Lord of the Flies
by William Golding · first published 1954
10% recommend81% neutral10% critical
Why HN recommends it
Grim novel of boys stranded without adult rules, read as a warning about human nature, bullying, mobs and tribalism. Suits school-age readers and anyone wanting a fictional lens on group behavior and office politics.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Lord of the Flies is a 1954 novel by Nobel Prize–winning British author William Golding. The book focuses on a group of British boys stranded on an uninhabited island and their disastrous attempt to govern themselves. Themes include the tension between groupthink and individuality, between rational and emotional reactions, and between morality and immorality. The novel has been generally well received. It was named in the Modern Library 100 Best Novels, reaching number 41 on the editor's list, and 25 on the reader's list. In 2003 it was listed at number 70 on the BBC's The Big Read poll, an
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…"Dracula" - Bram Stoker "Frankenstein" - Mary Shelly "On Education" - Bertrand Russell "The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy" - Douglas Adams "Animal Farm" - George Orwell "1984" - George Orwell "Lord of The Flies" - William Golding "Brave New World" - Aldous Huxley "Gulliver's Travels" - Jonathan Swift "The Selfish Gene" - Richard Dawkins
on “Ask HN: What are some good books?” ↗…privileged information, I would call it a protest that turned (or was instigated to turn, if you prefer to phrase it that way) into a mob, and there’s never any telling what could happen after that. Read Lord of the Flies - mobs do crazy things.
on “The most influential man on the internet” ↗…Malamud - *Northwest Passage* by Kenneth Roberts - *To Kill a Mockingbird* by Harper Lee - Anything by Nikolai Gogol - Short stories by Guy de Maupassant - Most of John Steinbeck's works - *Lord of the Flies* by William Golding - *The Great Gatsby* F. Scott Fitzgerald Also, if you're reading Kafka, In the Penal Colony is a short story I enjoyed that I don't see mentioned much.
on “Ask HN: classic literature recommendations?” ↗Tech: 1. The C Programming Language 2. Data Structures and Algorithms in Python Non-Tech: 3. Dune 4. Lord of the Flies
on “Ask HN: Which books have you re-read the most?” ↗- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Through the Looking Glass - Lord of the Flies - 1984 - Animal Farm - The Little Prince - Siddhartha - Narcissus and Goldmund - Crime and Punishment - Frankenstein - Dracula - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - The Lord of the Rings…
on “Ask HN: What Are You Fiction Book Recommendations?” ↗Earth Abides (50s post-apocalyptic set in the Bay Area) Blood Meridian Lord of the Flies Deliverance
on “Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?” ↗…the behavior of adult authoritarian figures: https://www.thoughtco.com/operant-conditioning-definition-ex... The best literature on bullying (and also a criticism of the British school system) IMO is "Lord of the Flies" (William Golding, 1954). Note it was not a critique of so-called 'human nature' in general but of a particular societal construct. https://crookedtimber.org/2019/11/07/englands-ruling-patholo... >…
on “Persistent and pervasive impact of being bullied in childhood and adolescence” ↗I think you're misconstruing the point of Lord of the Flies. It is not a children's book, and most of it's commentary can be generalized to adults. We see the exact same outcome in the highest echelons of politics, business and academia alike.
on “William Golding's Island of Savagery” ↗…a condemnation of Shakespeare but of schooling.) I do love literature, but that is in spite of school not because of it. School did a lot to put me off some books. I was lucky to have read Golding's "Lord of the Flies" before our class did, because it gave me a better appreciation of it. I did read some big books as a teenager. I waited until my twenties to tackle Dostoyevsky though. "The Brothers Karamazov" was especially…
on “Dostoyevsky Isn't Difficult” ↗Lord of the flies.
on “Ask HN: What book had a big impact on you as a child or teenager?” ↗…us. Buried beneath the surface is the always unspoken reality, which often entails a trail through a wilderness to a gingerbread house on a gumdrop mountain where a witch is waiting to boil us alive. Lord Of The Flies is grim but true. On the playground, in small groups, when the adults are absent, children become a hierarchy of peer pressure and social eruptions, like spots on the face of a Head Boy at whatever English…
on “William Golding's Island of Savagery” ↗…what GP and I are saying: alarm bells are going off in our heads because we have 1st or 2nd hand experience of how this plays out. And just like back then, people now are going 'naaaah, it'll be fine'. Lord of the Flies should remain mandatory school reading forever. It's a warning tale exactly about this.
on “The Four Quadrants of Conformism” ↗…I'm reminiscing, my favorite memory is over the course of a few afternoons in 7th grade retreating to the comfy reading area and picking up and reading the classroom's copies of Catcher in the Rye and Lord of the Flies.
on “Let’s ban elementary homework” ↗…us and them (people who do morally repugnant things). At the heart of it, it's tribalism. Or maybe they’re just tired of crap science that just won’t die. When you want to make your point, just use “Lord of the Flies” instead. It makes compelling, similar points about the human condition. But it just does it as a novel, not as a fake experiment.
on “Zimbardo’s Rebuttal Against Recent Criticisms of the Stanford Prison Experiment” ↗…many of the books that I was forced to read during high school. The most memorable ones for me all fell into the "modern classics" category - To Kill a Mockingbird, Animal Farm, 1984, A Clockwork Orange, Lord of the Flies, Brave New World, The Diary of Anne Frank, and so on.
on “Why Read the Classics? (1986)” ↗