‘Lord of the Flies: The Graphic Novel’ HC (review)

Adapted by Aimée de Jongh
Based on the book by William Golding
Published by Penguin Classics

You’ve probably read author William Golding’s 1954 bestseller, Lord of the Flies. It’s been required reading in high schools all across the United States for decades. I personally have sold hundreds of copies of it. When I was an English Department aide in high school back in the’70s we would get full boxes of it in, along with many other classic novels, which I would open and shelve neatly in a storage room.

Nine years after the book came out, Lord of the Flies was made into a movie. The movie was well-received by audiences and critics, alike, but I don’t believe that it would be considered a classic.

Neither would the remake that came out nearly three decades later, in 1990. Film buff that I am, it may surprise you to know that I have never seen either film version of the book.

It may also surprise you that I have never read the book! Despite all the copies of Lord of the Flies that have passed through my hands over half a century, I never opened a single one. For whatever reason, my AP English class in high school gravitated more toward Daphne Du Maurier, Agatha Christie, Ray Bradbury, and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Now, today, I have finally read Lord of the Flies—the graphic novel. Adapted and drawn by Dutch comics creator Aimée de Jongh, utilizing Golding’s actual prose and dialogue, I can’t help but feel I’ve been missing out all these years.

Of course, I knew the basic storyline.

It was hard to grow up back in the day without at least becoming aware of what the classics were about, even if you never read them. It’s been re-interpreted many times from Gilligan’s Island to Lost. Basically, you have a group of people stranded on a desert island. In this case, however, it’s a group of young children—all British school boys—who survive a disastrous airplane crash. The story follows them as they at first try to work together to get rescued.

As time goes on, however, and no rescue materializes, they first create rules, only to find that some people of any age just can’t play by the rules. That’s when they find themselves splitting up into different tribes. With no adult supervision whatsoever, children play rough.

Golding uses some poetic prose as he weaves the boys’ story into various metaphors for societal violence and human nature. Their descent into savagery is so gradual as to be unexpected, and therefore all the more powerful.

But this is a graphic novel. What about the images? They’re perfect. Aimée de Jongh previously won me over with her graphic novel Days of Sand. What I wrote about her at the time was that her book was “beautifully, expertly drawn by a woman who shows a true mastery of the graphic novel form.” I stand by that here.

She paces the scenes well for the different medium, using the pictures to add a significant amount of atmosphere and visual tension to Golding’s story and words. The boys, especially the “littleuns,” alternate between looking like newspaper comic strip kids and foreboding bullies. She’s particularly adept at adding emotion to the boys’ faces in ways that underline the scenes in play.

There isn’t much back matter to the book, only a couple of pages of watercolor roughs, but the story stands on its own and doesn’t need much else to sell it. In an earlier review of The Great Gatsby, I suggested that some classics might not make the best source material for graphic adaptations. Lord of the Flies, as adapted by Aimée de Jongh, is clear proof that this is not always the case.

Booksteve recommends.