History YMMV / LordOfTheFlies

** [[https://storygirl000.tumblr.com/post/618313225282453504/the-real-lord-of-the-flies-what-happened-when-six Yet another interpretation]] is that it wasn't meant to be commentary on any of the above -- that the intended message was simply [[UpperClassTwit "Upper-class]] [[KidsAreCruel English schoolboys are assholes"]], based on Golding's own experiences with them.

* FanficFuel: None of the boys' have their pasts revealed in the book (except for some details about Ralph and Piggy), we also is their fate after the island.

** The tribal dance around the fire in the second movie. The gratuitous slow motion didn't help, either.

* DiagnosedByTheAudience:
** Piggy shows signs of having autism as he is rather introverted with minimal social skills.
** Jack displays signs of Antisocial Personality Disorder. Someone with this disorder ''[[https://psychcentral.com/disorders/antisocial-personality-disorder/symptoms/ frequently lacks empathy and tends to be callous, cynical, and contemptuous of the feelings, rights, and sufferings of others]]'', but also possesses an ''inflated and arrogant self-appraisal (e.g., feels that ordinary work is beneath them or lacks a realistic concern about their current problems or their future)'', is ''excessively opinionated, self-assured, or cocky, displays a glib, superficial charm, and can be quite voluble and verbally facile'', which is Jack's characterization to a T, even more so than Roger's. This disorder is clinically diagnosed solely after the age of 18, so none of these two characters can be one hundred percent confirmed to be a case of it. The only other point against this diagnosis is his brief shock at [[spoiler:Piggy's death]], which can be interpreted as remorse.

** One camp believes that the book's view on HumansAreTheRealMonsters is outdated as a whole and that HumansAreGood when faced with peril, preferring cooperation to hostility. Let's hope they fare better with that idea than Simon and Piggy.

* ParodyDisplacement: Far fewer people remember the works (such as Creator/JulesVerne's ''Literature/TwoYearsVacation'' and R. M. Ballantyne's ''Literature/CoralIsland'') that ''Lord of the Flies'' was parodying than they do ''Lord of the Flies'' itself. The fact that it ''was'' a DeconstructiveParody in the first place is also not well-known.

* ParodyDisplacement: Far fewer people remember the works (such as Creator/JulesVerne's ''Two Years' Vacation'' and R. M. Ballantyne's ''Coral Island'') that ''Lord of the Flies'' was parodying than they do ''Lord of the Flies'' itself. The fact that it ''was'' a DeconstructiveParody in the first place is also not well-known.

*** This brings further dissonance in that their direct foil, Ralph and his group, explicitely wish to channel the "proper british spirit," framing britishness as the upstanding moral standard to be followed. Nowadays, with the horrors of the British empire and colonialism coming to light, it is generally accepted that the british were rather more morally dubious than the indigenous people they were supposedly "civilising." Hence, it comes off less as a critique of british morals but more as one of people who decide to reject the unfailable british ideal in favor of "inferior" ethnic ideals.

** Another interpretation is the danger of war and paranoia. The boys deteriorate partly due to their fear of the imagined "beastie", this fear grows when a soldier's corpse appears on the island, and the arrival of the naval officer and his massive warship also shows how the supposedly mature adult world isn't much better than how they boys behaved on the island.

* SpecialEffectsFailure: [[spoiler:Piggy's death by boulder to the head]] is meant to be a swift and shocking moment, as well as particularly brutal. But in the 90's film, [[spoiler:the impact just has it [[StyrofoamRocks bounce off]] of his chest almost weightlessly, a cartoonishly loud "THWACK" sound, and you get a solid second of seeing an unharmed Piggy falling backwards and blatantly tossing his things to the side before the camera cuts to blood suddenly spread across his ''head''.]] Surprisingly, this is only ''half'' of the reason the scene jumps straight into {{Narm}}.

** One camp believes that the book's view on HumansAreTheRealMonsters is outdated as a whole and that HumansAreGood when faced with peril, preferring cooperation to hostility. Let's hope they fair better with that idea than Simon and Piggy.

** [[https://storygirl000.tumblr.com/post/618313225282453504/the-real-lord-of-the-flies-what-happened-when-six Yet another interpretation]] is that it wasn't meant to be commentary on any of the above -- that the intended message was simply [[UpperClassTwit "upper-class]] [[KidsAreCruelEnglish schoolboys are assholes"]], based on Golding's own experiences with them.

** [[https://storygirl000.tumblr.com/post/618313225282453504/the-real-lord-of-the-flies-what-happened-when-six Yet another interpretation]] is that it wasn't meant to be commentary on any of the above -- that the intended message was simply [[KidsAreCruel "upper-class English schoolboys are assholes"]], based on Golding's own experiences with them.

** As mentionned above in UnfortunateImplications, the boys who reject order are described as "savages," paint themselves in tribal colours, hunt with spears and make ritual dances and bloody offerings to an inherently evil pagan deity, making them seen like the sort of racist caricature of polynesians that was popular amongst British empire apologists. The fact that Piggy refers to them by the n-word at one point does not help.

** [[https://storygirl000.tumblr.com/post/618313225282453504/the-real-lord-of-the-flies-what-happened-when-six Yet another interpretation]] is that it wasn't meant to be commentary on any of the above -- that the intended message was simply [[ChildrenAreMonsters "upper-class English schoolboys are assholes"]], based on Golding's own experiences with them.

** Ralph and Jack. While Ralph is no saint himself, he definitely is one of the more innocent boys on the island, especially when compared to Jack. Ralph turns from an immature kid into a kind and considerate boy, not to mention that he is completely broken in the end, while Jack starts the same as Ralph, but he goes into the opposite direction, as he becomes even more malicious, abusive and sadistic in the end. Ralph also represents the civil, moral part of the human mind, while Jack represents the primal instincts, the darkest, most savage part. Then there is the whole blonde hair-red hair contrast which strengthens this implication, as older beliefs considered fair hair to be of good will, while red hair was supposed to suggest evil.

* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot: As said above, Golding went for an all-male school because he believed that, had the book included both boys and girls, a realistic story would have inevitably focused on their budding sexuality. However, it's easy to argue that his intended topics, those of collectivity, morality and politics, would have only strengthened from including it, if anything because even non-Freudian psychology and anthropology regard sex as another ubiquitous factor in human society. (Of course, it deters from using this idea that, with all the realistic implications and [[RapeTropes possible outcomes]], doing so could have potentially turned an already dark story into something even darker.)

** Of course, another camp believes that the book's view on HumansAreTheRealMonsters is outdated as a whole and that HumansAreGood when faced with peril, preferring cooperation to hostility. Let's hope they fair better with that idea than Simon and Piggy.

* AmbiguousDisorder:
** Piggy shows signs of having autism as he is rather introverted with minimal social skills.
** Jack displays signs of Antisocial Personality Disorder. Someone with this disorder ''[[https://psychcentral.com/disorders/antisocial-personality-disorder/symptoms/ frequently lacks empathy and tends to be callous, cynical, and contemptuous of the feelings, rights, and sufferings of others]]'', but also possesses an ''inflated and arrogant self-appraisal (e.g., feels that ordinary work is beneath them or lacks a realistic concern about their current problems or their future)'', is ''excessively opinionated, self-assured, or cocky, displays a glib, superficial charm, and can be quite voluble and verbally facile'', which is Jack's characterization to a T, even more so than Roger's. This disorder is clinically diagnosed solely after the age of 18, so none of these two characters can be one hundred percent confirmed to be a case of it. The only other point against this diagnosis is his brief shock at [[spoiler:Piggy's death]], which can be interpreted as remorse.

* WhatAnIdiot:
** Piggy telling Ralph about a nickname he doesn't want to be called.
** When Simon discovers that the beast isn't real, he warns the other boys during a storm instead of waiting for it to pass. They mistake him for the beast and kill him.

* AccidentalAesop: Teach your sheltered kid survival skills. It may come in handy in the future. Being an honor student means nothing if they don't have these skills. The other big reason why everything fell apart aside from the lack of adult supervision was because the cast are all {{city mouse}}s that have no clue how to survive in the remote island, only getting by with a badly made smoke signal and rampant hunting.

* AlternateAesopInterpretation: The book was written just to say HumansAreBastards and HobbesWasRight, a TakeThat to all the RousseauWasRight works of the time. Some have read it as a [[FairForItsDay slightly friendlier]] {{a|nAesop}}esop against the racial stereotypes of the era, showing that under the wrong circumstances even British schoolboys can fall into savagery just as easily as any "inferior" cultures. Granted, said "savagery" has decidedly [[https://aspiringwarriorlibrarian.tumblr.com/post/675130071334404096/it-is-but-its-also-super-obvious-that-goldings racist overtones]] through modern eyes, but even then sends the message that [[FairForItsDay such "savagery" isn't inherent to "lesser" races but is arguably inherent to the human condition]]. (And notably, Golding himself [[https://mbird.com/literature/william-golding-explains-lord-of-the-flies/ went on record]] that even the adults that rescue the kids at the end aren't as far out of "savagery" as they appear.)

* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: Usually considered the best part about the 1990s film adaptation

** Upon [[http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/lord-of-the-flies-1990 reviewing]] the 1990 film version, Creator/RogerEbert argued that thanks to real-life violence amongst gang members, particularly in Chicago, where Ebert resided, the idea of kids killing each other is not as shocking as it was in 1954, when the book was first published, or 1963, when the original film was released. He also wrote that when the novel was first published, readers would have most likely sided with Ralph because of his humanist leanings, yet by 1990, world politics had changed to the extent that some readers might find themselves siding with capitalist Jack.

* AlternateAesopInterpretation: The book was written just to say HumansAreBastards and HobbesWasRight, a TakeThat to all the RousseauWasRight works of the time. Some have read it as a [[FairForItsDay slightly friendlier]] {{a|nAesop}}esop against the racial stereotypes of the era, showing that under the wrong circumstances even British schoolboys can fall into savagery just as easily as any "inferior" cultures. Alas, this is undermined by the [[https://aspiringwarriorlibrarian.tumblr.com/post/675130071334404096/it-is-but-its-also-super-obvious-that-goldings racist overtones]] of the kind of "savagery" that subsumes the boys.

* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot: As said above, Golding went for an all-male school because he believed that, had the book included both boys and girls, a realistic story would have inevitably focused on their budding sexuality. However, it's easy to argue that his intended topics, those of collectivity, morality and politics, would have only strengthened from including it, if anything because even non-Freudian psychology and anthropology regard sex as another ubiquitous factor in human society. (Of course, it deters from using this idea that, with all the realistic implications and possible outcomes, doing so could have potentially turned an already dark story into something even darker.)

* DracoInLeatherPants: Jack Merridew has probably the most fans in the fandom, even though he's a jerk and control freak who quickly grows into a sociopathic mess. Roger also has a lot of fans.

* FoeYay: Quite a lot, between Jack and Ralph. One particular quote: ''Now it was Ralph's turn to flush but he spoke despairingly [...] "Why do you hate me?" The boys stirred uneasily, as though something indecent had been said. The silence lengthened.''

** The HoYay (FoeYay, too) between Jack and Ralph has become this in itself. There are some specific things that serve as sub-memes under this category: