone else to hunt with him. tbh nobody really interacts with roger except maurice, who walks with him and destroys sandcastles with him.
ralph actually cries properly when the ship passes and they miss their chance of rescue. jack is left standing there in disbelief because he has made ralph cry, and the other boys do try to comfort ralph, although it does not really help.
when they eat the pig, robert makes an association between piggy’s name and the animal, and samneric start pretending to kill piggy with sticks. so that’s nice 💀
roger then sneaks away and starts choosing larger rocks before using them to bash limpets to death. again, he looks around first, which feels like a deliberate motif.
i do think this is meant to show an escalation. first it’s small stones near henry, then bigger rocks used on limpets, then eventually the boulder with piggy. roger is so deeply strange here like what is actually wrong with him.
also, i forgot to mention this earlier, but there were some extra scenes at the very end of the manuscript pages. a lot of them are scenes that basically exist in the finished book too, like roger talking to jack.
one interesting bit is the scene where simon gives piggy his meat. in this version, simon says he is not hungry, but jack tells him to eat. simon repeats that he is not hungry, but he gets interrupted and the meat is basically thrown at him anyway.
so it feels less like simon just quietly giving piggy meat and more like simon trying to remove himself from the whole meat eating ritual, only for jack to force him back into it.
also, after the signal fire goes out, simon cries with ralph. which is genuinely really sad because it makes simon feel much more emotionally tied to ralph’s disappointment and guilt here.
chapter five
when ralph goes to call the meeting, he has to shove simon and a random littlun off him, which is kind of funny but also says a lot about how physically clingy simon seems to be in this version.
simon explicitly tells the boys that the beast is inside them, but he struggles to explain what he means and everyone starts mocking him.
maurice actually defends simon and suggests that maybe simon means it is a ghost. jack then brings up the bible and questions what it would say about that.
ralph says there are no ghosts in the bible, jack pushes back about spirits and then piggy takes the conch and says he does not believe in ghosts at all.
when jack says that there are ghosts in the bible, piggy basically says that if there are then the bible must be wrong 💀
jack gets furious about this and accuses piggy of not believing in jesus.
ralph then asks for a vote on who believes it is a ghost. when most of them do, he is clearly not impressed. piggy keeps protesting that he never believed in ghosts and asks ralph to remember that.
chapter six
ralph has a dream about his father, who appears to give him grown up advice about jack, simon and piggy.
his dad basically tells him that jack and simon are like bananas and ralph needs to peel them back to find what he actually wants from them. skull emoji. i do not know either.
ralph then sees jack and simon smiling and is happy about it.
the bigger emotional thing is that ralph is just really happy to see his dad again, even though he knows it is only a dream. he is still glad to be dreaming it.
when everyone is talking about the beast that simon saw, piggy has an asthma attack and goes blue, but nobody really cares. insane behaviour from literally everyone 💀💀💀
when they go exploring to look for the beast, simon is clearly thinking about what he said earlier, about the beast being inside them. he also seems desperate to regain ralph’s approval.
there is this beautiful internal passage where simon thinks about how much he loves and adores ralph. it feels like a mixture of agape and something more romantic, or at least very emotionally intense.
simon tells ralph not to believe in the beast. ralph is confused by this and thinks simon is odd.
chapter seven
the scene where simon tells ralph he will get back is not actually in the original handwritten manuscript in the normal place. it seems to have been written separately on a page that says it should be added to chapter seven, but it is included in the typescript.
simon is not described in a particularly flattering way, but he is given this aura of gold and light around him when he tells ralph that he will get back.
ralph is cynical about it and keeps asking simon how he knows. simon is persistent, but he does not really have an answer.
in the original manuscript, this scene is basically replaced with ralph and jack eating fruit in a disgusting way, and jack sits down and just belches. classy.
after the boys pretend to kill robert during the pig hunt, simon has a full breakdown. he cries so hard that the rocks he is curled against are stained with his tears. weirdly enough, roger is the one who notices and asks what is wrong with him.
but the narration also makes it very clear that nobody really cares that simon is crying or upset because they all think he is weird.
roger is much more annoying toward ralph in the original manuscript too. in the finished book, roger taps a log with his stick and ralph gets irritated. in the original, ralph takes the stick away to stop him, but roger yanks it back and keeps tapping furiously while watching ralph for a reaction.
roger is such a menace honestly.
i did mention this before but i want to stress it because it stood out to me so much. when simon tells ralph that he will get back, there is this golden aura around simon. ralph is clearly overwhelmed by it, even though he does not fully understand what simon means or how simon could possibly know.
it makes the scene feel much more openly spiritual than it does in the finished novel.
chapter eight
piggy tells ralph that jack will come back again, which is not in the finished book.
ralph also thinks simon has joined jack’s tribe and gets genuinely upset about it.
but we are quickly told that simon has not joined jack at all. instead, he is on his own quest to find the beast. he does not really believe in the beast, but because ralph says he saw it on the mountain, simon cannot accept that ralph might be wrong or lying. so he goes to figure it out for himself.
simon then tries to interact with somebody or something. he tucks himself into a corner and starts to meditate. there is a lot of religious imagery here, especially around the garden of eden and jesus being tempted by the devil.
simon is hungry and thirsty, but he ignores it because he is trying to reach or communicate with this presence.
when the boys kill the pig, it is not just jack who gets on top of the sow. maurice and robert do too.
simon is also explicitly scared that if the beast comes for the pig’s head, it might come and eat him too 🥺
jack is apparently wearing a wreath of flowers and nothing else in the manuscript version. in the finished novel it is just paint and a belt, but here the image is way more strange and unsettling. also the littluns literally wet themselves because jack looks that terrifying.
simon does still speak to the lord of the flies, but this version is different. the pigs seem to offer simon the chance to become a chief of his own, which is very interesting considering how much leadership and authority matter in this draft.
then simon starts listing random names. it took me ages to try and decode them, but honestly i am not confident enough in what i read to post them. after that, the names slowly turn into gibberish and he ends by repeating one word over and over before he is knocked out.
so. normal stuff.
chapter nine
this one hurt.
to be honest, not loads was different here. i did struggle with the handwriting a bit, but from what i could make out, a lot of it seemed basically the same as the finished novel.
simon is very affected by what has happened to him. he is crying, full of disgust and seems to wonder whether he should offer himself to the beast so it will leave everyone else alone. he then decides to climb the mountain and see the beast for himself.
ralph and piggy laugh at jack’s tribe and think they look stupid and silly.
i could not really make out the scene where simon finds the parachutist, but from what i could see, it looked basically the same.
simon’s death though. oh dear.
in this version, a littlun is the one who spots simon. he points him out and immediately draws everyone’s attention to him.
the boys are also described in a very disturbing, almost lustful way (thats the word used!) while they kill him, which is… a choice. there is also screaming during the attack, which stood out to me because the finished novel makes the moment feel weirdly silent and unreal. here, it is much louder and more brutal.
the bit that really got me is that simon does fight back. he tries to reverse what is happening, pushes people off him and does everything he can, but he is overwhelmed by the crowd.
when he is lying dead, there is a lot more religious imagery. it is much more explicit than in the final novel, with God and religious symbolism basically shoved right in your face.
chapter ten
piggy and ralph have a longer conversation about simon’s death. piggy puts more blame on simon and insults him by treating him as strange and unstable.
ralph, meanwhile, is devastated. he feels dirty and says so very clearly. piggy offers to help him bathe, but ralph cannot stand being touched. when piggy puts a hand on his shoulder, ralph flinches, so no bathing happens.
piggy also tells ralph to tell sam and eric that they were not involved because they left early. he promises ralph that everything will be okay because they still have the conch, which is painfully piggy of him.
jack is very interesting here. he seems much guiltier than he does in the finished novel. it is pretty obvious that simon’s death has shaken him, but instead of admitting that, he pushes harder into the idea that simon was the beast.
in the final version, jack suggests that the beast may have disguised itself as simon. here, he is much more direct and tells the tribe that simon was the beast. another boy suggests that it wore simon’s skin.
anyway, jack is clearly disturbed by what happened. he stammers a lot, his voice is low and he seems genuinely unsettled.
he also warns the tribe that they need to stay on the right side of simon or he might come back.
ralph’s mum is also apparently in america for some reason. ralph thinks about wanting to get her back from america, which is such a random detail but also very sad.
when the tribe sneaks up to steal piggy’s glasses, ralph gets a little flicker of hope that it might be simon :(
and when ralph imagines the beast outside, there are a lot of explicit links to simon. he imagines features associated with simon, like his hair and skin.
ralph also offers piggy as a sacrifice to the beast, which is… not great!
in this version, piggy gets dragged out of the tent by the hunters and beaten, rather than everyone just being attacked inside the tent.
ralph’s guilt is much more explicit here. he does not just feel dirty in a vague way. he basically thinks that even if they get home and grow old, they will still be changed by what happened on the island.
the dirtiness is not just physical. it is moral and permanent.
so when piggy offers to help him bathe and ralph cannot stand being touched, it feels like the point is that washing would not actually fix anything. ralph knows they cannot just clean this off.
chapter eleven
this one was sad too.
piggy almost becomes a sort of replacement simon here. he starts talking about how everything that happened on the island was not something they were taught, but something they chose to do. he also says that if there is a beast, the beast would probably be scared of them because they were willing to kill one of their own.
he gets very distressed about this.
before ralph has his epiphany about simon, piggy reminds them that simon was murdered. that feels important because the boys are not just vaguely guilty here. they are actually beginning to understand what they did.
ralph also keeps wondering how he could ever explain what happened. it is like he already knows the truth is too awful and too strange to translate back into normal adult language.
ralph then has his kind of epiphany. he starts repeating simon’s belief that they will get back to where they came from. but earlier, when ralph asked simon whether everyone else would get back too, simon avoided the question, so there is this horrible sense that ralph is clinging to a promise that was only ever meant for him.
ralph almost becomes simon’s advocate. it feels like he believes simon now and wants to make sure simon lives on through that belief.
then they all start to remember that simon was crying out about the dead man on the hill. they remember the parachute coming down from the mountain and realise that simon was not just being strange. he was telling the truth.
for a moment they all get really excited, and then they remember how good simon was. sam even reminds piggy that simon once gave him his piece of meat.
but then ralph reminds them that simon is dead because of them and the whole mood just dies.
when they get to castle rock, roger is a lot scarier in my opinion. he is more talkative and feels much more alive as a character, which somehow makes him worse.
piggy’s death is pretty much the same, except ralph cannot believe what has happened and silently forms the word murder.
chapter twelve
there is a lot more description of ralph’s adrenaline and fear while he is running for his life. i did not take loads of notes here because a lot of it seemed pretty similar to the finished book.
ralph has to try not to laugh because he knows that if he starts laughing, he will start crying. which is genuinely awful.
we also get a little insight into bill. ralph thinks bill was probably bullied, frightened and uncomfortable in the tribe, which is interesting because it makes the tribe feel less like this united evil force and more like a group of scared boys trapped in something they do not know how to leave.
ralph wants to go back and try to be friends with them again, but then he remembers that he is an outsider now and that he is not welcome in their society anymore.
he keeps repeating simon’s words about getting out like a mantra, and this runs through the whole chapter.
then he thinks about what piggy would say, before remembering that piggy is dead.
most of the rest is ralph running for his life, and from what i remember, it was very similar to the finished novel.
however, the naval officer is a commander in her majesty’s navy. if i am remembering correctly, ralph’s dad is also described as a commander in the navy in the finished novel, so that parallel is really horrible for ralph.
ralph is overwhelmed by the size of adults. he explicitly thinks about how he had forgotten how large adults are.
the naval officer is also more sceptical of the idea that the boys have just been having fun. he still assumes that they probably have been, but he seems less convinced than in the finished version.
ralph is in disbelief and realises he can never explain what happened.
then the naval officer brings up the coral island, and that is what finally breaks ralph. he remembers reading it and thinking about boys being good friends on an island, except here simon was killed. ralph explicitly blames jack for simon’s death, which is interesting because chapters ten and eleven seem to show the boys shifting a lot of the blame onto jack.
ralph cries much harder than he does in the finished novel.
ralph’s crying at the end is much more clearly explained in this version.
he cries for piggy, he cries for simon and he cries because jack hunted him like a pig. he also cries because the whole thing has completely destroyed the fantasy of the coral island. this was meant to be a story about boys having an adventure and being good friends, but instead simon was murdered, piggy was killed and ralph himself was treated like prey.
so the ending feels less ambiguous about why ralph breaks down. he is not just crying because he is rescued. he is crying because he understands exactly what happened.
then we get a date and time: 16:00 on the second of october 1952. not too sure if that's meant to be when it was finished/when its set...
and that is basically everything i wrote down!!
obviously this is not a full transcript or anything close to that, and because i can’t post direct quotes this is all paraphrased from my notes. also some parts of the handwritten draft were genuinely difficult to read, so please take the tiny details with a pinch of salt. i tried my best but mr golding was not exactly writing for the tumblr folk of 2026 😭
overall though, the manuscript was SO interesting. it really feels like you can see golding slowly working out what lord of the flies was actually going to become. a lot of the final novel is already there, but the earlier version is much more explicit about religion, guilt, sexuality, violence and the boys’ emotional reactions to everything.
the biggest thing i came away thinking is that the finished novel is much tighter because so much of this stuff got cut, but i also think the manuscript makes some character dynamics way clearer. simon is even more painfully saintlike, ralph is much more openly disillusioned by the collapse of his adventure fantasy, piggy is somehow even more tragic and roger is somehow even more deeply concerning. which i did not think was possible but here we are.
anyway, i hope this was interesting!! please do not ask me for quotes because i legally cannot provide them, but i’m happy to talk about the general differences and what i remember from my notes.
if anyone else has seen the manuscript and remembers something differently, feel free to add on, just be nice because i spent three days hunched over golding’s handwriting and i am spiritually not the same person anymore lol
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