A recent visit to Sydney brought back literary memories as we walked down King Street and saw the fish 'n' chips shop "Lord of the Fries". Nice play on words, I thought, but does anyone still remember William Golding's book, published in 1954, or the 1963 movie of the same name?
(There was a second film adaptation in 1990 which, in my opinion, is not as good as the 1963 original. Alex Garland's book "The Beach", and the adventure drama film of the same name, starring teenage idol Leonardo DiCaprio, have much in common with the original "Lord of the Flies".)
Of course, the story of "Lord of the Flies" never happened. An English schoolmaster made it up in 1951. "Wouldn't it be a good idea", William Golding asked his wife one day, "to write a story about some boys on an island, showing how they would really behave?"
Golding's book "Lord of the Flies" would ultimately sell tens of millions of copies, be translated into more than thirty languages and be hailed as one of the classics of the twentieth century.
In hindsight, the secret to the book's success is clear. Golding had a masterful ability to portray the darkest depths of mankind. "Even if we start with a clean slate", he wrote in his first letter to his publisher, "our nature compels us to make a muck of it." Or as he later put it, "Man produces evil as a bee produces honey."
Unlike English-speaking children who read "Lord of the Flies" at school, my schooling - as limited as it was - in post-war Germany required no special reading about the evil that human nature was capable of, as the legacy of it could still be seen all around. It was only in the late sixties here in Australia, while still reduced to linguistic toddlerhood in my newly-adopted language English, that I first tried to read this book.
Perhaps "Lord of the Flies" is not the most apropriate reading in these troubled times as it may easily get you trapped into hopelessness. Because if you believe most people are rotten, you no longer need to get worked up about injustice. The world is going to hell either way.
If you are tempted by such cynical thoughts, please do NOT click on these links to read the book or watch the 1990 movie adaptation.
