Lord of The Flies by William Golding

 Lord of The Flies by William Golding

“If there are no rules, you have nothing”

Ralph and Jack have counterparts in our presidential elections

 

This might the fifth encounter with the lord of The Flies. I have read the magic book twice, in the unabridged format. Then I saw a documentary on the book and at least part of a film version, if not two. The last version is an adapted play for the National Radio, which is nothing to compare with the original but still helpful.

Some books lose everything when placed on stage, others cannot make it there and for most of all I can say that they help me in a few ways:

They remind me of the plot, characters and other aspects that have slipped away. Then, for the favorite books it would be ideal to read them again and again, but having only so much time and so many worthy books, one cannot read all of them at the same time.

At least not for the moment, but once the drugs from Limitless are invented, we would be able to use much more than the 10% of the brain available now and we would engage in Maugham and Proust at the same time, learn ancient Greek and read some classics in the original- all within hours, if we are to believe the premonitions made in some of the SF movies.

                “If there are no rules, you have nothing”

I have listened to William Golding talking about his masterpiece, Lord of The Flies. He was saying that the main message of the book refers to the necessity of rules and what happens when rules break down and with them the whole fabric of society. The fabulous author mentions other aspects, such as the absence of girls. If I remember well, he mentioned the fact that sex will have to come into the frame and he did not want that.

As I listened to the adapted play this morning, I was thinking that a great book is wonderful because it gives you so many ways to interpret messages, there are so many venues that you can explore.

With the latest reading I thought that we have added rules, but the moral, “civilized „man has been around for a much shorter time that the animal, the brute, the savage from which we have evolved.

Lord of the Flies makes this point very well. In the book, we are dealing with children, but they may also represent a kind of an early age of man, who has framed some rules, but is basically still an animal, when he arrives to an island, when he is not constrained somehow.

I live in a society which is still recovering from the breakdown of “modern, civilized” rules. Under the communist regime, the law was that of the jungle or the one described in Animal Farm:

-          “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

In a communist society, the main concern is to have food, because that is scarce and the pigs and dogs, placed at the top of the food chain, grab it almost all for themselves. Once we escaped formal communism, we have started to change the rules, but they are still ignored and you can see that just by looking at how people drive and how leaders steal. Not with the mattress full of dollars, but wiping out forests which they take from the people they are supposed to guide and protect.

This brings me to another parallel I saw between the Lord of the Flies and life around me. In the book there is a life and death dispute between two leaders: Ralph and Jack.

Ralph is the voice of reason, a boy with fears and shortcomings, but concerned and caring for others, worried about the fire which needs to stay burning in order to let passing ships know that they are on the island. He is wise, brave and compassionate.

Jack is the evil personage, causing havoc and mayhem, responsible for at least one death, violent and brutal. He leads a gang of boys who have turned into a cruel mob.

We have presidential elections in a couple of weeks and Ralph and Jack have equivalents in the race:

Jack is Ponta, the head of a gang of good fellas, wise guys bent on getting obscenely rich by stealing, willing to do anything to get the power and stay out of jail, by means of creating the above mentioned laws: all animals are equal, but they are more equal and therefore above getting in prison, no matter what they do.

Johannis is Ralph. He makes mistakes, but overall he represents a chance for a better future. Johannis is different, with his calm and dignified presence, he does not talk much but that is for the better. Like in Lord of The Flies: one leader is aggressive and leads a pack of killers and spoilers and the other represents reason, decency and hope.

Finally, a short description of the book out of the comedy series Two and a Half Men:

Survival with kids