Modern Classics Summarized: Lord Of The Flies 

I love the fact that Golding's reason for writing the book is basically "I'm a school teacher and British school kids can't keep calm under any circumstances, let alone fending for themselves on an island with no adult supervision"

I love the fact that this entire book was literally the author complaing about the little assholes he was teaching and wrote and entire book about how if they were forced into a survival situation they'd all die because they suck.

We had to write an extended ending for English class. Keeping with the tradition of this book that everything is dust. I wrote Ralph became a depressed and disillusioned alcoholic at a VERY young age (I implied it started right after coming back to civilization) while the others adapted really well and never mentioned it. Jack lied and implied he was the real hero which he used as an adult to give him a rise in politics....my teacher wrote in the notes "Just as depressing...good job!"

I always wondered how Ralph and Jack readjust... just see each other in the halls like... “Oh... it’s.. uh... you...” “Yeah.... uh...” “How uh... how ya been?” “Fine.... fine...” “Okay... I uh... gotta go to class” “We murdered two innocent children” “Right then... cya... around..”

If you are ever stuck on a deserted island, build a giant triangle out of stones, with a fire at each point. This creates an unmistakable distress signal.

Golding was actually a teacher at an all boys school and knew how typical boys behaved. So after reading the popular adventure books of young boys living off the land on a dessert island, he thought: "Are you serious? That would never happen. I'll show you the real outcome of pre pubescent boys being forced to share living space and having real responsibilities for 2 years." And thus Lord of the Flies was born.

Oh you forgot the best part, the Naval Officer finds the boys and berates them, asking how they could act so savagely toward each other and kill one another rather than act civilized, then looks back at his waiting battleship offshore and realizes the war their fighting is a direct mirroring of the violence that the boys commited only on a more grand and organized scale thus showing what happens when those same boys become men in "civilized" society with the same impulsiveness and fears displayed on the island. A pretty epic moment of self awareness and allegory 👍

"Imma call it Shelly" "Seems fair" "So Ralph blows Shelly..." "nO"

"See, Jack is one of those people who'd rather establish his own badassery than actually get them all rescued." You mean like darn near everyone in _The Walking Dead?_

The real horror is at the end of the book, once you realise that all the 'civilisation' talk is made by a grown up, who is in the middle of fighting a war. It's subtle to pick up, but that is the message. Nothing changes. The grownups are even more savage than the boys on the island.

The real lord of the flies was the friends they made along the way

"And Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy." One of the most beautiful, thoroughly depressing, emotionally raw endings to any book I've ever read.

I always thought the dead pilot drifting down was meant to symbolize that deep down the adults are no better than they are. They are sitting here waiting for the good rational adults that are peaceful and orderly to come rescue them, but they don't realize the true adulthood that lies behind that image and don't realize that the adults are slaughtering each other in a world just as barbaric as the one they are making for themselves on that island. They want a signal from the adults and dead pilot showing that the adults are too busy killing each other in their own hell to notice them, is that signal.

"This book needs more dead kids" is my new main book critique.

One of the most depressing realizations I've come to after I finished reading the book was that we never really got to learn Piggy's real name. He was picked on and bullied so much as well that the fact that we don't even know his name throughout the whole story, and even after his untimely demise made me grief so much harder for him. He truly didn't deserve the end that he met.

what the teacher says: "the author is trying to represent the battle of nurture vs. nature, of civilization vs. our innate instinc-" William Golding, who I just raised from the dead: "children are little shits so I wrote a book about it"

What i learned from this book: Don't get too attached to your favorite people. They all die.

Imagine Ralph, poor, traumatized Ralph, on that boat ride though. That child was basically glued to an adult the entire time and you can’t convince me otherwise. They killed Simon and Piggy, it’s implied that the tortured the twins, and they just led a manhunt to try and kill Ralph. I doubt he can be in the same room as Jack without panicking.

For sheer visceral horror, the moment when one of Jack's boys deliberately crushes Piggy's glasses, and he realises he's now blind on an island, really stuck with me. ... Perhaps I shouldn't have read this book when I was myself 11 years old.

I wrote my senior research paper on this book, and "Jack, who represents... just kinda being the worst." was basically my thesis.

Ralf: "Follow me and we'll be able to get off the island quickly!" Jack: "No, follow me! I can hit a C note!"

We read this first semester freshman year, and as part of it one of the English teachers will blow a conch shell so we could hear it. Fast forward to a couple weeks ago (I'm a sophomore now). We hear a weird bellowing noise. Hardly anyone questions it for more than a couple seconds - "Oh, the freshmen must be reading Lord of the Flies" - and we start reminiscing on the good ol' days of early freshman year.

It gives me indescribable joy to learn that Lord of the Flies was an edgy hatefic for a genre that doesn't exist anymore.

Just remembering one detail from when I read it for class, the little kid that first started the rumor about the lord of the flies, and then "vanished" didn't just disappear. He was killed in a forest fire all of the other boys started in like, the first or second chapter

Golding was my grandfather's English teacher at the time, and the kids were based on *HIS* English class. He's never told us which one he was part of, but my grandad was in LotF!

*New Title:* _Jack and Roger's Excellent Adventure_

Every girl in my class: awww Simon is so sweet!! He’s my favourite!! Me, who has read the book before: honey, you got a big storm comin’

"this book is meant to shred your faith in humanity" That's long gone, so I'm good.

**brutally kills a kid** **steals a kid's glasses then kills him later** **plans a freaking man hunt for another kid** **sets an entire freaking island on fire cause... reasons** **seriously they should've just left the boy choir** half my class cause they can't think properly for the life of them: "tHe bOYs ArE sO pURe aND SwEeT!!"

I remember hearing that the writer got pissed off because the books portrayed upper class British boys wrong and he knew that on their own they would turn into vicious assholes because of their own socialisation in society

This reminds me of when I was still in middle school. When we got to this book a teacher thought it would be a good idea to make us go through a thought experiment of what would happen if a random sample groups of the class were put into a similar situation (think “Lord of the flies” D&D edition). As it turns out, I’m a monster who will make sure everyone survives... until they try to kill another person, that’s when they are buried up to their head and get a nice sea spray facial with the tide rolling in.

The thing is there have been several actual incidences of groups of children becoming stranded since this book came out. Same age groups even, they worked together to survive, comfort each other and get rescued. I think he projected adult behaviors on the kids characters he wrote about.

“Write your own paper!” I AM T R Y I N G

Ralph blows Shelly.

The irony at the end.... an adult talking some sense to the kids: why y'all fighting like savages. While going back to his battleship.

I love this book. It's horribly depressing but the feeling one gets after reading quickly through the last chapter of the chase and then the end... incredible. My favourite part is where the naval officer asks if anyone's dead, half jokingly, and Ralph responds with something like 'just two'.

You forgot one interesting parallel at the end, though - the adult berating them was, as you mentioned, a naval officer, and the final line in the book was him looking at the (war) cruiser in the distance as he allowed the boys to regain their composure. The adults are no better than the children in regards to violence.

I actually liked Lord of the Flies, but my view of humanity is a little ... bitchy.

So you read all the magical British schoolchild books, eh? But did you read, *The Magic Treehouse Series?*

If you want your faith restored, the story was inspired by a real-life situation in which a troop of Boy Scouts was marooned on an island for some time before being rescued. Contrary to Golding's dismal view of how children would react to a lack of external order, they kept themselves fine, tended to the sick and wounded, and were generally a great bunch of kids who came through the worst survival training ever with flying colors

Im glad I watched this before I read it. For some reason I thought the kids would go on an adventure and the Lord of the flies would be the main antagonist. But apparently he's just a dead pig.

"I must say that anyone who moved through those years without understanding that man produces evil as a bee produces honey, must have been blind or wrong in the head." -William Golding

YOU MISSED THE IMPORTANT PART OF THE ENDING. The naval officer looks back at his own ship and pauses briefly.

Fun fact: something similar to this actually happened. Some boys got stranded on an island for a year and a half. But, unlike these jerks, they actually worked together, looked after each other when one of them got injured, and were all rescued. Someone once pointed out that Lord of the Flies is really only an accurate prediction for entitled white boys of upper class. But if you get poorer people (who have been scientifically proven to be more empathetic) and/or people from oppressed minority groups in this situation, the chances of murder go way down.

"So Ralph blows Shelly" I LITERALLY LAUGHED SO HARD MY MOM HEARD ME FROM DOWNSTAIRS IM SO MATURE

My head canon is that after getting on the boat they don't have to deal with pesky readjustment because as they are in a war the ship is attacked and they all die

You forgot to mention that Simon already knew that the beast was inside them. But couldn't explain it. And when he tried Jack just said poop and the kids laughed at him

Fun fact: You can't start a fire with a near-sighted person's glasses. (Piggy is specifically stated to be near-sighted in the book.) The curvature of the lenses diffuses the light instead of concentrating it. Your best bet would be with glasses made for a far-sighted person.

Man I am glad I found this channel. You guys are the best :)

Okay, I fully expected this to be about Beelzebub the actual Lord of the Flies, but hormonal teenagers with murdering tendencies is pretty much right up my alley.... so carry on

We studied this book in high school, and honestly I thought it was great. I loved all of the motifs, the symbolism, etc. There is so much more that can be said about this book and what it means.

I love how you casually skipped over the first time jack sets the island on fire, or the horrific detail with which the book describes Piggy’s BRAINS splatting out of his head when the rock drops on him. But yeah, RIP Shelly, I guess.

"Are there any dead?" "Just two, Sir."

"I'm an adult" - Red

Jack's Mom- So, how was the island, I guess? What'd you do? Jack- *nothing*

"I HATE THIS BOOK" Can't say that I blame you Red. Can't say that I do.

I owe my mental health to red, i realised after three chapters that i can't finish this work of pure evil but this video got me through the basic knowledge test.

Jack is a really interesting character. When my English teacher said that other character “shifts” to savagery except for Jack and Roger who are savages in the first place I say nah, Jack gone through a process too, remember he can’t kill the piglet at first? Remember one if the first line he said? “We’re British, not savages.” Well Jack, you don’t say. ◉‿◉ It’s like he just flipped a light switch and poof he a freakin savage. It’s like he just do whatever he believes will give him the most prestige regardless of morals or values. I got a feeling that he will be one of the first to adapt back to civilization once they got back (granted he won’t be sent to reformation camps or something like that for what he did).

"Ralph blows Shelly" NOw the image of one of my classmates BLOWING another one of my classmates is forever branded in my head. Thanks for nothing Red

5:39 \*A kid is crushed to death by a boulder* Red: "Shelly!! Nooo!! " While not caring about the kid at all

You know, you'd probably make for a much better literature teacher than most, especially when it comes to engaging your audience. I've read all the books you've summarized and overly-sarcasticized XD and I have been a literature professor myself, and wish I had half your ability to talk about these classical works. Great video, as usual.

does it count as murder if there are no adults to yell at you? that honestly killed me

I remember reading this book in school -- and I remember enjoying it simply because I considered it a great thriller/horror story. Jack is downright creepy, man. As is good old Roger -- and the really sad part is, because of the time period of the book, it's unlikely any of them got the help they needed upon rescue. Feel-good novel indeed!

When I was in grade school, every adult I knew used this book as a "this WILL happen if boys get stranded on an island." A few years later, the news reported about the real British boys who really were stranded on an island and worked together for months. Nobody died or staged a violent mutiny or anything.

You know, if you were teaching this book, I might have actually enjoyed it. High school English destroyed the lord of the flies for me. In hindsight, it really was an amazing(and not amazing cuz murder) book.

Maybe you could do a Brothers Grimm fairytale saga? Not sure if that will restore faith in humanity per say but it will be entertaining

Fun history note: There actually WAS a group of kids who got stranded on a deserted island! Except they didn't turn into little murdering jerks. They banded together and got everyone safely rescued/returned home. Reference date: 18 June 1965. Some Tongan boys wanted to get away from their uh....Catholic school (who can blame them honestly?) and run off. They get stranded on a remote island for 15 months. One of the lads, specifically the one named Mano, told all about it in an interview years later.

"Why don't you want kids?" See above.

2:01 "I'm an adult" Yup, even in the twenty first century on one of quite possibly one of the darkest books I've read, sex jokes are still aparent... yup

In my current (Sophmore) english class we are reading lord of the flies for one unit. And everyone in my class just LOVES Jack, going on about how he's the best character and how great he is! The things they will learn in time...

When my class was reading this in school we were split up into groups and preformed the scene where Simon talks to the pigs head in sort of a competition. My group won because of my reading the part of the lord of the flies, I had chosen to do a suave, smooth voice with a hint of a threat and had the entire class riveted with my performance

the fact that they were found by a naval officer is actually a super important detail. he berates them for being savage and violent when he was literally on his way to kill people.

Oh man, I *hated* this book as a kid. Calling it a horrible downer would be an understatement. Any character that was even somewhat likable was ignored, tortured and/or killed and... ugh, man... there was hardly anything to look forward to. I was just glad Ralph made it out alive. I wished everyone else died or something through.

"He had first discovered the idea of having a happy story in kid books, and was having none of it." *Extreme zoom-in* I can't help but find that humorous. :)

"Ralph blows Shelly" we stan a boy comfortable with a trans girl

Here's a quick restoration of some faith in humanity. This premise actually did happen off the coast of Tonga. In 1965 6 boys set out on a boat they knicked and proceeded to strand themselves on an island, 'Ata. And the exact opposite thing from that dumb book happened (btw I have never liked that book since I first read it in HS) The boys looked after each, even when 1 broke his leg the others made sure he rested and recouped. They were stranded for 15 MONTHS! before they were finally able to flag down a passing ship.

i liked it a little bit and I'd like to see Animal Farm

My reaction to Lord of the Flies was "How on Earth does this author make murder sound so boring?". I would have lost my faith in humanity, if I hadn't already lost any emotional investment I had in the story within the span of the first two pages.

I remember my local youth theatre group put on a play of Lord of the Flies, which I was incredibly surprised by considering how dark the story was, and the fact we were only a few years younger than the characters- turns out it remained pretty faithful to the source material (though we did add a few female characters so everyone could have a role and double-casted all the important ones from the book), but what I find interesting is that we changed the ending a little. We kept the murder stuff, using red glitter for blood, but when the naval officer appears, we had him say something like ‘I see you were all playing a game! Not a very safe situation to play in, I see, but I hope you all played nicely…’ and then ended it with the characters looking at each other awkwardly, the final line being spoken by Ralph: ‘Yes… nicely…’ and the characters following the naval officer off… though a little more optimistic, as it insinuates that the kids can and want to change and be better people, I feel like it lessened the blow of the original source material. Then again, it had to be an appropriate ending for a show performed by ten-year-olds!

“Go write your own paper” I feel like I’m being called out and I’ve already passed all of the English classes I need for college

R.I.P Simon, the only reasonable character.

I heard "shred your faith in humanity" and immediately liked, shared, subscribed, and connected to the video on a level unfathomable to the human consciousness regarding interdimensional planes.

Ralfs bizzare adventure *Ceasar's death music plays as the bolder gets pushed onto piggy* Ralf: Piggggyyyyy

This is completely accurate for the mindset of young boys, when I was in school at around fifteen a bunch of us got sent on a wilderness survival thing and about two days in I went to go for a piss only to see a slug stuck to a tree with its guts hanging out below it, as I looked around I noticed, all of the trees, had slugs stuck to them with their guys hanging out, a little later I found out why as I saw one of the year 7’s of the group go up to a tree with a slug on it, and using one of the pairs of small harder shears we had to cut branches with, stick the blunt end of said shears into the slugs breathing hole and close the blade, which cut the slug open and its guys dropped out, needless to say then little bastards made bows shortly afterwards and started trying to shoot the rest of us with sharpened sticks and generally piss everyone else off to the point that the “goodietwoshoes” of the group who was my age, yeet one of these sharped sticks back at a kid after being shot and nearly skewerd this kids eye. In short, barbarianism is only one unsupervised group of kids away from becoming reality

Why is it that so many school studied books have such a cynical view of human nature?

I've heard someone say that the point of the book was a critique on the notion that the English are the most civilised genteel people EVER and clearly superior to everyone else, a popular notion at the time. Less a reflection on humanity as a whole.

Thank you for helping me get an A on a test for a book I haven’t read

"A ship was passing." 3:20 I love those kind of ships.

Mwahahahahahaha! Now I have ALL THE SPOILERS FOR MY HONORS ENGLISH CLASS! MWAHAHAHAHAH!

That book fucked up my weekend. Thank God there's channels like this which make absolutely hilarious jokes to make me forget the horrible feelings of death and the questions of morality.

Yeah, I think I for once prefer the french counterpart of this story, Two Years Vacation by Jules Verne. Same premise, same ending, but the pack of rowdy kids actually get their act together, learn to survive and cooperate, create their own little community and keep up with their studies with varied degrees of success depending on their age: the younger children are able to be taught by their older mates while they have to make do with whatever study materials they had with them on the boat that didn't get soaked

"The littlins being the youngins and the biggins being the source of every problem" Just like in real life.

Funny story: When I had to read this book in highschool, I somehow unknowingly skipped over the scene where Simon gets killed, so the first time I found out that he was dead was when I read this one shot passage at the end of a chapter describing his corpse floating out to sea. Needless to say I was... confused, to say the least.

Ooo, I love this book. It's symbolically rich enough that an entire island of young boys could survive on its provocative thoughts alone. Or make them question the very foundations of rationality and what it means to be human. Either way. Somewhat on that same note, Samneric represent Rationality coupled with the desire to Survive. Call them primitive survival instincts vs conscious thought, if you will. They are the first older boys to "believe" in the beast, symbolizing the dawning realization of the boys' society that they will have to defend themselves from any inherent threats that may occur on the island since they haven't yet and likely WON'T receive any adult help on the island. It's the catalyst that begins the inherent fear that permeates the latter half of the book, and the escalation of relying on brute force to survive an unfamiliar situation vs calmly thinking it through. Samneric are also the last two to "yield" to Jack's hunters, after being kidnapped and tortured. Jack's primal representation of dominance-through-violence takes hold of the last bastions of Rationality and ultimately force them to choose: succumb to the fear-induced craze of survival instincts to live to the next day and abandon the only remaining shreds of civility that could hold back that inherent barbaric nature, or... well, die? Samneric's last talk with Ralph is Rationality effectively stating inwardly that Civility will be abandoned because it's no longer needed in the current situation, and would only serve to hold survivability itself back.

I read this book for the first time when I was 15. I saw myself in the book, sometimes in the form of Simon, sometimes as Piggy. I grew up with boys who would be Jack, Roger, the twins, etc. (I wasn't sure who I knew who would be Ralph; no one I grew up with struck me as someone I wanted as a Ralph, even if they might have been one) I knew that if all of us were in that same situation, the same general things would happen. Potentially up to and including the murder, on a large enough time scale. I'm not even sure how hyperbolic this book is - everything seems to happen so fast, but even that isn't particularly out of the question. We're not talking about adults here, who can be expected to have some degree of foresight. We're talking about boys - preteens - who would be terrified to do most of the things in the book... until someone else does it. Then when there's no one to tell them no, nearly everyone will do it. Why? Because most boys (and most children in general) derive their world-view and Morals from what Adults tell them. If an adult tells them it's Bad, then it's Bad. If an Adult tells them it's Good, it's Good. 10 year olds aren't old enough (generally) to figure most things out for themselves, so when no Adult is telling them something is Bad, they aren't able to decide for themselves why something is Bad. At best, you get boys going "N is like X, and X is something bad, so is N bad too?" and deciding not to do N because it might be bad. All it takes is one boy to overcome his fear at doing N and then doing N for others to join in. The more who join in, the more likely the hold outs will, until you can reasonably expect the majority to do N. This might take months. This might take minutes. There's no way to predict how long it will take for someone to do N, to NOT get in trouble for it (as there are no adults to punish the boys) and for others to join in. So even the timeline on the island is reasonable. All in all, it's a very reasonable - if bleak - look at how pre-teen boys would act in this kind of extreme situation.

Not gonna lie... I LOVED this book. It's grim, it's depressing, it's chaotic... but after a few months of literary analysis I really came to see the book very profoundly and it was much more engaging then. So basically, if you want to like this book, write a few five-page-essays on it!

Favorite part of the story is when a little boy named Percival, who knew his name and address at the beginning, can't remember them at the end.

When I read this in highschool, I and a lot of the other kids thought the ending was really weak. But we also had never been told about why exactly Golding had written the book in the first place, just had a lesson on the Themes(tm), so instead of the captain rolling up like, "you kids having fun?" being a response to those books, it just felt like the tension of the scene got kneecapped. After I learned why it was written, I actually changed my mind and really enjoyed the ending.

My English teacher, before we started the book, made us get into groups of four and five. We were going to set up how we would live on a deserted island. We had to make rules and punishments and stuff. It was mainly girls in the class and I wanted to see how it would change from the book. One group basically said they would have a feelings circle every night and would have group voting, banish you if they felt it was right, but would try to talk things out first. Group two, said they had set boundaries of no stealing, and if you did you were punished. Not bad at all. Group three, no joke, said that it was survival of the strongest. Murder isn't allowed but if you see someone dying you don't help them or we throw you to the sharks. Group four was all boys, they said no rules, but if you break any rules we kill you. I don't really understand what they were doing. There were only two kids left, me and my partner. We only had two people, which means our rules were do your work, if you get sick I understand, we were socialists basically. Honestly, I am scared to think that me and the other kid might have survived the longest.

Back when I was a young man (before the internet as we know it existed, but after my ETS from the Army) I took a communications class. One of the activities the instructor had us do was the 'trapped on the dark side of the moon with the following 15 items, make a list of most important to least important' gag. I chose the pistol at the number one thing, followed by air, water, food, and so on. When the rest of the class were arguing over less important stuff they all chose to deride my choice of the pistol as number one. I simply said that if they didn't like my choices I would just start shooting people until they agreed. The room became very quiet. I don't think a single member of that class doubted my statement. The instructor gave me an A for the activity because I was able to concisely communicate my intentions and reasoning.