Comparison
Lord of the Flies vs The Great Gatsby
How Lord of the Flies by William Golding and The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgeraldcompare on reading level, grade placement, curriculum overlap, and shared themes — derived from primary-source citations on each book’s ReadingList page.
Lord of the Flies
William Golding
- Lexile
- 770L
- Grades
- 9–12
- Published
- 1954
- Pages
- 224
- Genre
- Allegorical Fiction
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Lexile
- 1070L
- Grades
- 10–12
- Published
- 1925
- Pages
- 180
- Genre
- Literary Fiction
At a glance
- Lexile differential
- 300L (Lord of the Flies: 770L · The Great Gatsby: 1070L)
- Grade-range overlap
- Grades 10–12
- Year-of-publication gap
- 29 years (1954 vs 1925)
- Page-count gap
- 44 pages (224 vs 180)
- Shared curricula
- 6 of 5
- Shared themes
- 0 of 12
Reading-level difference
The 300-point Lexile gap puts The Great Gatsby roughly substantially more demanding than Lord of the Flies. Lexile differences below 50L typically reflect equivalent decoding load (sentence length + word frequency); differences above 200L cross developmental reading-band boundaries. More on how Lexile measures work →
Curriculum overlap
Both books appear in 6 shared curriculum frameworks:
Themes
Only Lord of the Flies
- civilization vs savagery
- human nature
- loss of innocence
- group psychology
- power and leadership
- fear
Only The Great Gatsby
- American Dream
- wealth and class
- obsession
- illusion and reality
- Jazz Age
- unrequited love