What Lord of the Flies is really about | Letter from Judy Golding Carver
by Letter from on (#3N8DT)
My father distrusted simple judgments, but he did say his novel was about the importance of the rule of law, and the complexity of human beings, says William Golding's daughter Judy Golding Carver
David Shariatmadari's account of my father's novel Lord of the Flies was a little sweeping when he declared: "William Golding sought to show that boys were, by their nature, little devils" (A real-life Lord of the Flies: the troubling legacy of the Robbers Cave experiment, 17 April) .
The boys in Lord of the Flies make quite a good fist of creating a democratic society, at least to begin with. Ralph, the democratically elected leader, admonishes Jack to stick to "the rules", because "the rules are the only thing we've got". In an interview the author said that the novel was about the importance of the rule of law. It was also about the complexity of human beings.
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