Lord of the Flies is a great book ruined by an awful ending

r/

Spoilers for the book ahead

Lord of the Flies was a really good read in my opinion. There was great buildup, drama, and pressure put onto the characters, and the plot developed at a good pace. However, the ending kinda ruined the book for me. The book ends with Ralph running away from the other boys as the burn the island. They’ve been trying to find ways to leave the island for weeks, and as Ralph is escaping, he runs into a coast guard who happened to stumble upon the island, where the book abruptly ends. It sucks. The climax of the book, the most exciting part, is cut short instantly, and the book just stops. It feels like such a letdown.

Comments

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  2. NoahtheRed Avatar

    so you wanted Ralph to presumably get torn to shreds by the other boys?

  3. CriticPerspective Avatar

    What more climactic event were you waiting for? The quiet ride back? The awkward explanations of what happened on the island?

  4. Gurney_Hackman Avatar

    If memory serves, it was a Navy ship, not a coast guard ship, which is significant to what Golding was going for.

    It’s important to understand that the book was written shortly after World War II, at a time when many people thought World War III would be happening soon. The behavior of the boys on the island is a microcosm for how humanity behaves all over the world. The ship’s captain is aghast at how the boys have been acting, but he’s the commander of a warship that exists to carry out the same kind of violence which, Golding argues, comes from the same place inside humanity.

  5. Alive_Ice7937 Avatar

    The climax of the story has already happened at that point. The boys have progressed from accidentally killing Simon out of fear to deliberately trying to kill Ralph.

  6. EverettGT Avatar

    Yeah, when an ending feels abrupt it usually means it didn’t actually resolve all the conflicts and tension it created nor return the tone to a more relaxed state to let you go back to your normal life smoothly.

  7. No-Researcher-4554 Avatar

    I actually really liked the abruptness of the ending. It was a reality check for the boys to see how far from grace they had fallen. They were hit square in the face with how much they lost their way when they had to see the officer and the realization made them burst into tears. The story is a tragedy because it’s like these boys went insane and murdered a couple of themselves along the way for nothing.

  8. ttw81 Avatar

    ” and they were eventually saved by…oh, let’s say, Moe.”

  9. BlasphemousRykard Avatar

    This is less of an unpopular opinion, and more of a misunderstanding of the book itself. The story isn’t just about boys trying to get off of an island, it’s all metaphor and allegory for humanity and war. The boys getting saved by a naval ship in the midst of a world war represents the cycle of violence, and the naval officer’s inability to understand the kids behavior represents how human are able to rationalize violence when they’re a part of it. While the ending does happen abruptly, there wouldn’t be any meaningful conclusions to draw from the kids just getting sent home, or all of them dying, or Ralph getting killed. 

  10. Intelligent_Pop1173 Avatar

    Just made me realize that the tv series Yellowjackets has to be heavily inspired by Lord of the Flies (I never thought of it because I only read the book once in middle school). If you want to know the aftermath of a similar situation, they go into it on that show.

  11. Goodness_Gracious7 Avatar

    The book is not some standard fantasy adventure following the typical beats of the genre. It’s not meant to have a neatly tied up satisfying ending. The lack of a satisfying ending is the entire point. It’s showing raw humanity, which does not ever fit into a neat satisfying storyline.

  12. missingwhitegirl Avatar

    Terrible take IMO. Upvote.

  13. underdabridge Avatar

    I loved the ending.

  14. Winter-Detective2488 Avatar

    i read the book as a class this year for english and a lot of us agreed we didn’t like the ending. all that buildup, the chase, so much tension, and then ralph just happens to bump into an adult and yay they all get saved. most of us thought it would’ve been cooler if they hadn’t gotten saved at all. we didn’t have a gripe with it in terms of it ending short, more so with what the ending entailed. but we enjoyed it overall, too.

  15. MapleTheBeegon Avatar

    Sounds like a case of media illiteracy, not a “bad ending”.

  16. Emotional-Golf-6226 Avatar

    Its one of those books where the allegory is more important than the specific plot points

  17. Master-o-Classes Avatar

    Have you ever watched Yellowjackets? It is heavily inspired by Lord of the Flies, and you get to see what happens to the survivors years later. Maybe that would be up your alley.

  18. stuthaman Avatar

    That was a surprisingly shocking book in primary school. Kids attacking kids wasn’t part of our literary diary back then. There was more than one confused kid in class discussions

  19. Mulliganasty Avatar

    It was definitely a Deus ex ending but I still think it works because sure they were rescued but the boys will have to live with the shame of what they did for the rest of their lives.

  20. Ruby-Shark Avatar

    A truly awful take. Have my upvote.

  21. weak_shimmer Avatar

    When I read this book in high school English, which was a long time ago, we were taught that it was a bit of an ironic take on the popular adventure novels of the time. Instead of working together and being heroic, the boys are murderers and set the island on fire.

  22. silverandshade Avatar

    That’s…. Kind of the point of the story…..

  23. Reek_0_Swovaye Avatar

    You can’t light a Fire with Piggy’s glasses either; he was short-sighted.

  24. Ok_Law219 Avatar

    I think your sentiment is extreme.  The abrupt conclusion felt confusing and thus disruptive.  But, if they had reason to believe that a ship would come or something like that, it would have been better.

  25. indie_berry05 Avatar

    I mean, upvote to disagree. Not for the reasons everyone else though: mainly because I think the book was ruined for me by the writing style. It’s got a great story, but I just can’t get over the writing style, and I don’t know why. It’s a great story though, it’s just if I didn’t have to read it in school, I wouldn’t have even came close to finishing it.

  26. brightblueson Avatar

    Deus Ex Machina

  27. Nice_Buy_602 Avatar

    The whole story is an allegory for humanity and how we behave. The boys find themselves alone on an island with no adults to guide them and no clear explanations as to how they ended up there. By working together and following a set of rules, they’re able to hope for rescue. In the end, when they’re rescued despite failing to adhere to the rules, the Captain is disappointed and says something to the effect of “I would have thought British boys would have done better.”

    The boys are mankind. The conch represents social order and the rule of law. The Captain represents God. His disappointment is a reflection on how God probably sees us. The fact that he’s a Navy Captain is a reflection on God’s nature in that God is probably just as violent. The comment about British boys reflects the ethnocentricity of how humanity views who God is.

    How many words and pages do you need to get that point across?

  28. subjecttochangesoaru Avatar

    Ending worked way better for me as I got older

  29. blackpeoplexbot Avatar

    The book was great you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. The reason it ends like that is because the kids in the islands are supposed to be a metaphor for brutality of humanity. Them getting saved at the end is supposed to make you wonder what getting saved in real life would look like. And then you realize that no one is gonna come to save us, we’re all trapped on this island like scared little boys as shit burns down around us.

  30. enigmanaught Avatar

    Doesn’t the sailor say something like “Oh, it’s like XYZ”. I didn’t recognize the specific reference but the implication is that a similar situation (with adults) has happened before. Basically showing neither kids or adults are civilized, the human condition is violence and tribalism. Like the irony of Piggy saying “if grownups were here they’d sort it out”.

  31. akapusin3 Avatar

    And the boys were rescued by… let’s say Mo

  32. Atticus-XI Avatar

    Terrible book with an expected terrible ending …

  33. TisBeTheFuk Avatar

    You might enjoy Yellowjackets

  34. hoorah9011 Avatar

    What was the purpose of the book?

  35. NoIdeaWhoIBe Avatar

    Some people don’t understand how books and stories and metaphors work.

    It’s a perfect ending.

  36. Mullattobutt Avatar

    Doesn’t it end with the conversation of the captain and Ralph and the captain says “at least no one died” and Ralph says “only 2”

    I’m not going to look up the real answer, but that’s my memory and if it’s true that’s an amazing and dark ending.

  37. Bootmacher Avatar

    They didn’t just happen to find the island. They were searching. The abruptness was supposed to represent the impact of civilization.

  38. caseybvdc74 Avatar

    I took it for a metaphor about sending young men to war. They acclimate to a violent environment then are abruptly sent to civilization like nothing has and are expected to fit right back in.

  39. AdvancedPangolin618 Avatar

    One irony is that it is this fire that signals the boat. Proper society has been using fire for weeks and it’s Jack’s fire that burns the books. 

    The second irony is that the captain who rescues them says he expected better from British boys. He is a British man actively at war; the children are simply recreating the behaviours they saw as children. The first chapter has Ralph play a game where he pretends to be an airplane and shoot piggy, immediately after their plane was shot down. They observed adults, and now their play on the island reflects the adults back home in Britain. This is a clever reminder for people to judge the children for their childish and dangerous behaviour, only for the book to turn the mirror back on the audience

  40. dick-lasagna Avatar

    I think the ending was great. Their little power trip was abruptly cut short, and everything they did hit them square in the face. I don’t remember it exactly, but I think Ralph breaks down crying, morning the death of innocence and his good friend piggy.

  41. WorrDragon Avatar

    This isn’t even an unpopular opinion, it’s just bad. 

    If you think the ending ruins the book, you missed the point of the book. The children’s immediate recognition of a single adult and their subsequent emotional breakdown is the climax and resolution all in one go. It represents the wild nature of humanity without social rules or instruction, and how we as a species are only kept intact by our responsibility to uphold those rules for each other’s sake.

    It’s fucking brilliant. 

  42. BBennison9 Avatar

    I agree with you. It is by far the worst part of the book and I think that it would have been against their new view of the world to just go with the Naval officer. They were against authority and adults but after seeing the first adult in a while they just give in to them in an instant. I do think the author was trying to make a point with the ending but that doesn’t mean it is a good ending. The better ending would have been if they teamed up together, killed the officer and inadvertently doomed their society without realizing it.

  43. The_TransGinger Avatar

    Boooooo, but upvoted. Unpopular opinions are what this is for. Good job.

  44. ShreddingUruk Avatar

    It’s a metaphor dummy.

  45. monkeetoes82 Avatar

    Did you just now read this book? I got an idea, go read “Of Mice and Men.”

  46. an_actual_pangolin Avatar

    I like it. It’s tonal whiplash, like “oh yeah… we were all civilised and we’ll-behaved once, weren’t we?” Like waking up from a dream.

  47. Jvk_1996 Avatar

    This is how I feel about Mamma Mia.

  48. Dsb0208 Avatar

    I think the point is how after having an adult again, they stop being monsters. Once they get a bit of structure and society again, they immediately drop the primal way they’ve been acting

    It’s almost comic at how just the presence of an adult representing society and structure is enough for them to instantly, mid chase, stop trying to kill each other and just go back to crying the way a 12 year old normally would if he was stranded on an island