Am I the only person who thinks that Lord of the Flies is very badly written?

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I think it's beautifully written, plus it's a great story. I give it a 10/10. I've never really understood why it's considered children's literature. Because it's about children? It's dark, violent, and all aroun depressing--a great portrayal of human nature. Don't really get all the hate (except for JBI--if it isn't esoteric ancient Chinese poetry, he will likely hate it). I love this passage, one of the most famous in the book:

Simon looked up, feeling the weight of his wet hair, and gazed up at the sky. Up there, for once, were clouds, great bulging towers that sprouted away over the island, grey and cream and copper-coloured. The clouds were sitting on the land; they squeezed, produced moment by moment, this close, tormenting heat. Even the butterflies deserted the open space where the obscene thing grinned and dripped. Simon lowered his head, carefully keeping his eyes shut, then sheltered them with his hand. There were no shadows under the trees but everywhere a pearly stillness, so that what was real seemed illusive and without definition. The pile of guts was a black blob of flies that buzzed like a saw. After a while these flies found Simon. Gorged, they alighted the runnels of sweat and drank. They tickled under his nostrils and played leap-frog on his thighs. They were black and iridescent green and without number; and in front of Simon, the Lord of the Flies hung on his stick and grinned. At last Simon gave up and looked back, saw the white teeth and dim eyes, the blood - and his gaze was held by that ancient, inescapable recognition.

[PeterL]

No, I also believe that it was "very badly written." I thought that when i had to read it in high school, and my opinion has not changed. I have been told that it was the theme that was important, but the theme is too oversimplified to be effective.

[Eiseabhal]

I like the irony at the end. We are an instinctively violent species even when in neat officer's uniform. I like the description of the silent aerial battle and the sign from the adult world - the dead pilot. It is a beautifully written book. The descriptions of the sea rising and falling are very good. They help to convey a feeling of isolation and menace. The environment has a cold hostility to match the sense of civilised codes breaking down despite the efforts to maintain them. Golding had been at sea and you can tell.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

No, I also believe that it was "very badly written." I thought that when i had to read it in high school, and my opinion has not changed. I have been told that it was the theme that was important, but the theme is too oversimplified to be effective.

Maybe you could actually explain why, Peter. Oh, wait, Peter had me on his ignore list. Could someone ask him to explain himself?

Someone earlier said its inaccessible (this member is long gone, it looks like). Others said its too complex or "backwards." What? It doesn't get much more straightforward. If someone gets confused by the prose in TLotF, you may have a reading comprehension problem.

[Jackson Richardson]

I heard about the book at school as a shocking suggestion that schoolboys at independent schools could be a bit nasty. Since I knew from personal experience there was no depth of cruelty that they were not capable of, I was not interested in reading what I knew all too well.

So I read it a few years back, just to lay the ghost of my schooldays. Personally I prefer an epigrammatic, balanced prose style, Gibbon, Waugh, Saki. I’m not a great love of lyrical writing for its own sake.

Golding isn’t epigrammatic and balanced. But it is a very distinctive prose style. I find it takes concentration. It works in its context. I can see what it’s doing. It adds to the effect of the whole imaginative world in a way a simplified paraphrase wouldn’t. I can’t see what is meant by it being “badly written”.

And no way is it a children’s book. It’s not Swallows and Amazons, for Pete’s sake.

[cacian]

I think it is very cleverly written and has an underneath layer of truth behind the story itself.
I think the story is choking but what underneath it even more. You need a second pair of eyes to read past the story and see through a different image through the language.
When I looked at it recently I discovered a different image to the book I was pleasantly unreassuringly surprised.
It made sense then. It ties in with a group of boys in the wild tearing each other apart.
The story is one thing what is underneath it is another.
That is how I feel about the book.

[Alexander III]

The prose is pretty dreadful. The rest is quite good and interesting.

[qimissung]

I haven't read it in years, so I can't comment on the quality of the writing. I did find it absorbing and horrifying when I read it as a young adult. I don't think it's classified as "children's literature," but it is often read in high school here in the United States, and possibly in middle school, also, I don't know. So maybe that's why people say it's children's literature.

[ennison]

Golding was a writer who tied style and meaning very closely together in all his books. LOF is very well crafted. Pincher Martin is one of the most extraordinary short texts I've ever read. Queasily fascinating and memorable . He was one of the most successful writers to write some of his novels as illustrations of ideas. Lots of writers who try that realise that they are producing dross and have to redraft and let the story "take over" or end up producing didactic trivia. Golding seemed able to meld the two together. I've heard Allan Massie decrying attempts to do that kind of thing (His own novels illustrate ideas very well) as putting the cart before the horse. I think most readers want a story, characters, entertainment. Writers of novels who fail at that don't get too many readers.

[Eiseabhal]

I would like those who think it is badly written to give an analysis of a piece. I suspect they can't. They just don't like it. That's ok. Taste isn't rational and none the worse for that. It is unfortunately used in schools and often read with children as young as fourteen or fifteen but it is not a suitable book for immature minds who not grasping its stylistic cleverness concentrate on its dark violence and take a dislike to it. After all teenagers don't like to be told, no matter in what way, that they are a bunch of savages. Only it is not just about boy savages. They are on the island because their countries are run by sophisticated adult savages.

[Ser Nevarc]

I remember enjoying the novel. I don't remember thinking it was poorly written.

Maybe because I read it when I was 16?