Lord of the Flies
I watched the 1990 film "Lord of the Flies" on the Chiller Channel tonight with my daughter Elizabeth, who is 14. I had never seen the film (and didn't know there was a Chiller Channel), but of course had read the William Golding novel of the same name back in 9th grade. As I recall--here comes a guilty admisson--I bought the Cliff Notes at Reader's World in downtown Holland, Michigan, to help me with my book report. Elizabeth was assigned the book as summer reading going into 9th grade at Harrisburg Academy. She has been plugging away at the book and didn't buy the Cliff Notes.
I hasten to add that I did read "Lord of the Flies" and it did stick with me. How could it not? Fourteen is the perfect age for a boy or girl to read Golding's 1954 masterwork, which helped him win the Nobel Prize in Literature. The idea of being stranded on an apparently deserted tropical island starts out very attractive. No more parental rules, no more teachers, just fun in the sun. Of course, the boys rapidly shed what turns out to be a thin veneer of civilization and revert to jungle savagery, complete with spears and loincloths and bloody violence.
The movie is a relatively faithful rendition of the book, although the English boys become Americans and the time is the Cold War rather than World War II. They don't find a dead flyer hanging by a parachute from a tree, but they do kill Piggy with a boulder to shut him up. That scene always gave me a chill, symbolic as it is of the triumph of a brutal mob over civilized life.
In 9th grade in 1968 we were confronted with the Vietnam War. Classmates' brother were dying in the Tet Offensive, and we wondered if the war would still be on when we were old enough to be drafted. Fourteen year-olds do wonder about that. What do they think about today when they read "Lord of the Flies?" The bloody hell of Iraq, where the civil war in what, long ago, was the cradle of civilization has become slaughter for slaughter's sake? Where 250 innocent people in a small village die at the hand of faceless bombers?
Yes, do read "Lord of the Flies" whether you are 14 or 41. And think of that thin veneer of civilization and the terrible power of the cruel and brutal mob to strip it away.