Compendium of Key Discrepancies Between This Film and the Original Novel

This topic comes up fairly often, and has been addressed elsewhere on this board, but I thought I'd assemble a full compilation of the important discrepancies between the plot, setting, characters, themes and motifs of the original William Golding novel and the 1990 film, all in one place for easy reference. (I wrote these on the film's Wikipedia page a while back, only to have them edited out.) High school students, feel free to use this as cheating material if you tried to avoid reading the book by watching this movie.

The film follows the same basic plot as the original novel: A group of young schoolboys find themselves stranded on a remote, uninhabited island, and initially attempt to form a civilized society among themselves by establishing rules, leadership, order, and plans to seek rescue. As time passes the established rules and order break down, as conflicts arise about priorities and the boys succumb to their more primitive, base instincts, including the irrational fear of an unknown "monster" lurking on the island with them. Eventually the group splits into two factions, one civilized, one savage, with the latter gradually absorbing and very nearly destroying the former along with the island itself. The tale is meant to illustrate the flaws in human nature that drive mankind to savagery, bloodlust and self-destruction, with only societal constructs to keep those instincts in check; humanity at war with itself.

The film attempts to simplify, update and modernize the story for contemporary audiences by using American military-school cadets as its characters in place of British schoolboys, and setting it in the late 1980's. The film adds certain plot elements that are absent from the novel, most notably the presence of an adult at the start, while reordering, reinterpreting or eliminating several key elements of the original storyline and reimagining at least two of the main characters. In general, the film's plot gets closer to that of the novel as it goes on. Nevertheless, much of the substance of Golding's allegory of human nature is diluted or lost in the adaptation due to changes in setting, plot, and character.

The novel, published in 1954, is set at an indeterminate time resembling the mid-20th century; the exact year or decade is never revealed. The narrative suggests that a world war, possibly an atomic war, has broken out and children are being evacuated from Britain by air. The film, by contrast, is specifically set in the late 1980s (based on dialogue about the television program "ALF" being aired on Mondays at 8 p.m.); it contains no hint of any war going on in the outside world, nor of why the boys were traveling.

Given the differences in time and the characters' national origin, both the dialogue and cultural attitudes of the characters in the film are very different from those in the novel. The modern American boys in the film are rather more coarse and vulgar than Golding's mid-century British lads. The film's dialogue also contains contemporary pop-culture references such as ALF, Miss Piggy and Rambo which obviously didn't exist when the novel was published; however, the novel does not contain any cultural references of this kind, as Golding did not intend it to take place in any particular year or decade.

In the film, the boys are of differing ethnicities and creeds; among them are one African-American boy and one Hispanic boy, one boy wears a cross, another wears the Star of David, one has a Southern accent, and so forth. In the book, they are all white and British, and their individual backgrounds, including religious affiliations, are not stated. This is an important allegorical element in the novel, as Golding intended to create a generic and homogeneous population with no obvious or conventional sources of conflict (such as race, nationality, religion and economic status) at the outset of the story.

Golding also gave his characters no shared history; when they arrive on the island, they don't seem to know each other even though they presumably come from the same school and were on the same transport plane. In the film, the characters are already familiar to each other, know each other's names and, being military cadets, have an established system of authority among them. Again, Golding's intention was that the boys bring no conflicts or hierarchies with them onto the island.

Accordingly, in the novel, there were no adults present on the island at any time, which is highly important to establishing the novel's themes about human nature in the absence of authority and other social constructs. In the film, the airplane pilot survived the crash and is present on the island, albeit in a near-catatonic state, for a time before wandering off and disappearing. This sets him up to essentially play the role of the dead parachutist from the novel and thus provide an avatar for the "monster" (which in the novel is called a "beast" or "beastie"); his presence serves no other purpose. Indeed, the screenplay directly and explicitly contradicts the novel, which places great emphasis on Ralph's realization that the boys are alone and on their own with no grown-ups at all, by having Ralph say to the others at the first assembly that "the important thing is, we're not by ourselves."

The "beastie" element itself, which is the novel's central symbol and critical to its allegorical function, is handled very differently here, and in a way that severely diminishes its thematic and symbolic value. In the novel, the idea is introduced almost immediately, when the boy with the mulberry-colored birthmark whispers something about it to Piggy at the boys' first assembly. The nascent and ever-growing fear of this unknown, unseen, undefined threat becomes the catalyst for the division of factions and the breakdown of order on the island. In the film, the element is completely absent until after the boy encounters the deranged pilot in the cave, roughly halfway through the film's running time, by which point the factions had already split and order had already started to break down.

The deranged pilot/dead parachutist function differently in a thematic sense due to these plot disparities. In the novel, the parachutist literally falls out of the sky, unseen, so there is no reason for the boys to have known what it was or expected to find it. The boys in the film, in an obvious plot hole, simply fail to connect the encounter in the cave with the missing pilot. Also, since the pilot was alive and appeared to lunge at the boy who wandered into the cave, it was at least plausible for the boys in the film to believe there might be a dangerous creature among them, whereas the boys in the novel feared something no one had seen, later manifested as naught but an inert corpse. In the novel the encounter merely reinforces and validates their belief in, and fear of, the "beast;" in the film it is the direct cause. Golding's point was that the "beast" came from within, not from without; the film appears to make the opposite point.

The character of Piggy is very different in the film than in the novel, in which he is cerebral, courageous, practical, wise beyond his years, and very strong mentally and emotionally, despite his physical limitations and the abuse he takes as a result thereof. In the film, he could best be described as a sanctimonious crybaby. Piggy never cries in the novel; he weeps openly and often in the film. As an example, although they occur at different points in the story, when his glasses are broken in the novel he reacts with fist-shaking defiance ("Just you wait!"); in the film he's reduced to a blubbering mess, sobbing and whimpering uncontrollably.

The character of Jack is also somewhat different in the film, in which he is given a backstory of juvenile delinquency and thus is already predisposed to antisocial behavior at the outset, which presumably was meant to foreshadow his role in the story. In the novel, however, he begins as (quite literally) a choirboy, a leader, top of his class, which lends great irony and poignancy to his later descent into bloodlust and demagoguery.

Simon is shown in the novel to be rather mystical and clairvoyant, as well as in touch with nature; there are a number of passages that suggest he is meant to be a Christ-like figure. He also has fainting spells and is regarded by some of the other boys as odd or weird. The film implies some of this. In addition, the novel has Simon experiencing a hallucination in which the "Lord of the Flies" (in the form of the impaled boar's head) seems to speak to him. The passage is critical, as Simon is the only one on the island who understands the true nature of the "beast," but neither this film nor the 1963 version attempted to realize his hallucination on-screen.

In the book, the election of the leader is very important, while in the film it is not. This is in part because the boys in the film are military cadets and therefore already have an established chain of command, in which Ralph is already the ranking cadet, so his "election" is essentially a formality. In the novel it is much more significant, because Ralph did not have that sort of established authority and prestige, and Jack -- as head of the choir -- did. The novel's Jack expected to be the leader, and when the boys chose Ralph instead he was upset and wounded by it. By contrast, the film's Jack is not the head of anything when they first arrive (there is no "choir" or counterpart thereto), and his cadet rank and position are never mentioned; indeed, his only qualification for leadership expressed on-screen is that he is "the oldest," although he is not noticeably older or more mature than the other boys. (Chris Furrh is, in fact, the oldest among the principal actors, about a month older than co-star Balthazar Getty.)

At the end of the film, a critical moment from the novel is left out (and was also left out of the 1963 film version). The naval officer who arrives to rescue the boys asks who is in charge. Ralph holds up his hand and says "I am," while Jack, standing nearby with Piggy's broken glasses hanging from his loincloth, lowers his head and says nothing. This is the only glimmer of hope for humanity that Golding gives the reader at the conclusion of the book, and it is conspicuously absent from both film versions, in which there is practically no interaction at all between Ralph and the naval officer.

There are a slew of minor discrepancies as well, some of which I'll post separately, the rest of which I'll leave to the comment thread.