Lord of the flies

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Lord of the Flies ( English original title: Lord of the Flies ) is a 1954 novel by the English writer William Golding .

Golding's first novel was his most successful. In his Robinsonade , populated only by boys , Golding shows the social development of a group of six to twelve year olds who are suddenly cut off from any influence from adults. Although they were shaped by culture and civilization, they behave more and more according to their respective characters , and a violent conflict develops.

content

An airplane used in an evacuation operation due to a nuclear war crashes with a group of six to twelve year old English boys on board. The children survive and are ended up on an uninhabited South Sea island. Some children, the "choir", come from an elite school and already have a permanent leader, Jack. The others don't know anyone, but they also form a group and choose the good-looking, decent twelve-year-old Ralph as their leader. From the beginning there is a dispute between the two disaffected groups. Ralph, who tries to bring order to his group, is supported by Piggy, a plump, intelligent boy, and Simon, who is suffering from epilepsy and is haunted by visions . A conch shell used as a snail's trumpet , which Piggy finds on the beach and with which Ralph calls the rest of the group to community meetings, becomes a symbol of the order that Ralph is trying to maintain.

While Ralph and Piggy strive to maintain the civilization they have become and devise ways to bring them back to Europe , Jack is aggressive and prefers "fun and action" over necessary activities. He would rather go hunting for wild pigs instead of building huts or keeping the fire going on the mountain top, which is supposed to serve as a signal for passing ships. His aggressiveness causes the first conflicts. Jack bullies weaker people and has chosen Piggy in particular. More and more children are joining Jack and calling themselves "the hunters". The group is becoming increasingly estranged when the rumor spreads among the smaller children, called Littluns (little ones), that there was a monster on the island. Later, the dead body of a parachuted soldier caught in a tree is mistaken for the monster. The wind blows the parachute so that the children feel like a living monster.

In the last third of the plot, Jack and his "hunters" separate from Ralph, settle in a new camp on a peninsula called "rock castle" on the other side of the island and finally can pull the majority of the islanders on his side. Only Piggy, Simon, the twins Sam and Eric (also called Samneric, as they show the characteristics stereotyped for twins, such as synchronous speaking and thinking) and a few younger people are at Ralph's side. In the end it's only Sam, Eric and Piggy, because Simon is killed at night thinking he is the monster. But he only wanted to uncover the secret of the monster, since he had recently climbed the mountain and discovered the truth. “The hunters” succumb more and more to the thirst for blood and become savages with their own rituals. One of the hunters, Roger, even becomes a passionate torturer, first of pigs, but then of fellow devils.

When the two groups attempt to negotiate, the twins are handcuffed and forcibly recruited into Jack's group. Shortly afterwards, Piggy is murdered when Roger rolls a boulder from a cliff onto the Piggy below. This then plunges over twelve meters and hits the rocks in the sea. Finally, Jack and his "warriors" try to kill Ralph too. They set the entire island on fire in the hunt for him. At the last moment, Ralph is rescued by a naval officer who has just docked his warship.

interpretation

The main theme of the story is man's innate propensity for violence. In the novel, the situation is exaggerated by the fact that the main characters are children who are actually symbols of innocence and purity. The more children lose touch with civilization and law, the more their apparent innocence and purity , assumed by adults, dwindle , and the more the law of the fittest reigns.

In detail

The initial description of the island and the sunlight on the water suggests a paradise where the innocent children who have just been evacuated from a war situation are given a new chance. But the behavior of the individual survivors as individuals and their group behavior soon transform the island into the exact opposite: an inferno .

First of all, past socialization prevents the children from serious physical abuse:

“Invisible [,] but imperative here was the taboo from the past. The squatting child was surrounded by the protection of the parents and the school and the police and the law. "

- William Golding : Lord of the Flies

This acquired peaceableness and bondage are increasingly taking a back seat to a crude law of the thumb . Particularly noteworthy are the circumstances in which the violence escalates in certain situations : The characters generally do not show any obviously violent features (apart from Jack, the leader of the hunters, and Roger). At the beginning of the story a more school discipline with self-discipline and obedience predominates ; you sing and work together purposefully. In the course of the story, at moments of conflict, dangerous group dynamics arise: individual voices become a tangle of voices; the crowd becomes more and more inaccessible to logical arguments. In some situations this happens particularly dramatically: the hunters dance around the fire at night and carry out fake attacks on "the monster" they suspect to be a threat on the island. Simon finds out that this monster is just a dead parachutist; But when he wants to tell the hunters about it, they take him in their ecstasy for "the monster", attack him and kill him. In another situation, Piggy wants to get his glasses back from the hunters after they forcibly took them away from him. The argument escalates and a boy (Roger) kills Piggy with a huge boulder that he deliberately drops on top of him when Piggy tries desperately to make the boys understand their difficult situation again.

Most children do not have a strong character and become followers of the attractive hunting group. This image, which is aggressive in its entirety, is reminiscent of, among other things, early forms of human development and totalitarian and authoritarian systems of rule in advanced civilization and modernity.

The group of survivors does not want to face the tedious, arduous tasks of building the hut and the beacon; hunting seems much more exciting and brings direct results. The conflict between Ralph, the advocate of democracy and civilization, and the resolute leader Jack, symbolic of human aggression in perfection , escalates in a merciless hunt down the last non-hunter, Ralph, in the course of which the children set fire to the whole island. The rescue from the island, which the children experience at the very last minute, is done by a naval officer from a warship. This only ends the hunt and the killing for a short time, because both are only raised to another level - the war between adults.

However, this topic can not only be related to real systems of rule, but also to more fundamental levels. Golding emphasizes too much metaphysical and psychological considerations for the novel to be seen as a purely political criticism. There is also a reference to the Cold War . It is generally and in a strikingly symbolic form about the origins of structural and physical violence, because in the novel fear and helplessness let the children follow the group dynamic in the direction of violence.

symbolism

As the title suggests, various symbols and name symbolisms can be found in Lord of the Flies .

  • As Lord of the Flies is the Beelzebub , the devil called. The Old Testament lord of the flies, the Ba'al Zevuv (בעל זבוב), describes one of the Ba'al variants, as used by the Phoenicians of the city of Sidon or, according to 2 Book of Kings 1, 2, also by the Philistines as weather and god of fertility were worshiped. In the Old Testament interpretation, like all Ba'ale and Astarten, it has a negative connotation for the “false deity” and the seducibility of man. At Golding, Ba'al Zevuv, who was a god of war, becomes a symbol of man's willingness to use violence outside of culture . Personified by an impaled pig's skull full of flies, he reveals his true character: the “animal” in everyone, waiting to drive man to the worst. Far from his civilization , the man, falling back into the Bellum omnium contra omnes (war of all against all), is to be exposed as a non-socialized violent being - with which Golding's novel unfolds his criticism of civilization .
  • Ralph comes from the Old High German Radulf ("rad" or "rat", i.e. the advice, the advice, the counselor; "ulf" (Wulf), i.e. the wolf), meaning a powerful adviser , something that Ralph repeatedly attributes to trying to be, but what is shouted down by the others. His attempts to maintain democracy by repeatedly emphasizing that he was elected have also found less and less resonance in the course of history.
  • The name Simon comes from the Hebrew word Shim'on, which means "to hear", "to hear". Simon is the discerning man who, in a maddened fever, hears the truth about human nature from a speared pig's head swirled around by flies . It is also he who finds out the truth about the "monster" on the mountain.
  • Jack is a name like a scream - short, loud, dominant - and can be seen onomatopoeically like a striking blow. The name Jack is conceivable as a short form of John , which in turn goes back to the name Johannes (German: "God has shown grace"), or as a short form of Jacob (German: "(God) protects / protects"). Both meanings suggest that the bearer of the name was chosen. The Jack in the story rises to become the leader of the savages, the hunter. He becomes, as it were, the leader of God's grace.
  • Roger is the English form of the Germanic Rutger / Rüdiger and consists of the parts hrod (fame) and ger (spear), he is the famous spear hunter who only knows how to hunt and kill.
  • The dead parachutist: A pilot - killed in a dogfight over the island - is parachuted across the island and lands on the mountainside. The updrafts inflate the parachute and drag the body up to the top of the mountain, where it gets stuck between the rocks. When there is no wind, the body is bent forward; if the wind comes up, the parachute straightens the dead man. A sign came down from the world of adults ... no child was awake to read it. In daylight the children might have seen what it was about: a person killed in a senseless fight, garbage (in the sense of the word) from the war machine. Since this recognition does not take place, the dead person - the clear sign - becomes another element of fear ( beast from air ), which further drives the spiral of violence that children create for themselves. The effects of the war create fear and further fighting.
  • Naval officers: Deus ex machina and apparent symbol for civilization and its protagonists (here: persons of authority in uniform), but in his function as a soldier he is just as much a "hunter" as the children on the island - only on another level: in the Adult world. When naval officers appear on the island at the end of the novel, the murderous hustle and bustle among Jack and his hunters is abruptly ended - without their intervention, just by their presence, as the boys suddenly re-enter through the appearance of these authority figures from "civilization" find their usual role and the associated internalized behavior patterns back, but one already suspects that this is not a solution for the better, because the war continues in the adult world.

reception

Similar to Jerome D. Salinger's novel The Catcher in the Rye , Golding's novel was also controversially discussed in Great Britain, but initially received very well in the USA , which meant that it quickly became a cult book there . However, the religious , psychological and sociological aspects of the novel were initially ignored and it was only discussed in terms of its character. From 1974 onwards, access to this book was made difficult in various schools and school districts in the USA and Canada , or it was removed from the relevant libraries ( challenged book ).

In addition, Golding's work is also a parable about the end of human innocence, the mythical-symbolic meaning of what happened is deepened by its lyrical language. Golding succeeds in never losing sight of his central anthropological issue , despite all of his symbolic exaggerations .

Film adaptations, influences and real incidents

The novel was first filmed in black and white in 1963 . A remake was shot in 1990 under the direction of Harry Hook in Hawaii and California and Port Antonio in Jamaica , although this American color film leaves out much of the symbolism of the novel, but dramatically emphasizes the conflict between civilization and unbridled aggression.

In terms of content based on Lord of the Flies , the Simpsons episode "Das Bus" (Eng. "The stupid UNO Club") was broadcast on February 15, 1998 . Here, some children from Springfield Primary School, who were on their way to a model UN meeting, stranded on a desert island and, analogous to Lord of the Flies , develop the first structures of social coexistence before chaotic tendencies develop.

In New Zealand, 1999-2003 by was Lord of the Flies -inspired television series The Tribe - A world without adults in which a virus kills all adults and the remaining children (Engl. To tribes tribes ) unite.

The Lord of the Flies also influenced the US mystery television series Lost , which tells of the (adult) survivors of a plane crash. Some of the basic ideas of the novel also appear in the television series, including the formation of two groups under two leaders, one more democratic and the other more inclined to dictatorship. The motif of the “parachutist in the tree” is visually quoted in Lost . Another parallel to Lord of the Flies is the island monster: only invented by the children, it actually exists in Lost and kills some protagonists; the whole island is becoming more and more of a contributing character.

The behavior of a small group of self-sufficient adolescents is also discussed in The 100 and in The Society .

Several authors also point to strong parallels between the first part of the Maze Runner series, The Chosen - In the Labyrinth and Lord of the Flies .

In 1995 a song called Lord of the Flies by the English heavy metal band Iron Maiden was released on the album The X Factor . In 2008 another song called Lord of the Flies was released by the German power metal band Rage . In 2010 a song called Caesar was released by the British band I Blame Coco with the Swedish singer Robyn , in which the theme is based on the book Lord of the Flies. The title is also quoted in the lyrics ("It's the Lord of the Flies all Over Again").

In an episode of the US sitcom Two and a Half Men , Jake has to prepare a book presentation about Lord of the Flies . In another episode, Charlie compares a rebellious school class that he is supposed to teach, frustrated with the children from Lord of the Flies .

A real situation with stranded youths arose in 1965. A group of six boys stranded on the small uninhabited island of 'Ata , which belongs to the Tonga archipelago in the Pacific. They wanted to escape the boredom of their boarding school by boat from the capital of Tonga, later got caught in a storm and ended up on the remote island. After more than 15 months, they were found and rescued by an Australian fisherman who happened to be passing by. The youngsters behaved differently during their time on 'Ata than in the novel. So they settled disputes largely constructively and, even figuratively, did not let their fire go out on the island.

Awards

In 1983 William Golding was honored with the Nobel Prize in Literature for his novels .

Expenses (selection)

  • William Golding: Lord of the Flies (= Fischer pocket books. 1462). 50th edition, Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag , Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 978-3-596-21462-4 .
  • William Golding; Peter Torberg: Lord of the Flies. Newly translated by Peter Torberg. (= Fischer Classic. 95028). 1st edition, S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2016, ISBN 978-3-596-95028-7 .
  • William Golding: Lord of the Flies . Petersen Buchimport, Hamburg 2002, ISBN 3-88389-165-7 .

Audio books

radio play

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Patricia Patkovszky: Children as agents of evil . William Golding's novel "Lord of the Flies". 1st edition. GRIN Verlag, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-640-25634-1 , p. 4 .
  2. ↑ William Golding: Lord of the Flies. Transcribed from English by Hermann Stiehl, Unabridged Edition, Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1983, ISBN 3-596-21462-9 , p. 51.
  3. ↑ a b Thomas Assheuer : Lord of the Flies . William Golding escapes the memory of the war (=  Zeit Online ). The time, 2012 ( html ).
  4. ^ A b Marie-Luise Humberg: The social behavior in the novels of William Goldings. Lord of the flies, the inheritors, the spire, To the ends of the earth: a sea trilogy (= Europäische Hochschulschriften. ISSN  0721-3387 Series XIV: Anglo-Saxon Language and Literature. Volume 460). Lang, Frankfurt am Main a. a. 2010, ISBN 978-3-631-60897-5 , p. 35 ( on Google books ).
  5. ↑ Banned and / or Challenged Books from the Radcliffe Publishing Course Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century at American Library Association ( Memento from January 19, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ↑ Original DVD title: Lord of the Flies. (German: Lord of the Flies. ) MGM Home Entertainment, 2003, EAN: 4045167022102.
  7. ↑ Lord of the Flies . At: simpsonspedia.net last accessed October 5, 2013.
  8. ^ David Bernstein: Cast Away . In: Chicago Magazine. August 2007; online at: chicagomag.com last accessed on October 5, 2013.
  9. ↑ Fred Hawson: Review: 'Maze Runner' an updated 'Lord of the Flies' . In: ABS CBN News of September 23, 2014, accessed May 16, 2016.
  10. ^ Richard Corliss: Review: The Hunger Games Meets Lord of the Flies in The Maze Runner . In: TIME. dated September 17, 2014, accessed May 16, 2016.
  11. ↑ cf. Article: The real Lord of the Flies in The Guardian, May 9, 2020. Author: Rutger Bregman . Retrieved May 10, 2020.