Lord of the Flies musical choir under an established leader. With the exception of Sam and Eric and the choirboys, they appear never to have encountered each other before. The book portrays their descent into savagery; left to themselves on a paradisiacal island, far from modern civilization, the well-educated children regress to a primitive state. Golding wrote his book as a counterpoint to R.M. Ballantyne's youth novel "The Coral Island" (1858), and included specific references to it, such as the rescuing naval officer's description of the children's initial attempts at civilised cooperation as "a jolly good show, like the Coral Island". Golding's three central
Lord of the World is not as well known as the dystopian writings of Evgeny Zamyatin, George Orwell, and Aldous Huxley, "Lord of the World" continues to have many admirers—especially among Conservative and Traditionalist Catholics. In a 2005 essay, Joseph Pearce wrote that, while Orwell and Huxley's novels are "great literature", they "are clearly inferior works of prophecy." Pearce explains that while "the political dictatorships" that inspired Huxley and Orwell "have had their day", "Benson's novel-nightmare... is coming true before our very eyes." Pearce elaborates, The world depicted in "Lord of the World" is one where creeping secularism and godless humanism have triumphed over