Lord of the Flies versus The Road

During one of my frequent visits to a wonderful bookstore in Great Barrington, MA called The Bookloft, I picked up two novels. For my son, Lord of the Flies, written in 1954 by William Golding (UK) and for myself, The Road, written in 2006 by Cormac McCarthy (USA).

Both titles came to us with recommendations; Lord of the Flies by my son’s English teacher and The Road by a friend of mine. Although I do not doubt Mr. McCarthy writing skills, my memories of his prose involved a struggle through Blood Meridian, so I started the novel with a fair dose of skepticism.

Both books won numerous awards and were adapted to film. After my son polished off his book in less than a week, I decided to follow up my novel with his, and they turn out to have striking similarities.

The Road is a post-apocalyptic tale of a journey by a father and his son, across a landscape charred by an unspecified disaster. It seems to have happened a while ago and most of civilization is destroyed.

Lord of the Flies also seems to take place after a global tragedy, which caused an airplane with young British children to crash on a deserted island.

Obviously two stories of survival, which deal with very contemporary issues. Besides the classic “good versus bad” conflict, we find much deeper undertones.

The Road has been hailed by environmentalists for bringing awareness to where our planet is heading. Lord of the Flies illustrates beautifully how people (in this case children, but it applies on adults as well) evolve in moments of challenge and controversy. Leaders versus followers, reason versus savagery, rational versus violence.

We have to give Cormac credit though for blatantly and proudly ignoring every grammatical rule ever written.

Both books seem to elicit strong emotions and while I was reading The Road on a bench at Snowbird, Utah, two people came up to me separately to discuss the book.

I will not go in to further details, however I will leave you with the following: Read and Reflect.