BOOK REVIEW | Lord of the Flies by William Goulding

What a pity that so many adults had a bad experience with this novel in  high school that they never want to pick it up again. 

At first glance, this novel seems innocent enough: a group of English school boys find themselves stranded on a remote island and must learn survival skills to stay alive.  However, the direction that the author took this seemingly harmless premise could make anyone fall into an existential crisis. 

Truly, the mastery that went into "Lord of the Flies" is astounding.  There is so much allegory just leaking off the pages that sometimes I think people can get too caught up in the intellectual aspect of the novel.  And there truly is a lot to be discussed.  The island follows the same fate as the Garden of Eden.  As the boys fall more and more into their darker selves, the island itself becomes a character taking on an evil turn.  

In fact, this book has been banned and challenged relentlessly due to the fact that, in the end, Goulding's message is that all of humanity is evil at its core. 

This novel focuses on the murder of reason, the death of goodness and the dark truth of what it means to be human.  So much is condensed into this roughly 200 paged book that it's hard not to find yourself in a deep conversation about the human condition.   However, even though it is a well of conversation starters, as an adult I found myself more and more affected by the boys' deaths and descent into madness.  When reading this as a high school student, I was encouraged to focus only on the academic aspect of the novel.  But when reading it as an adult, I couldn't help but focus on the emotional side of it, too.

There were times when I read this that my blood ran cold.  Other times I felt myself in such shock that my body went numb.  I didn't have any of these experiences when I was a teenager.   I didn't have a connection like this with the book before.

I can't recommend that adults re-read (or read for the first time!) this novel enough.  And I hope in doing so, they'll find more meaning and more emotion than they experienced before. 

What #HaleNo and #BloggerBlackout Really Mean

I feel the need to have a space where these two hashtags can be explained in as an accessible way as possible.  I'm not perfect and my explanation of them may not be everyone's explanation of them, but I ask you to please take a moment to read my subjective interpretation.  If you've anything to add, please do so in the comments and I will be happy to include them in this post.  I'd love for this to be a community explanation.

#HaleNo is a hashtag that represents blogger's taking a stance against the recent insanity to do with Kathleen Hale stalking a blogger to her home, and now also has to do with Richard Brittain, an author who stalked a reviewer and committed physical harm against her.  It is a peaceful protest against that sort of behavior in the community.  Also, this needs to be made clear: We also do not support the recent doxxing of Kathleen Hale and many bloggers reported that incident.  I just wanted that to be heard.

#Bloggerblackout is a movement that has been ignited due to the recent events.  In short, it's a movement where bloggers are choosing not to review until October 27th (although I have heard that some are prolonging their blackout) in order to get back in touch with their roots.  The truth is, blogging is for the bloggers and the reviews are for the readers.  I think it's great when bloggers and authors and publishers form beautiful relationships.  I really think that's a wonderful aspect of blogging, but I don't think it's ever been intended to be the main aspect.  Please respect that bloggers are trying to remember why they began blogging in the first place and to rekindle their love for it.

The reason why I didn't participate in the #Bloggerblackout is because I do not do ARC reviews in general.  At least, not yet.  I've been reviewing much older books.  However, I do 100% support the #Bloggerblackout for however long the bloggers want to maintain it.

I hope this explains a few things.