Blog #1: My Summer Reading Favorite

I enjoyed reading The Lord of the Flies by William Golding more than White Fang by Jack London for several reasons.

First, the character types in both books were completely different, at least in my eye. In The Lord of the Flies, the characters were people who talked. In White Fang, most of them were either dogs or wolves, and they used actions as speech. It was a little harder to figure out what conversations between two or more characters were about. While that is not my main reason for liking The Lord of the Flies better, part of it comes from the fact that I found the style of White Fang kind of annoying after a time.

Second, the conflict in The Lord of the Flies was clearly defined. The intensity between Ralph (the good) and Jack (the bad) was so interesting, I couldn’t put the book down. This is perhaps the largest factor in my determination. Reading The Lord of the Flies, I couldn’t help but feel Ralph’s frustration with the others, especially about keeping the fire going. I can relate to his frustration, because I too have experienced the feeling of being the only one who thinks a certain way, and all efforts to persuade others had failed. Back to the book, it was this “stirred emotion” that made reading The Lord of the Flies more enjoyable than White Fang. Also, as mentioned earlier, I couldn’t put it down – it had my attention.

Lastly, the whole topic of the summer assignment was the focused around the question, “Is man inherently evil?” I found that White Fang was more complicated to relate to this theme than The Lord of the Flies. Perhaps because The Lord of the Flies was so easy to figure out, it made White Fang all the more difficult. That aside, both books related to the theme, The Lord of the Flies was just clearer.

In closing, while White Fang was somewhat enjoyable to read, I enjoyed reading The Lord of the Flies more. As stated above, the characters were actual people and they actually talked. The conflict was easy to see and easy to understand. And, the main theme was more relatable to The Lord of the Flies. All in all, they were both good books, The Lord of the Flies just came out on top for me.