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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
Of course, he finally consummates his passion. In the book's most gruesome scene, Jack and his buddies set upon a mother sow and her piglets. As the hunters throw themselves at her, the sow "squealed and bucked and the air was full of sweat and noise and blood and terror. Roger ran round the heap, prodding with his spear whenever pigflesh appeared. Jack was on top of the sow, stabbing downward with his knife. Roger found a lodgement for his point and began to push till he was leaning with his whole weight. The spear moved forward inch by inch and the terrified squealing became a high-pitched scream. Then Jack found the throat and the hot blood spouted over his hands. The sow collapsed under them and they were heavy and fulfilled upon her."
Killing and raping the mother. Hmm. Wonder what that's all about ... Were we really assigned this in eighth grade?
There is more metaphor here than your average 8th grader can handle. Is the sow Mother England? Are the orphaned piglets mirrors of the boys we're reading about? Is sexual energy tied to murderous impulse? Even a 13-year-old should know this is Oedipal, but is fulfillment of the Oedipal desire key to the breakdown of society? How stupid are these kids that they off the reproducing female of the species?
The wretched little brutes place the sow's head on a stick, where it gathers flies, and where Simon -- a little Zen mystic who stays out of island politics -- observes it from a trance state. The sow's head becomes the Lord of the Flies, and tells a hallucinatory Simon that the beast on the island -- first identified by the birthmarked little boy -- actually resides inside the boys. "'Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill!' said the head."
Keen thinking, pig's-head-on-a-stick!
From there, it's all downhill. Jack and his mean-boy friends set up a chanting, pork-product-consuming camp where they reenact their slaughters, once accidentally killing Simon, thinking he's a pig. Whoops! They kill Piggy, too. When it happens, "His head opened and stuff came out and turned red. Piggy's arms and legs twitched a bit, like a pig's after it has been killed." Get it? Piggy? Pig? Get it?
Ralph looks to be doomed as well, until a soldier shows up on the island. Of course, the military official is just a grown-up embodiment of the societal violence Golding thinks is inherent in all men, pubescent or adult, but hey, I was happy to see him. And I was happy to see through his eyes that these menacing creatures I'd been reading about were just little boys.
I'm torn in my feelings about "LOTF." On the one hand, I find it a nasty, sophomoric book, not any different from what I thought it was -- a smug treatise on the evil of unchecked human nature.
On the other, perhaps my instinct to steer clear of it back then was not mere laziness or accident. It's easier to sum up and summarily dismiss Golding's philosophy in theory than it is to actually read a novel about it, to allow yourself to become attached to these characters, no matter how much you realize that each of them is a little turd. Even Piggy is sympathetic only because he is vulnerable, not because he provides a moral beacon or even diverting company. Ralph barely manages to evolve from a real jerk into someone capable of acknowledging that there might be some humanity in the fat kid. Here is Ralph, "adjusting his values:" "Piggy, for all his ludicrous body, had brains. Ralph was a specialist in thought now, and could recognize thought in another." Well congratu-fucking-lations, Ralph, you're a real mensch.
But perhaps that's just it. I hate these kids, in part because I recognize in them something familiar, something repugnant. As an adult, I actually believe better of human beings than Golding does. Sure, we've got bad apples, but I don't think it all comes down to porcine rape and murder.
But I doubt I had a fully formed or even an embryonic consciousness about that in the eighth grade, when human nature -- especially in group form -- is not at its cheeriest. Just as "Hamlet" is a young man's play, perfect for frightened youngsters paralyzed by decision and responsibility, so "LOTF" might speak most clearly and most terrifyingly to young teenagers whose bodies are roiling with hormones and unnameable night fears and impulses about how to exert power over themselves and others. It is when we are most like a murderous mob; in our almost-adult social and sexual lives, we are most likely to lose control.
So while I might have done myself a literary disservice in not entering Golding's dismal universe when it would have felt most relevant, I'm guessing that I did myself an emotional favor. I'm not one to look too long or hard at ugliness, especially, perhaps, when I'm aware of being implicated in it. Maybe that's what kept me from reading "LOTF" at 13. The miserable dance of despair over human nature might have hit too close to home. I'm pretty glad I didn't join the frenzied circle back when I was first asked to.
