Lovecraft Would Be Proud - Golding's Lord of the Flies

The story of Lord of the Flies is known to almost anyone, present company excluded. I may have seen the movie decades ago, but the memory was hazy. There were some kids, some island, and something bad happens. I was half-right. Lord of the Flies can be read through a few different lenses. On the surface it's, what we now call, a Young Adult Adventure Novel. The kids are alone and they need to find means of survival. Bonds are created and broken, evil guys are doing evil things and yada yada yada. Not my type of novel. There is much more. Golding tells a story of what happens when we abandon civil society; what happens when we give in to our instincts. Barbarism, foolishness, chaos. The estranged kids don't have much in common. There are a few groups, but mostly they are a random bunch. How will we maintain what makes us civil humans, when it can lead to our deaths? It's also a story about the lust of power. Not all the kids are "civil" - some are bullish brutes. How will this impact…