Yet another "at long last."

I'd read countless interpretations of this novel ranging from hokey, high-falutin analogies to human nature and violence to half-baked theories about societal decline and contemporary reality television, and I think that - as with so many other novels - is what turned me away from reading it for so long in the first place. A few years ago, I caught a seventh-grader reading (and enjoying) it, and asked what she liked about it so far, and she'd mentioned a few things about how she thought the language was (in so many words, as best I can recall) both "pretty" and "confusing." That same year, the book was passed over for a ninth-grade reading unit on account of the language being a possible difficulty for some students and, knowing what I did about it already and having just read The Hunger Games, I suggested the more contemporary choice as an alternative.

Lovers of books like The Hunger Games and Battle Royale will readily find parallels between those novels and Lord of the Flies, too. I don't think it matters which was or was not inspired by Lord of the Flies (Battle Royale fans still consider The Hunger Games a rip-off, despite Collins never having read it at the time), but I think it's important to recognize each book as representing different themes. Lord of the Flies is a wonderful take on the violence of human nature and, for lack of a better term, "child's play gone wrong" (which, if you dig deep, could really be seen as one and the same), while the modern choices are rife with coming-of-age, rebellion, and oppression. There are plenty of similarities among the smaller bits of each story, but they each paint a much different "big picture", and I'm a little bit sorry I didn't want to see that a little bit sooner than I did, when I finally decided to finish this book.

It's a pretty quick read, if you want it to be, but there's plenty to stop and think about, all the same. Just don't go into the book with everybody else's ideas fresh in your mind. (Unless that's your thing.)