“Jolly good show. Like The Coral Island.”(Golding 248) The naval officer who rescues the boys in the novel Lord of the Flies compares their story to the one the boys in The Coral Island go through. Ignorant of the conflict and savagery present during their stay, he imagines they had fun and lived crazy new adventures just like in the novel, The Coral Island. The Coral Island written by R.M. Ballantyne in 1858 and set on an island of the Pacific Ocean, is about how a group of British boys miraculously survive a shipwreck and find themselves on a paradisiac island with everything they could have ever wished for. In contrast, Lord Of The Flies by William Golding is set in a deserted island in the middle of nowhere at the time of a nuclear war. This allegorical novel is a controversial version of the later novel. It narrates a group of young British boys’ wild experience when they are stranded on an island after their plane crashes during their evacuation from home. These two novels have a very similar outline. However, Golding’s version has been said to be a parody of Ballentine’s romanticised and fantasized …show more content…
Imagine being stranded on an inhabited island with a bunch of other kids and no adults. It could seem fun at first. But that feeling won’t last long, at least not in the case of Lord of the Flies. In an attempt to avoid the inevitable, the kids apoint a leader, trying to restore society’s rules and avoid chaos. In Lord of the Flies, the boys democratically institute a ‘chief’. This is their only connection with society and their old habits. - The trouble was, if you were a chief you had to think, you had to be wise. And then the occasion slipped by so that you could grab at a decision. This made you think; because thought was a valuable thing, that got results… Only, decided Ralph as he faced the chief’s seat, I can’t think.- (Golding