My Favorite Novel

My favorite book is Lord of the Flies by William Golding.

Sure, it is a depressing book, but it opened my eyes to the realities of the world. The singular quote that I learned from class, “When you take man out of civilization, you take civilization out of man,” has stuck with me all of my high school career. In fact, just recently, I created a video about Lord of the Flies, and in the video, I showed how the book begs the questions “Are we all just civilized people until problems and conflict arise?” and “Are we just criminals of society ourselves?”

This book debates the power of an individual vs. the power of a group, power and control in general, how society functions as a whole, how people react in different situations, and how people need to belong in groups.This book becomes more than just a deep understanding of human nature, but it becomes a novel that seeks to raise awareness and criticize what we must live with to function as a successful society.

There are so many powerful novels that I read throughout high school such as To Kill A Mockingbird, The Stranger, Hamlet, Catcher in the Rye, The Great Gatsby, and The Things They Carried, but nothing struck me on an emotional level as Lord of the Flies did. I do not know why I connected so well to it, as I have never been in a totally dire situation of life or death, but I just know that I needed the book more than it needed me. I needed to learn that the entire world is not made up of butterflies and rainbows, and there are serious issues that can happen at any second. I needed to prepare myself for the realities of the world.

It is a book so raw and so real to the potentials of a failing civilization. It is a book that seems to be a sharp contrast to a futuristic society book such as the Hunger Game series, and brings a potential situation into a realistic view. It is a book that delves deep into the human mindset, and how, maybe everyone is just a flaw of society itself.