I didn’t miss reading this when I was younger – it just seemed like a good time to revisit it. Golding has written that the theme of his book is “to trace the defects of society back to the defects of human nature. The moral is that the shape of a society must depend on the ethical nature of the individual.” It is tempting to conclude that society will descend into savagery if immoral people are in charge, and all we need do is promote those who are moral. The larger truth, though, is that dangers to civil society are never far away; they are rooted in human nature, not the nature of particular humans. The descent into savagery on the island had as much do to with the failures of the “moral” characters (Ralph, Piggy and Simon) as the others. In a time of apparent threats to honesty, decency and the rule of law, it is wise to ask whether these threats have roots in the failures of those who promote those values as well as the behavior of those who seem to have little regard for them.
I read a hard copy of this book and recommend the 2016 Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition I read. It has insightful introductory and following essays by Lois Lowry, Stephen King, E.M Forester and others.