Lord of the Flies: Crash Course Literature 305 - YouTube (2)

All of that noted, as W.H. Auden once wrote, "Some books are undeservedly forgotten."

"None are undeservedly remembered."

And despite its flaws, Lord of the Flies is a compulsively readable, multi-layered novel that can be read in a variety of ways.

Like, on the surface, it's a dark adventure story that tells serious truths that books like Coral Island disguise.

You can also see it as a kind of unusually violent coming-of-age novel in which Ralph has to learn how to stand up and be a man, resisting peer pressure and pig-killing.

And it can be read as a political allegory about the way that democratic societies give way to totalitarian ones.

Or along religious lines, where the island is a stand-in for the Garden of Eden and the book is a working out of how everyone is tainted by original sin.

Or, without bringing religion into it, you can read it as a moral allegory about how goodness almost always fails to withstand evil.

And there is something deeply true in that because we all know that it is harder to be good than most novels would have us believe.

And lastly, I just wanna touch on the novel's strange and somewhat happy ending.

Like, out of nowhere, a ship arrives, which is a lot like this thing that happens in Greek tragedy called "deus ex machina",

where suddenly just when everything seems like it's a total and complete mess, a god suddenly descends and saves the day.

The naval officer who comes onshore probably looks like a god with his bright white uniform and his medals,

but he's carrying a revolver and there's a guy with a machine gun just behind him.

So we get the sense that this is just a grown up, socially approved version of the violence and bloodlust that the boys on the island have discovered.

And indeed Golding later wrote that the officer who saves Ralph from the manhunt, quote, "will presently be hunting his enemy in the same implacable way."

"And who will rescue the adult and his cruiser?"

But wars do end, even if the war never ended for Golding.

Thanks for watching. I'll see you next week.

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