Book Report on Lord of the Flies by William Golding

Book Report on Lord of the Flies by William Golding

The following report is on William Golding’s Lord Of The Flies. The book itself is 208 pages. The topics that will be covered are a brief summary, type of chronology used, evaluation of character development, type of conflicts, themes, writers styles, and personal opinions.

This novel takes place on a boat like shaped island. There is a jungle, beach, and a lagoon. There are pigs and fish that they can eat, and different fruits.

This novel is about several young boys trying to survive on this island after their plane crashed. They have to work together in order to survive. There aren’t any grown ups around. Ralph and Piggy are the first to appear after the crash. Ralph finds a conch shell and blows into it hoping to get the attention of the other survivors. When they get around in a circle, they elect Ralph as the chief. Jack gets upset and this begins the conflict between Jack and Ralph. Jack decides that he and his choir, now called “hunters” want to go out and hunt for food. On his first attempt, he fails. One of the boys mentions that there is a beast on the island. Nobody paid too much attention to him, but in the back of their minds they knew there had to be something out there.

Ralph decides that they need a fire so that ships can rescue them. They use Piggy’s glasses to start the fire. Each of the boys were told to watch out for ships but they decided to play instead so they missed their opportunity to be rescued earlier.

Jack and his “hungers” have become obsessed with hunting and killing. They painted their faces and finally killed a pig. Finally Jack breaks away from Ralph’s leadership and he tells the others to follow him. He killed another pig and put the head of the pig on a stake, which symbolized The Lord Of The Flies. While Jack and the “hunters” were roasting the pig, Simon finds a dead man hanging from the rocks wearing a parachute. When he ran to tell the boys they mistaken him for the beast and kill him.

Now only Ralph, Piggy and the twins remain together. The fight for leadership reaches a climax when Jack turns violent. The hunters stole Piggy’s glasses, broke the conch, stole the twins and Roger ends up killing Piggy by throwing a boulder at him over the edge. Jack wanted to kill Ralph then, but Ralph ran into the woods to hide. ...

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...itions, our ideals, values, and the basics of right and wrong are lost.

Another theme is that people often single out others to give themselves security. This happened a lot with Piggy, which wasn’t fair. The boys definitely singled him out and Piggy knew what was happening.

I liked Golding’s style. It was fast moving, smooth, and I was able to understand what he was writing for the most part. He used good word choices when talking about a scene. In the first scene, when the boys were talking about how wonderful the island was, Golding used words like “thorns” and “Creeper” to tell us that the island wasn’t very friendly at all. He also uses good imagery.

The point of view was usually objective, but was sometimes omniscient, showing the thought of only one character at a time in the scene. Most of the story is told through the eyes of the boys, but sometimes it changed to the viewpoint to that of the author.

The age level that this book would be best suited is 12 and older. I think that boys would enjoy it more just for the fact that it is a book based on all boys. The only thing in the story that bothered me was the killings of the two young boys.