William Golding’s debut novel follows a group of British schoolboys whose plane crashes on the shore of an uninhabited island. As well intentioned their attempt to cope with the situation and govern themselves may have been they instead regress to primal instincts and the mentality of humanity’s earliest hunter societies.
Published in 1954, Lord of the Flies wasn’t a huge success in the United States, selling only 3,000 copies before going out of print. By the early 1960’s, though, it was a best seller and required reading in grade schools and universities across the country. It was also adapted for the screen in 1963 and 1990. In 2005, it was chosen by Time magazine as one of the 100 best novels of the century.
The story makes vague hints about taking place during a nuclear war, which was a common fear during the political Red Scare of the 1950’s. Due to its rather stark and dystopian exploration of human nature it has also been quite controversial, especially in regards to its commentary on putting the self before the common good- which is the book’s central theme. The conflict between civilization- living by rules, peacefully and in harmony- and the human impulse to control others shapes most of the interactions and dialog; related themes include the conflict between rational and emotional reactions, and morality and immorality. Thus, it finds itself at #8 on the American Library Association’s list of frequently banned classics.
Examples include being challenged in the Dallas, Texas, Independent School District’s high school libraries in 1974 and the Sully Buttes, South Dakota high school in 1981.
Also in 1981, it was challenged at the Owen, North Carolina high school because the book was “demoralizing, in that it implies that man is little more than an animal.”
It was considered “inappropriate reading” in a Marana, Arizona, high school in 1983 and a year later challenged in the Olney, Texas, Independent School District for “excessive violence and bad language”.
A special committee of the Toronto Board of Education ruled on June 23, 1988, that the novel is “racist” and recommended that it be removed from all schools after members of the black community argued about a reference to “niggers” in the book and complained that it vilified blacks.
The Waterloo, Iowa, and Duval County, Florida, schools dealt with a challenge in 1992 because of profanity, “lurid passages about sex”, and “statements defamatory to minorities, God, women, and the disabled.”
The complaints argued that Lord of the Flies contained subversive indictments against the Christian Church. As proof of their claims, protesters sited that the book attempts to show that religion was not a factor in the creation or maintenance of civilization because the religious boys in the group were the ones who led the children down a path of superstition and violence using a sense of “rightness” as their justification for their actions.
Moving on to the 21st century, it was challenged, but retained, in the ninth-grade accelerated English reading list in Bloomfield, New York, in 2000.
The innocence of putting the boys on a plane and sending them off to a place safe from the ongoing war is taken through an ironic twist when an unfortunate incident sends the plane down on the island. There, cut off from the guidance of adults, they still follow a warrior mentality and show just how far we as a species have to go to be truly “civilized”. Therein lays the masterpiece of Golding’s work.
We may live in a world with modern conveniences and luxury, and consider ourselves the pillars of culture and sophistication, but when the lights go out and we are cut off from those tools of the modern world we show just how basic our instincts really are. The hardest lesson in wisdom is not in examining the outside, physical world and the actions of others, but by taking a long cold look into our own psyche.
Parents can claim that banning this book will shield and protect their children from these subjects and that the world is a place of perfection and harmony. The religious can claim all the righteousness they want. However, the true nature of these subjects isn’t in that they exist, but the fact that we simply don’t want to acknowledge or own up to the fact that they exist within ourselves.
For more information on the Banned Books Awareness and Reading for Knowledge project and the complete list of titles covered, please visit the official website at http://bbark.deepforestproductions.com/
Sources: Wikipedia, American Library Association
© 2013 R. Wolf Baldassarro/Deep Forest Productions
LoTF should definitely stay in schools.. why not? in high school, every single person has been exposed and understand much more harsh and crude stuff. There is not a single person in High School that can’t handle something like LoTF, so yeah of course it should stay.
The book teaches a good lesson. Written years before today’s popular social media sites existed, the book shows the mentality of teens unsupervised. You may think that is a fair reach, but think about the group mentality and savagery that goes into today’s cyber bullying. Teens turn on anyone going against what they consider the social norm and viciously attack them online, sometimes to the extent of suicide. The internet provides some anonymity, and with that, this situation in the book can be likened to it. I agree that it should remain in schools.