My Life In Books: Beth Kirkbride

Lord of the Flies – William Golding 

It is the summer holidays, and I am inordinately bored. Complaining to my Dad about my lack of things to do, he tells me that if I read and review “difficult” literature then he will give me £10 per essay. This seems like my dream job: not only do I get to read and talk about books, but I get paid to do so!

It is not until later in my adolescence I will realise just how much I have benefited from my Dad’s scheme to stop me pestering him. I will have already read To Kill a Mockingbird by the time I come to study it at GCSE, and Shelley’s Frankenstein will have been well-thumbed when I dig it out once again for my study at A Level. Who said that bribery was bad, eh?

For me, Lord of the Flies signifies a time where I began to challenge myself by what I read. Admittedly, as a twelve year old I didn’t fully comprehend the significance of Golding’s critique of the nature of man, or the philosophical arguments of the individual vs. the collective. But I did try to unpick these ideas, as I followed Golding’s dystopic tale of British boys on a desert island and their attempts to govern themselves, which have disastrous consequences. 

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