In the article “‘It could happen here’: Lord of the Flies took its lessons from Hitler’s Germany. They speak to now”, University of Sydney academic Alexander Howard reviews the writing by William Golding of The Lord of the Flies & the way in which the lessons of that novel also speak to our current time.

William Golding was a teacher after serving in WWII & he wrote his debut novel “at his desk during lessons” according to former students. Apparently, he went on to “detest the book that bought him fame & fortune” but stood by the “moral lesson” in the novel. That is, that “Western civilisation had neither eliminated cruelty, nor prevented brutality…The problem was humanity.”

For Jack Thorne, writing about his new TV adaptation of Lord of the Flies, there are resonances between William Golding’s time & our current “climate of populism and hate”.

Says Alexander Howard:

“The adolescent cruelty and rage he drew on to write his portrait of young toxic masculinity [in Adolescence] are infused into his Lord of the Flies.”