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Article: 50 years later, `Lord of the Flies' retains disturbing buzz.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)
- Article from:
- Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service
- Article date:
- January 14, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Byline: John Mark Eberhart
``Lord of the Flies: 50th Anniversary Edition'' by William Golding; Perigee Books ($22.95)
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In the scant decade from 1951 to 1960, three books were published that would become rites of passage from American adolescence to adulthood. All three addressed the complex problem of evil.
The sunniest was Harper Lee's ``To Kill a Mockingbird,'' published in 1960, which suggested that evil was mostly a product of ignorance. Merely eradicating ignorance, then, could make for better human beings and better societies.
Nine years earlier J.D. Salinger had published a book a bit darker: ``The Catcher in the ...