Extract

Maybe there is a beast... maybe it's only us.

A choir of English schoolboys, still wearing their black cloaks, arrives on an uninhabited island after a plane crash and proceeds to build a civilization that collapses into ritual murder. William Golding published this novel in 1954, dismantling the optimistic island-adventure tradition by asking what happens when adults disappear and children are left with nothing but their own nature. The conch shell that serves as the instrument of democracy grows fainter with each chapter until it shatters entirely. Golding, who had commanded a naval vessel during the war, wrote not an allegory but a diagnosis. The beast the boys hunt across the island is, of course, already among them. It always was.