Lord of the Flies

Lord of the Flies

It is a well known fact that when a book is adapted into a movie, many changes are made. It is because movies are a visual medium, where it is hard to show certain parts of a novel, the character's thought, for an example. The filmmakers has to "rewrite" the book, change different scenes, in order to eliminate the possibility of making it a 3 hours film when it does not need to be. If the movie was 100 percent according to the book, all the movies would have ended up being much longer than viewers would want it to be. So, overall, there is always a difference between books and movies due to the fact that they are different type of media. The novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding and the film "Lord of the Flies" directed by Harry Hook both has the main theme of how all human beings have a dark side that can trigger a meltdown of individual or community moral standards if this dark side takes over reason and rightful thinking. Nonetheless, Hook had to "rewrite" what Golding has written in order to make the film into a 90 minutes film instead of a three hours film.

In the movie, the boys who were stranded on the island are American and are running away from a war. In the book, the boys are British and are running away from war also. I think Hook decided to make the boys American because Hook himself is American so this way he would be more comfortable working with. Golding, on the other hand is British, which is probably why he chose the boys to be British. Another possibility is that the book was written during WWII where the movie was during Vietnam. I believe that making the kids British is a better choice due to the fact that they are more proper and it shows more of a difference between their civilized behavior and their vicious behavior. Though this difference does not take off any extra time, it is still a significant difference that separates the film and the novel apart.

One thing the movie lacks is the symbolization of the conch shell. Golding uses the conch to show many different ideas in the book by setting the story on an island. Ralph and Piggy discover the conch shell when they first arrived on the beach and use it to summon the boys together after the plane crash separates them. Right away, the Golding illustrates that the conch shell as a powerful symbol of authority where one must hold the conch in order to speak. Order is displayed by the meetings and gatherings that it used to call and hold. The conch also represented power throughout the book. It was used at the beginning as the children voted for Ralph to be the head chief just because he was the one with the conch,

"Him with the shell."

"Ralph! Ralph!"

"Let him be chief with the trumpet thing" (Golding 22).

This excerpt demonstrates how leadership skills, responsibility, and power come from the conch.

In the movie the boys all come together on a boat where they are familiar with each other. It doesn't show the coming together of the boys. This eliminates extra time the filmmakers would have to explain how the boys comes together and instead right away, Hook makes it seem that the boys were already friends. The conch did not show it had a lot of power during the "election" because the boys just scream out who they want to be their leader. Unlike the book, the boys in the film never said they want Ralph to be the leader because he holds the conch but instead he was colonel.

In comparison both the book and movie shows that conch