Monthly Archives: tammikuu 2015

William Golding, 1954

This is a book about a group of schoolboys wrecked in an unhabited, tropical island, who struggle trying to survive while there’s no rescuer in sight. But at the same time it’s a book about society, war, democracy, autocracy, adulthood, violence and human nature. With all these issues on the table, it is intangible how William Golding, a Nobel Prize-winning English author, has managed to deal with them with such lightness and simplicity.

It’s the age of the Second World War. The world is in chaos but it’s sincerely silent and tranquil on the island. The only exception in the serenity are the lost schoolboys who landed there due to an airplane accident. One of the boys, by the name of Ralph, finds a pure white conch and decides to summon all the boys to an assembly. Soon he’s chosen to be the Chief. Things start well as the children work devotedly together, but as the time flies, some boys begin to disagree on some shared rules. Conflicts are born, fear grows and on every one’s mind is a doubt if they’ll ever get back home again.

First a few words about the plot. I hadn’t heard much about it in advance though Lord of the Flies is a well-known peace of literature. Therefore I expected to be excited and surprised by the twists and turns of the storyline. Instead I was to find myself yawning in a neverending state of boredom – at least it felt like it!

I was greatly disappointed in the events of this book which roughly didn’t even exist. Where the boys were described arguing or eating or bathing or dreaming, I was left to long for more action. On the other hand the book was filled with talented narration and description of the milieu. Unfortunately my linguistic talents of English weren’t quite enough to grasp that (And the time was too short for using the dictionary with so many difficult words in a row!) Still, it’s never a good sign if one has to force herself to reading a book.

Golding’s writing is polished and finely tuned. Particularly impressing were the lines of the boys. The children spoke very plainly and abruptly which was convincing but also frustrating for it made the story a lot harder to follow. Although I have to admit that the confusingly random and sudden comments were as funny as they were irrelevant.

In my opinion the writer has too much focus on the everyday chores that the boys keep busy with, like building the shelters and not letting the fire signal out. After all, the book has many interesting subjects for the author to play around with. One of them comes up more frequently than any other: a mysterious beast which a couple of the boys claim to have seen. The reader wants to find out what kind of creature the beast is in the end but it turns out to be a work of the boys’ own imagination.

As I spent a little bit of my time to think I noticed a few metaphors in the book. Firstly I’d like to mention the imaginary beast which to me reflects the savage in every one of us humans. It’s the fear and the devil inside. When the boys were left by themselves for too long, it began to dominate them.

Other clear reflections of the real world were the characters themselves. There’s the main character Ralph, who’s chosen to be the Chief of the island. Ralph represents the democracy and discipline. On the opposite side standing for the violence and wildness is Jack, the becoming enemy of Ralph. Piggy is a fat, bullied boy who desperately tries to be the voice of reason. Together the boys sort of form a tiny society.

Bullying is also one matter that’s brought up quite often in the book. Piggy, who seems to be the smartest boy in the bunch and who, at least from my point of view, is the most likeable and sympathetic character, is bullied throughout the book. It looks to me that the author is expressing how too often the bullied people are actually the bravest or the most intelligent. And most of all it’s wrong and no good will come from it. This fact can be seen in the end of the book most clearly.

Confused by the name of the book, I was compelled to do my research. It turns out that the name ”Lord of the flies” is a reference directly to another name of Satan in Hebrew. This brings us back to the beast which has a huge role in the book. I actually found an interesting review about the book in which the writer, ”Pii” AKA Anni Vuorinen, draws a line from the devilish beast to the religion. She also discovered some symbolics that completely passed my thoughts, for instance the conch being a symbol of civilisation.

To sum up, I think the book was sadly a bit of a dull experience but it had some wonderful but sometimes brutal thoughts and arguments in it. Nevertheless I’m happy to have finally read it. No regrets, as I often like to say!
Melina Ojala

SOURCES:

http://maailmanaareen.blogspot.fi/2012/09/karpasten-herra.html

http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A4rp%C3%A4sten_herra

The renowned British author Charlotte Brontë’s second published novel (published in 1849) is her only novel to deal with social and political themes. The story is set in Yorkshire in 1811-1812, during a time of notable upheaval in Europe. Sally Minogue, in her introduction to the WORDSWORTH CLASSICS edition of the novel, explains the situation thus: ”With the Napoleonic wars raging, French embargoes were strangling British trade; the British government answered with Orders in Council invoking counter-embargoes on neutral countries, which led to America’s cutting off trade with Britain. This slashing of its economic arteries badly affected manufacturing industries, and especially the cloth manufacturers of Yorkshire, where ”Shirley” is set. Meanwhile engineering advances had produced machinery to replace individual skilled labour in the cloth mills; while hard-pressed mill-owners saw these machines as saviours of their dwindling trade, even more hard-pressed cloth workers saw them as their bemesis. Machine-breaking (Luddism) now became the desperate tool of those flung out of work at a time of acute privation.” ”Shirley” depicts the struggles of the cloth mill-owners, particularly of half-Belgian, half-British Robert Moore, who suffers multiple attacks for introducing new machinery his mill. One also makes the acquaintance of the desperate Luddites who are responsible for the attacks, as well as the more peacable, yet suffering members of the working class.
Now, to introduce the main characters:Shirley of the title is a young lady and the other of the novel’s two heroines. She is the only child of deceased parents and has inherited notable wealth and estate, including the cloth mill run by Robert Moore. Expected to be a boy,and for that reason possessing a predominantly male name as her christened name (Shirley was a masculine surname until the publishing of this book, which caused it to become popular for females), Shirley has many priviledges that most women of her time do not possess; being of independent means and her own mistress. On top of this she is pretty, friendly and impetious, making her a favourite among her contemporaries.
The other heroine Caroline Helstone is the 18-year old niece of a rector, who also is her guardian. Her mother ran away to escape from a violent marriage when she was an infant, and her father died not many years after, so Caroline has grown up with her uncle. She is of a shy,sensitive nature and has a beautiful face. Unlike Shirley, Caroline is not rich, but is rather a middle-class woman; her needs are sufficiently provided for, but she lacks independence.
Caroline’s and Shirley’s meeting and the friendship which develops between them is a crucial part of the story. Despite their different circumstances and personalities, they have many things in common and a deep regard for each other. These two women’s lives are also intertwined with those of the cloth-manufacturer Robert Moore and his tutor-brother Louis. They are Caroline’s cousins, and to Shirley one is her tenant, and the other her former tutor. There are also appearances by a trio of comical curates, a variety of rectors, businessmen, labourers, old maids and servants, to name a few, all in all making for quite an impressive display of characters. My favourite things about the book have to be the lively description of the characters, the portrayal of their various interactions with each other, and the way the omniscient narrator analyzes and evaluates them.
On the whole this was a great novel to read and I greatly enjoyed it. I found it an eye-opener to the past; to how society actually worked and what the circumstances of women were like then. Also, ”Shirley” was written during a difficult period of Charlotte Brontë’s life, during which her brother and her two sisters Anne and Emily (who were also writers) all died from consumption within eight months.