William Golding was losing  his faith in humanity. Serving aboard a British destroyer  in World War II, the philosophy teacher turned Royal Navy  lieutenant was constantly confronted by the atrocities of his fellow man. And when he returned to England  to find Cold War superpowers threatening one another  with nuclear annihilation, he was forced to interrogate  the very roots of human nature. These musings on the inevitability  of violence would inspire his first and most famous  novel: "Lord of the Flies." After being rejected by 21 publishers, the novel was finally published in 1954. It takes its title from Beelzebub,  a demon associated with pride and war— two themes very much  at the heart of Golding’s book. The novel was a bleak satire  of a classic island adventure story, a popular genre where young boys  get shipwrecked in exotic locations. The protagonists in these stories  are able to master nature while evading the dangers  posed by their new environments. The genre also endorsed  the problematic colonialist narrative found in many British works at the time, in which the boys teach the island’s  native inhabitants their allegedly superior British values. Golding’s satire even goes so far  as to explicitly use the setting and character names from R.M. Ballantyne’s "Coral Island"— one of the most beloved  island adventure novels. But while Ballantyne’s book  promised readers "pleasure... profit... and unbounded  amusement,” Golding’s had darker things in store. "Lord of the Flies" opens  with the boys already on the island, but snippets of conversation hint  at their terrifying journey— their plane had been shot down in  the midst of an unspecified nuclear war. The boys, ranging in age from 6 to 13,  are strangers to each other. All except for a choir, clad in black  uniforms and led by a boy named Jack. Just as in Ballantyne’s "Coral Island," the boy’s new home appears  to be a paradise— with fresh water, shelter,  and abundant food sources. But even from the novel’s opening pages, a macabre darkness hangs over  this seemingly tranquil situation. The boys’ shadows are compared  to “black, bat-like creatures” while the choir itself first appears as “something dark... fumbling along”  the beach. Within hours of their arrival, the boys are already trading terrifying  rumors of a vicious “beastie” lurking in the woods. From these ominous beginnings, Golding’s narrative reveals  how quickly cooperation unravels without the presence  of an adult authority. Initially, the survivors try  to establish some sense of order. A boy named Ralph blows into a conch shell to assemble the group, and delegate tasks. But as Jack vies  for leadership with Ralph, the group splinters  and the boys submit to their darker urges. The mob of children soon forgets  their plans for rescue, silences the few voices of reason, and blindly follows Jack to the edge  of the island, and the edge of sanity. The novel’s universal themes  of morality, civility, and society have made it a literary classic, satirizing both conventions of its time  and long held beliefs about humanity. While island adventure stories  often support colonialism, "Lord of the Flies"  turns this trope on its head. Rather than cruelly casting native  populations as stereotypical savages, Golding transforms his angelic British  schoolboys into savage caricatures. And as the boys fight  their own battle on the island, the far more destructive war  that brought them there continues off the page. Even if the boys were to be rescued  from themselves, what kind of world would  they be returning to? With so few references  to anchor the characters in a specific place or period,  the novel feels truly timeless— an examination of human nature  at its most bare. And though not all readers  may agree with Golding’s grim view, "Lord of the Flies" is unsettling enough to challenge even the most  determined optimist.