nicanical
William Golding's Lord of the Flies is about some British schoolboys stranded on an island, trying to stay civilized while awaiting rescue.
The schoolboys represent society in miniature, with the main characters Ralph and Jack (and Piggy, to an extent) standing in for human qualities and archetypes. Thus, their interactions invoke struggles familiar and timeless—between the powerful and the powerless, haves and have-nots, bullies and the bullied.
Sounds great. Unfortunately, Golding's execution does not impress. His sentences are too long, passively-constructed, and maddeningly uniform in cadence which transforms swathes of the book into monolithic blocks that sink eyelids. Narrative portions, like descriptions and scene-setting, are verbose and nebulous to the point of frustrating comprehension of important moments. E.g., when Simon realizes the monster's true nature, I wasn't sure if his epiphany was genuine or merely a hallucination.
Golding does better with dialogue and character interactions. Sometimes, too many tags are omitted making it hard to follow who is speaking. But otherwise, the dialogue and choreography wonderfully conveys all the tension expected of a band of marooned adolescents.
William Golding's Lord of the Flies is about some British schoolboys stranded on an island, trying to stay civilized while awaiting rescue.
The schoolboys represent society in miniature, with the main characters Ralph and Jack (and Piggy, to an extent) standing in for human qualities and archetypes. Thus, their interactions invoke struggles familiar and timeless—between the powerful and the powerless, haves and have-nots, bullies and the bullied.
Sounds great. Unfortunately, Golding's execution does not impress. His sentences are too long, passively-constructed, and maddeningly uniform in cadence which transforms swathes of the book into monolithic blocks that sink eyelids. Narrative portions, like descriptions and scene-setting, are verbose and nebulous to the point of frustrating comprehension of important moments. E.g., when Simon realizes the monster's true nature, I wasn't sure if his epiphany was genuine or merely a hallucination.
Golding does better with dialogue and character interactions. Sometimes, too many tags are omitted making it hard to follow who is speaking. But otherwise, the dialogue and choreography wonderfully conveys all the tension expected of a band of marooned adolescents.