Year: 2006

I read William Golding’s Lord of the Flies back in high school and couldn’t put it down. I read it pretty much straight through, which is exactly what happened the other day when I reread it front to back in one sitting. Amazing work.

Lord of the Flies is rich in the kind of symbolism and subtext that makes it more than just a tale about a group of boys just losing it on a deserted island. It explores the very nature of evil and positions it firmly within the human heart. The boys had everything and they threw it all away, partially out of fear of imaginary beasts and partially to satisfy their own hunger.

I find the book a little more chilling now than I did when I was a teenager. Then, it was a cracking good story that I couldn’t put down. Now it seems so much more believable and therefore more terrifying.

In terms of Lost, there are many connections, many similarities, but each with a twist. There is Jack who, like Ralph in Lord of the Flies is allowed to lead by popular consent. There is the hunter (John Locke) who goes after wild pigs and brings meat back to the survivors, but unlike the cruel Jack of Lord of the Flies, Locke is kind and (so far anyway) unwilling to challenge Jack’s authority. The lack of tension between these two types in Lost is probably due to the fact that we are dealing with adults as opposed to children who are unable to recognize that fact that they need one another.

Another similarity is the beast, but where in Lord of the Flies the beast is a figment of the boys’ imagination, in Lost, the beast is, apparently, quite real.

Thematically, Lost and Lord of the Flies (along with Heart of Darkness) address the issue of the fragility of civilization and the speed with which civilized people will revert into behavior they would have called barbaric from the comfort of their old living rooms. The Oceanic survivors of Lost have not reverted as far as Jack’s tribe in Lord of the Flies, but at times the fine line between civilized and savage seems very fine indeed.

The last issue in both works stems from the problem of evil. Is it external or contained within the hearts of all men? Lord of the Flies suggests we all carry the capacity for evil and that it is civilization that holds it in check, if only sometimes and barely at that. This is still an open question on Lost, though. I’ve wondered before if the survivors have brought evil to the island much as the boys in Lord of the Flies brought evil to what could have been paradise for them. Each survivor has had a checkered past and only “the good ones” have been taken by the others. Back to an original question of mine then. Who are the “good guys” on Lost?

I think Lord of the Flies is a natural inspiration for Lost, though of course, the two tales differ considerably in large part because in Lost we’re dealing with adults who are capable of thinking longterm and recognizing the fact that they need each other to survive and that they must make decisions that will keep them alive for the long term.

Or, perhaps, Lost just hasn’t gone on long enough. The tail section survivors did “go all Lord of the Flies” as Hurley put it. Maybe the rest of the survivors just have to get a little closer to the edge before they start painting themselves and having ritual dances. Probably not. They are adults after all.

For more of my Lost book posts, please visit The Lost Book Club.

Rereading Jospeh Conrad’s Heart of Darkness for the first time since I was a senior in high school was an interesting affair. When I read it back in the spring of ’89, I had almost no interest in it. There were other things to do. I had photos to develop, friends to hang out with, Calculus to do, and besides I’d already been accepted to college and was ready for my AP English test. Naturally, I gave the book a perfunctory read all the while wondering what the big deal was.

Our teacher showed Apocalypse Now, leaving me to wonder if we read the book mainly so he could show his favorite film. It was springtime. We were AP seniors. I’m convinced.

As I reread Heart of Darkness last week I kept going back to high school and wondering how and why I didn’t get into it back then. This time around I was in awe of Conrad’s rich prose, the vivid intensity with which he tells his tale of Europeans plunderers and their encounters with primitive Africans. This time around it was dark, mysterious, and a bit scary. It was a brilliant meditation on the ease and speed with which men will throw off the illusion of civilized behavior when given the chance to do so.

Last time, reading it was a hassle. More than anything else, Heart of Darkness made me think about the way young people relate to literature. Being an English teacher, this is something that’s of more than a little interest to me.

Sometimes we cynically joke and say that education is wasted on the young, but I think that that’s not true. I think they’re so loaded down with homework, projects and other classes that there just isn’t time to truly absorb the richness of books like Heart of Darkness. Most kids are going to give it a cursory read, memorize the major characters and plot points, keep the potential essay question in mind and never give it much thought. The list of great books that I read in that manner while in high school is quite extensive. Many of them I’ve reread and in most cases I like them more now.

There are certainly many books that some students really get into, really see all the way through, but I sometimes wonder if the ideal situation for high school teachers is to get most of their students to like a book enough to remember it and reread it later, when they have more time to really appreciate it, to let it in. Having a few extra years of life experience probably helps too.

In short, I loved Heart of Darkness this time around, but as always, what does it have to do with Lost?

It does not appear, but rather is referenced in “Numbers” in which Hurley goes on a quest into the dark heart of the island’s interior searching for Rousseau – his own Mr. Kurtz – who has been on the island for sixteen years and has left many of the trappings of civilization behind.

Other than that, the connection between Lost and Heart of Darkness if a relatively obvious one: in both cases we wonder just how powerful a force civilization really is and we see how quickly and effortlessly people will move away from it and revert to more savage behavior once the constraints of civilized society are gone.

For more of my Lost book posts, please see The Lost Book Club.