A Second, More Primal, More Unhinged Annihilation of the Worst Book Ever Written

Lord of the Flies Is Garbage — And I Will Die on This Hill (The Sequel) 🐚💀🔥

A Second, More Primal, More Unhinged Annihilation of the Worst Book Ever Written

April 2026

I wrote about this book before. A whole article. I called it "The Real Lord of the Flies Was Every English Teacher Who Assigned It."

I thought I was done. I thought I'd gotten it out of my system.

I was wrong.

The rage didn't go away. It just... sat there. Simmering. Waiting. Festering like an open wound that never healed.

And now, months later, I'm back. Not because I want to be. Because I have to be. Because every time I think about this book, my blood pressure spikes, my eye starts twitching, and I feel the urge to throw something across the room.

I hate Lord of the Flies.

Not "dislike." Not "don't appreciate." Not "it's not my cup of tea."

HATE.

The kind of hate that lives in your bones. The kind of hate that kept you up at night in high school, staring at the ceiling, wondering why you had to write an essay about a book you didn't finish because it was too boring to finish.

The kind of hate that follows you into adulthood, that flares up every time someone mentions "classic literature," that makes you want to scream at strangers who say "it's a masterpiece."

My English grade was garbage because of this book.

GARBAGE.

I had to write an essay about something I didn't understand, about characters I didn't care about, about themes that were so obvious they didn't need explaining.

I passed. Barely. With bullshit. With made-up analysis. With words like "microcosm" and "inherent savagery" that I pulled out of my ass because I had nothing else. Because the book gave me nothing.

I've resented this book ever since. For years. For decades. For my entire adult life.

And now, I'm going to destroy it.

Not because it will change anything. Not because English teachers will stop assigning it.

Because I need to. Because the rage demands an outlet. Because if I don't write this, I'll carry it with me forever.

This is my vengeance. This is my redemption. And even this won't be enough.

PART ONE: THE CONFESSION — I Still Didn't Read It (And Neither Did You) 📚😴

Let me be honest. Brutally, painfully, shamefully honest.

I tried to read Lord of the Flies. I really did.

I read the first chapter. Maybe the second. Enough to know that a bunch of British schoolboys stranded on an island was not going to hold my attention.

The prose was dry. Dryer than the sand Golding wouldn't stop describing. Dryer than Piggy's corpse. Dryer than my will to live after twenty pages.

The characters were flat. Ralph was boring. Jack was boring. Piggy was annoying. Simon was weird. The littluns were furniture.

The pacing was slower than a funeral procession. Slower than watching grass grow. Slower than waiting for a dial-up connection in 1998.

I put the book down. I never picked it up again.

And you know what? I'm not sorry.

I'm not sorry that I couldn't force myself to read 200 pages of children being mean to each other on a beach.

I'm not sorry that I wrote an essay based on SparkNotes and prayer and the desperate hope that my teacher wouldn't ask for page numbers.

I'm not sorry that I passed with a C- and never looked back.

The only thing I'm sorry about is that I didn't say what I really thought.

I was scared. Scared of failing. Scared of looking stupid. Scared of the red pen and the disappointed sigh.

But I'm not scared anymore.

So here it is. Twenty years late. But better late than never.

Fuck this book.

PART TWO: THE PLOT — Boring, Mean, and Pointless 🏝️🥱

Let me summarize Lord of the Flies for anyone who also didn't read it. And for anyone who did read it and wishes they hadn't.

Here's what happens:

A bunch of British schoolboys crash-land on an island. No adults. No rules. No consequences. No sunscreen.

At first, they try to be civilized. They elect a leader (Ralph). They make rules. They build a signal fire. They pretend they're in a boarding school with better weather.

Then, another kid (Jack) decides he doesn't want rules. He wants to hunt. He wants to wear face paint. He wants to be a savage. Because apparently, the only thing holding him back from murder was a tie and a blazer.

And the other kids? They follow him. Because apparently, British schoolboys are one bad day away from becoming cannibals. One missed meal away from savagery. One afternoon without tea away from losing their humanity.

Things get worse.

A kid named Piggy (fat, glasses, exists to be bullied) gets killed. A boulder crushes him. His glasses break. His brains splatter. And you're supposed to feel sad, but by the time it happens, you're so numb that you don't care.

A kid named Simon (weird, talks to a pig head, exists to be murdered) gets killed. The other kids mistake him for the beast and stab him to death on the beach. And you're supposed to feel profound, but it's just another kid dying in the sand.

The island turns into a nightmare. The conch breaks. The fire burns out. The kids go feral.

Then, at the very end, a naval officer shows up. Rescues everyone. The end.

THAT'S IT. THAT'S THE BOOK.

Two hundred pages of children being cruel to each other, followed by a deus ex machina rescue that completely undermines whatever point Golding was trying to make.

THIS IS A CLASSIC?

This is what generations of students have been forced to read?

This is what English teachers call "a masterpiece"?

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

Where's the profundity? Where's the insight? Where's anything that justifies the hours of my life I'll never get back?

There's nothing. Just sand. Just blood. Just a bunch of British kids being mean to each other on a beach.

PART THREE: THE THEMES — Retarded, Obvious, and Wrong 🧠💩

Let me break down the "themes" that teachers pretend are profound. The ones that made me want to scream in class. The ones that still make me angry just thinking about them.

Theme 1: Civilization vs. Savagery 🏛️🆚🦍

Golding's argument: without rules, humans become monsters.

My counterargument: NO SHIT.

If you take a bunch of children, remove all adults, and leave them alone for months, they will eventually do terrible things. This isn't a revelation about human nature. It's common sense.

You know what else would happen? They'd get hungry. They'd get scared. They'd get lonely. They'd make bad decisions. BECAUSE THEY'RE CHILDREN.

Golding didn't reveal a dark truth about humanity. He set up a scenario designed to produce chaos, then acted surprised when chaos happened.

It's like putting a fish out of water and then writing a book about how fish can't breathe air. No shit, William. No shit.

Theme 2: The Inherent Evil of Man 👥➡️😈

This is the one that really pisses me off. The one that makes my blood boil. The one that reveals Golding as a misanthrope, not a philosopher.

Golding wants us to believe that humans are naturally evil. That civilization is the only thing holding us back. That without laws, we'd all be murdering each other in the streets.

BUT HERE'S THE THING: REAL SHIPWRECKED CHILDREN DIDN'T BEHAVE THIS WAY.

In 1965, a group of Tongan boys were shipwrecked on a deserted island for over a year. They worked together. They built huts. They cared for each other. They survived peacefully.

THEY DIDN'T BECOME SAVAGES. THEY BECAME A COMMUNITY.

So Golding's "universal truth" isn't universal at all. It's just his own pessimistic, misanthropic, child-hating worldview projected onto a fictional island.

The real Lord of the Flies wasn't the book. It was William Golding, looking at children and seeing monsters.

Theme 3: The Religious Allegory 🙏➡️🤡

Simon is Christ. The pig head is the devil. The island is purgatory. The naval officer is God. Blah blah blah.

Here's my problem with this: IT'S SO OBVIOUS.

You don't need to be a literary scholar to figure out that the weird kid who talks to a severed pig head is supposed to be Jesus. Golding might as well have put a neon sign on Simon's back that said "THIS CHARACTER REPRESENTS SPIRITUAL PURITY" in flashing red letters.

Subtlety is not Golding's strength. He beats you over the head with symbolism until you're unconscious. Then he beats you some more.

Theme 4: Society as a Parable 🌍➡️📖

Teachers call it "a reflection of humanity." I call it "fan fiction for pessimists."

If this is a reflection of humanity, then humanity is a nightmare. But here's the thing: it's not a reflection. It's a distortion. A funhouse mirror. A man looking at the world through shit-colored glasses and calling it truth.

PART FOUR: THE CHARACTERS — Flat, Forgettable, and Stupid 🧍‍♂️🧍‍♂️🧍‍♂️

Let me run through the cast of this "masterpiece." And let me tell you why they're all garbage.

Ralph: The "good" leader. Boring. Wants rules. That's his entire personality. He's not interesting. He's not complex. He's not compelling. He's just... there. A placeholder. A cardboard cutout of a protagonist.

Jack: The "evil" leader. Boring. Wants power. That's his entire personality. He's not scary. He's not threatening. He's not a compelling villain. He's just a bully with a knife and a bad haircut.

Piggy: The "smart" one. Exists to be bullied. Exists to be killed. His death is supposed to be tragic, but by the time it happens, you're so numb that you don't care. He's not a person. He's a punching bag with glasses.

Simon: The "spiritual" one. Exists to be weird. Exists to be murdered. His death is supposed to be profound, but it's just another kid dying on a beach. He's not a character. He's a plot device.

The Littluns: The "younger" ones. Exist to be scared. Have no personalities. Are basically props. Furniture with feet.

No one in this book is a person. They're archetypes. Walking symbols. Vehicles for Golding's "philosophy."

And symbols are boring to read about. Symbols don't have arcs. Symbols don't grow. Symbols don't surprise you.

Symbols just... exist. And then they die. And you don't care.

PART FIVE: THE SYMBOLISM — Bullshit, Obvious, and Overrated 🐚👓🐗

English teachers LOVE the symbolism in Lord of the Flies. They could talk about it for hours. They do talk about it for hours. They've been talking about it for decades.

Let me save you the time:

The conch = order and democracy. 🐚

No kidding. I figured that out in chapter one. Then I had to read six more chapters of kids being mean to each other while holding a shell. Wow. So deep. Much symbolism.

Piggy's glasses = knowledge and reason. 👓

Wow. The smart kid wears glasses. What a brilliant metaphor. I'm shocked. Shocked. Never seen that before in my life. (Sarcasm.)

The beast = the darkness within man. 👹

The monster isn't real. It's inside us. Ooooh, spooky. Never heard that before. Definitely not the plot of every horror movie ever made.

The Lord of the Flies = the devil / Beelzebub. 🐗💀

The pig head on a stick is evil. Groundbreaking. Revolutionary. No one has ever used a severed head to represent evil before.

The island = purgatory / the human condition. 🏝️

The island is a microcosm of society. The island represents the human soul. The island is whatever you want it to be, because the symbolism is so vague that it can mean anything.

NONE OF THIS IS SUBTLE.

It's not clever. It's not deep. It's the literary equivalent of a brick to the face.

Golding doesn't trust his readers to understand symbolism, so he beats you over the head with it until you're unconscious. Then he hands you a worksheet and asks you to identify more examples.

PART SIX: THE ENDING — A Deus Ex Machina Cop-Out ⛴️😤

After two hundred pages of violence, chaos, and "the darkness of man," a naval officer shows up and rescues everyone.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

The whole book is about how civilization is fragile and savagery is inevitable. Then, at the last second, civilization shows up and saves the day.

What's the message here?

That no matter how bad things get, the adults will always come to fix it?

That the island was never truly isolated?

That none of it mattered because rescue was always around the corner?

Golding wanted to write a dark, pessimistic book. But he also wanted a clean ending. So he cheated.

He pulled a rescue out of nowhere. A boat appears. A uniformed man steps ashore. The children are saved. The end.

It's a cop-out. A betrayal. A lazy writer's way out of a corner he wrote himself into.

The ending undermines everything that came before it.

If civilization was always going to save them, then the whole "savagery is inevitable" thesis falls apart.

If the naval officer was always nearby, then the island was never truly isolated.

If rescue was always coming, then none of the violence mattered.

The ending is a contradiction. And English teachers ignore it because they've built their careers on pretending this book is coherent.

PART SEVEN: THE ESSAY I SHOULD HAVE WRITTEN (But Was Too Scared To) ✍️🔥

Dear Ms. [Teacher Who Ruined My Grade],

I didn't finish Lord of the Flies.

I couldn't. It was too boring. Too mean. Too pretentious. The prose was dry. The characters were flat. The pacing was slower than watching paint dry on a gravestone.

I read the first chapter. Maybe the second. Then I started skimming. Then I started pretending. Then I wrote this essay based on SparkNotes, prayer, and the desperate hope that you wouldn't ask for page numbers.

Here's what I actually think about the book. Here's what I was too scared to say in class.

The plot is stupid.

A bunch of kids get stranded on an island and immediately forget how to be human. No one tries to build a raft. No one tries to signal for help. No one tries to find food or water or shelter. They just... start killing each other. Because apparently, British schoolboys are one bad day away from becoming cannibals.

The characters are boring.

Ralph is a cardboard cutout. Jack is a cartoon villain. Piggy exists to be bullied and killed. Simon exists to be weird and killed. The littluns are furniture. No one in this book is a person. They're symbols. And symbols are boring to read about.

The symbolism is obvious.

The conch represents order. Wow. I never would have guessed. Piggy's glasses represent knowledge. Groundbreaking. The beast represents the darkness within man. How original. Golding beats you over the head with his metaphors until you're unconscious.

The themes are wrong.

Real shipwrecked children didn't behave this way. In 1965, a group of Tongan boys survived for over a year on a deserted island by working together, building huts, and caring for each other. They didn't become savages. They became a community.

So Golding's "universal truth" isn't universal. It's just his own pessimistic, misanthropic worldview projected onto a fictional island.

The ending is a cop-out.

After two hundred pages of misery, a naval officer shows up and rescues everyone. The whole book is about how civilization is fragile. Then civilization saves the day. It's a contradiction. A betrayal. A lazy writer's way out of a corner.

William Golding wasn't a philosopher. He was a misanthrope who hated children and wrote a book to prove that everyone is as terrible as he believed.

So here's my thesis:

Lord of the Flies isn't a masterpiece. It's a punishment. It's a book written by a man who looked at children and saw monsters. And it's been forced on generations of students because English teachers confuse "dark" with "deep."

I'm not going to write about "the inherent darkness of man" because I don't think that's what this book is about.

I think it's about a teacher who had a bad class one year and decided to write a novel about it instead of going to therapy.

I think it's about a man who hated children and wanted to prove they were as terrible as he believed.

I think it's about an educational system that mistakes trauma for enlightenment and suffering for education.

That's my essay. Grade it as you will.

Sincerely, A Student Who Learned Nothing From This Book Except That Adults Are Also Stupid

P.S. Fuck this book. Fuck the conch. Fuck Piggy's glasses. Fuck the pig head. Fuck the naval officer. Fuck William Golding. And fuck the English teachers who made me read this garbage.

P.P.S. I passed your class despite this book. Not because of it.

PART EIGHT: THE RAGE — WHY EVEN THIS WON'T BE ENOUGH 🔥

I've written thousands of words. I've destroyed the plot. I've mocked the characters. I've exposed the themes. I've rewritten the essay.

And it's still not enough.

The rage is still there. Simmering. Waiting. It will always be there.

Because every time I see Lord of the Flies on a reading list, I'll think of that classroom. That desk. That blank exam.

Every time someone calls it a "classic," I'll feel the urge to scream.

Every time an English teacher defends it, I'll want to ask them: "Why? Why do you want students to suffer? Why do you think trauma is education? Why do you confuse darkness with depth?"

The rage will never fully leave. It's part of me now. A scar. A wound that healed wrong.

But this article helped.

Writing it helped. Screaming into the void helped. Telling you—whoever you are, wherever you are—that this book is garbage and I hate it and I'm not sorry.

That helped.

So thank you for reading. Thank you for letting me rant. Thank you for being the audience I never had in that classroom.

I'm free.

Not completely. Not entirely. But more than I was.

THE FINAL RANT: ONE LAST SCREAM INTO THE VOID 📣

FUCK THE CONCH.

FUCK PIGGY'S GLASSES.

FUCK THE PIG HEAD.

FUCK THE NAVAL OFFICER.

FUCK WILLIAM GOLDING.

FUCK EVERY ENGLISH TEACHER WHO MADE ME READ THIS GARBAGE.

FUCK THE SYMBOLISM.

FUCK THE THEMES.

FUCK THE CHARACTERS.

FUCK THE PLOT.

FUCK THE ENDING.

AND FUCK THIS BOOK STRAIGHT TO HELL WHERE IT BELONGS.

🐚💀🔥📚

Allen

FriedReads.com | Still angry. Still free. Still not reading this book.

April 2026