> Issachar, your review intrigued me, so I checked Lord of the Flies out from the library. Started reading it yesterday. I'll let you know what I think.
>
> Gri"from what I've read so far, I'm probably most like 'Piggy'"shny

Well Issachar, Lord of the Flies was a quick read. I think I finished it in less than a week. It held my interest really well; I'm afraid I found it a bit depressing, though. Golding had a realistic outlook on the nature of humanity, even if he didn't understand *why* we are the way we are.

Now I'll move on to something that *really* bugged me: the "forward" or introduction to the novel. In the particular edition that I read, it was written by E.M. Forster. He pretty much *ruined* the book for me.

An introduction to any book should create anticipation and give one a vague idea of the overall themes covered within. It should not be a synopsis of the story. If I had known what was in the forward to LOTF, I would have waited until after I finished the book to then go back and read it.

Forster even said in the first paragraph of his introduction that he didn't want to tell the story, as that would cause the reader to become "complacent," and "complacency is not a quality which Mr. Golding desires." He then proceeded to blatantly hypocritize himself. He gave a detailed character sketch of each of the three main characters of the novel, and described exactly what happens to each of them, even going so far as to describe Piggy's fate to the tee. From the moment he was introduced in the story, I knew what was going to happen to him in the end, and that stunk. The book would have been so much better if I had actually been SURPRISED by the events in it, as I'm sure William Golding intended.

I'm thinking that from now on, better save the "introduction" for last, lest I be burned again. Better safe than sorry, eh?

Grishny