Review: Lord of the Flies by William Golding (Spoiler-Free)

Simon became inarticulate in his effort to express mankind's essential illness.

Well, this seems particularly resonant at this current moment in history 😀 and I don't think that's a good thing.

I'm not even going to try to write a polished essay here while I know that there are hundreds out there about this classic, ones written by scholars much more equipped to articulate "mankind's essential illness" than I am. But, having now read this in my adulthood instead of being introduced to it in a classroom setting, I do have a lot of thoughts to share. Maybe one day upon a revisit I'll make them sound a bit more pretty.

I've seen the self-taught curriculum trend making its way across the internet, and after reading I Who Have Never Known Men and realizing Lord of the Flies was the next book in the pile on my nightstand, I figured that pairing might make a perfect syllabus. Both are isolated survival stories, one about a group of grown women, one about a group of young boys. I was curious to see the contrast between the outcomes—when isolated from society, to what do these groups cling?

The women in Jacqueline Harpman's novel cling to community. To relationships, support, and a sense of purpose. They cling to the pursuit of information and the value of company.

The boys in William Golding's tale cling to dominance. To avoiding fear by instilling it. They cling to violence and adrenaline and chaos. They're surprisingly hedonistic.

And I'm aware that we can't extrapolate two specific, fictional stories to the generalized behavior of an entire gender. But that doesn't mean there isn't value in comparing how these stories are told.

Ever since I read bell hooks' The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love, I have had the same quote ringing in my head. It actually comes from one of the book's citations. In the words of Terrance Real, "'I have come to believe that violence is boyhood socialization. The way we 'turn boys into men' is through injury... Disconnection is masculinity.'"

Everywhere, I see that quote incarnate. In the stark difference between the elementary school boys I taught and the high school boys taught by my friends. A hug, a touch, an expression of any singular emotion goes from innocent to morphed as "wrong." Something to be ridiculed. Can't be too enthusiastic, can't be too angry, can't be too anything other than disconnected. Chill. They don't allow each other to care about anything.

The only way any feelings can be expressed is through feigned irony. Fighting is also permitted. Violence is their only outlet of expression. And frankly, that's depressing.

No piece of media has portrayed this phenomenon as perfectly as Lukas Dhont's film, Close. If you're prepared to have your soul carved out of your body, I can't recommend that film more highly.

Earlier today, I listened to a portion of The Art of Charm podcast episode entitled "How to Use Emotions as Data." I lasted maybe five minutes before I found myself laughing. The guest, and author of a book on emotional regulation, was describing that concept to the hosts. Everyone involved was acting like this information was completely revolutionary:

"Think about it. When you're really pissed and you're saying something that's really hurtful to someone else or you're being self-denigrating, you don't usually call it and say, gosh, I'm being a jerk right now because I'm feeling this way."

"What emotional intelligence tells us we need to do is, we need to pause, we gotta recognize that emotion, and then we gotta figure out: Is that emotion helpful or unhelpful for the goal that I have at hand? And if it's unhelpful, what's my strategy for shifting it?"

Like. I'm so sorry. I'll admit this might be personal bias and complete anecdotal evidence, but this is my blog review not an academic paper, so I can do what I want. I personally feel like the majority of adult women realized this information around the ripe age of 18. Once all those puberty hormones settled, we were expected to be adults and self-regulate.

However, we can't blame men for their ignorance. There is another root cause here. "Mankind's essential illness" is not men or masculinity. As bell hooks so brilliantly conveys in the aforementioned book, patriarchal masculinity is the enemy, not maleness. The system is what we need to fight, not the descendants of those who created it. (For this idea fully expanded, see my review for that book here.)

So, I admit, it's not funny that grown men on a podcast had to be taught emotional intelligence. It's actually quite sad and speaks to the failures of the current societal framework we live in. How can we expect boys to learn emotional regulation when recognizing they feel emotion at all is prohibited?

All that being said, I actually don't think Lord of the Flies is an inherently gendered story. I think you can choose to read it that way (as I have here), but I think what it has to say speaks largely to the trends of all of humanity. There are threads of imperialism, anonymity as emboldenment (which has only become more relevant with the introduction of the internet), and the evergreen power of fear, especially of "the other."

Written in 1954, Lord of the Flies tells an eternal tale. One I am sorry to say may never stop resonating.