The book was written by William Golding and it was published in 1954. A nobel-prize winner, the novel was adapted for film twice: In 1966 and in 1990.
It follows the story of a group of boys that end up on an uninhabited island after the plane they were in crashed. The kids, in the age range of 6 to 12, have to survive on their own and govern themselves. The main focus of the book is human nature, society and the savagery inside of humans. The main characters are Ralph and Jack, whom represent two different sides of the human: society & organisation and savagery and the will of power. Supporting characters and episodic characters each represent biblical and social constructs, struggling between the two camps, with extremes on the both sides: the sociopath killer (Roger), the intellectual, the civilised (Piggy), the goodness, the purity (Simon).
The action follows the deterioration of society under the lack of authority. Though at first things looked promising, the lack of control gets the real human natures out of what looks like mere children, thus completely subjugating what everyone saw as innocence.
Some of the motifs of the story are:
The conch, symbol of oder and civilisation;
The spear, symbol of human savagery;
The specs, symbol of intelligence;
The fire, symbol of hope and glimpse of civilisation,
The beast, symbol of fear and the human nature itself.
The book is full of hidden meanings, with each character and each element having a different contribution to the real message of the story. The ending shows that, despite the fact that the presence of authority suddenly changes human’s rules and reasoning, the innocence is still under a huge question mark. As an open ending, we know that the children are back to civilisation, but we can never find out if the innocence of childhood will ever return to what was quickly going to savagery.
