Genre: Classic/ Fiction
Publication Date: 1954
Page Count: 201
Rating: 4/5
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A plane full of young boys crashes on an island while the rest of the world is fighting in WWII. They must learn to survive on their own and create their own civilization in order to survive and get rescued, but things quickly fall apart when fear of a beast spreads through the boys.
I read this book for the first time in my tenth grade English class; I had pretty meh feelings about it. But as I reread it seven years later, I found it brilliant. This book is so full of symbolism and depth that I just wasn't able to see as a high schooler. The connection between what is happening to the boys on the island and what is happening to the rest of the world is brilliant. The descent into savagery of the boys is terrifying and perfectly paced.
I read this book for my class about teaching literature in a high school classroom and I am really glad we looked at this book again. This is definitely a great book to study in high school, and if you did study it in high school, I highly recommend you revisit it now so you can see everything you missed. I was particularly interested this time in Simon and his truth-seeing abilities; that is a subject I would love to do some research on see what scholars are saying about it.
Because I read this book for school and have already done a fair amount of writing on it, I just wanted to get down some quick reread thoughts for this one and encourage you to pick it up again if you read it in high school and felt indifferent about it. It really is brilliantly constructed and full of literary merit and the horrors of humanity. Which let's be honest, is everything you could ever want in a book.
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