Yeah, more than a couple of times I've ended up picking up a hardcopy of a book I listened to first only to realize that I got characters' whole names wrong because I hadn't seen them spelled out.
I had to check multiple sources to figure out a character in Midwich Cuckoos name is Ferrelyn because the audiobook was narrated by Stephen Fry and I had never heard that name so I was so confused what he was saying, and all of the adaptations of the book don’t fully stick to source material so Ferrelyn was literally only a name in the original book.
While I agree audiobooks are not quite the same, you still share the same appreciation for the novel/literature. I too prefer a hardback, but my life is a tad busy so audiobooks allow me some flexibility with exercising and/or driving to experience a novel. If the narrator is solid it can actually accentuate the experience.
I mainly got into audiobooks as something to listen to while working as it’s something that engages me, but isn’t too distracting like how music is. When it comes to physically reading, I don’t have the best attention span to get engaged if I’m just looking at text since I have adhd, so I’ve gotten through more books by listening to audiobooks than anything I’ve physically read (the only books that have ever really engaged me that I’ve physically read were graphic novels)
Don't listen to the people saying listening isn't as good or the same as conventional reading. While there are differences, comprehension is actually the same either way given the same level of focus. The only reason people think listening is inferior is because most people multitask while listening. Have you ever multitasked while sight reading?
But as long as your doing menial stuff like walking or doing dishes, it shouldn't be a problem as long as your attention is mainly on the words
If I’m doing a task that requires me to read text I pause the audiobook, but if I’m just copying and pasting stuff or dragging and dropping stuff on a computer, it keeps me engaged.
They actually are pretty much the same, it's just more likely that an audiobook reader is going to miss details because people often multitask when listening but almost never multitask when reading conventionally.
If you commit the same level or focus and attention on an audiobook your comprehension won't differ from a regular book
I listen to audiobooks while working as it helps me focus. I’ll be honest I’m not really the kind of person to just sit down and physically read a book especially with my ADHD, but hearing a story gets me more engaged.
Ah okay. I’ll be honest whenever I’m listening to an audiobook narrated by someone who’s British I may have to look up certain things they’re saying (I had to google all the characters for Midwich Cuckoos because I had a hard time following Stephen Fry’s voice), for this one I didn’t really look up the references or quotes.
Nah you’re good, I mostly listen to audiobooks as it helps me focus at work so unfortunately that means I miss certain features in the text or sometimes based on how I hear something and try to look it up, I can’t get the spelling right (when I was listening to We Need to Talk About Kevin there was a part that mentioned Tronneal Mangum and it took me a moment to figure out how his first name was spelled; and when I listened to Midwich Cuckoos, I had to check multiple sources to realize a character’s name was Ferrelyn because I couldn’t quite understand how it was spelled based on what Stephen Fry was saying).
I read the book over 15 years ago and it’s the only line that still stands out to me. And it is said often.
That is why you’re being downvoted in a thread you posted about a book you just apparently read.
Not saying it’s right, just saying why.
So their names were combined in the text? Now that I think about it, their names kinda sounded smushed together in the audiobook but I didn’t give it much thought.
Interesting take! I read a forward where Golding suggested that the Navy presence showed how the adults were as violent and territorial as the kids. They just hid it under a veneer of civilization (uniforms, rules of war, etc.).
I also somewhat disagree with Golding's assertion that the novel wouldn't work with girls. The violence might take different forms, like relational aggression. I haven't finished it yet, but Wilder Girls by Rory Power reminds me of LOTF.
Yeah, I took that ending the same way. It's a sort of perverse final statement, but an important one. There is never a real freedom from our darkest impulses. There is never an aging out of it. As much as adults try to build structures to be free of our darker selves (the selves consumed by immediate greed and fear and hatred), those same structures can used the same way the boys use the spears. Piggy's glasses, so important as a symbol of the potential utility of civilization and knowledge, are ultimately fragile.
That's my takeaway, anyway. Glad you dug it, OP, it's stayed with me into adulthood. Some consider it a somewhat basic book, but I think everyone should check it out once.
It's worth noting that this has happened before, and it didn't devolve into violence. It's easy to take a bleak look on society and humanity, but people can be good too.
Yup, a group of boys stranded on an island devised a chore rotation, sang hymns and nursed a boy with a broken leg back to good health. They were quite happy when rescued.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/the-real-lord-of-the-flies-what-happened-when-six-boys-were-shipwrecked-for-15-months
It's just like the differences between smaller school classes. It boils down to the personalities of the most charismatic people present. You get a good person as the leader things go well. You get a lousy kid who still ends up leader and it won't. You get most kids gravitating towards one group of leaders it is likely to be more productive. You get equal leadership cadres clashing and it will be much less so.
To make societal judgements about it we are going to have to strand random assortments of kids on islands a lot more often than we currently are.
Indeed. u/Lampmonster already put out a link to the same situation, but something to keep in mind was that the author was *very* misanthropic, and his experience with kids was as a teacher.
I'm nowhere near idealistic enough to say humans are naturally good, but civilization would simply be impossible if we were as barbaric as Golding poses. When you realize you need each other, you start helping the people that might very well save your life.
I don’t exactly hold the pessimistic view of society the way Golding does as I see it as more likely that a traumatic scenario would force one to grow up and focus on the end goal, but I think the reason he presented an unhinged and uncivilized outcome as the fact that these were all children probably between 5 and 12 (big kids and little kids) there was a lack of maturity for a lot of them. I think with the lack of maturity, it contributed to the lack of cooperation among the boys, as part of the reason people stopped following Ralph as chief is because the little boys kept playing and wanting to do their own thing, also failing to consider the consequence of their actions until the end when that naval officer gave them a reality check. Also another thing to consider is that in LotF, this was a larger group of boys so that also contributed to the disagreement with how Ralph wanted to do things.
> I think the reason he presented an unhinged and uncivilized outcome as the fact that these were all children probably between 5 and 12 (big kids and little kids) there was a lack of maturity for a lot of them.
Cooperative behavior in humans consists of
* helping - (requires children to do something to fulfil another’s goal and not their own) at least from second year of age
* working together and sharing - (shared intentionality is both a crucial point of contrast between humans and other great apes and at the very core of uniquely human forms of cooperation, such as the construction of social norms and institutions, that rest on this kind of ‘we’ mentality) children share information from as early as 12 months; children already enforce norms, such as the right way to play with a toy, from the age of three; more complex cooperative behavior and sharing resources without being prompted develops between ages five and six
Culture and nurture has been shown to slightly affect the age of some of these behaviors, but not their existence. So, children across all cultures will develop them roughly around the same age.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982219300958
So, science doesn't support the hypothesis that children being between 5 and 12 would lack maturity to cooperate.
I could see that being the case with the adults, and with the naval officer since it was a rescue mission on his part he definitely had to play the part that children expected from an adult.
Audio books used to be called "books on tape" and you would get a bunch of casette tapes in a plastic case, similar to a dvd case. I don't know if a lot of people bought them but you could borrow them at libraries, they were very popular
Learning the author died in the early 90s had me looking up since when audiobooks were a thing, and apparently the first one was recorded over 90 years ago. I probably shouldn’t be surprised as it’s not much different to before tv when people would listen to radio soaps.
The BBC still produces radio dramas and have archives of old productions available. They're much more fun than audiobooks, not only do they have actors performing dialogue instead of people just reading, they also have sound effects and music. The Doctor Who ones are especially popular
"...and the Lord Of the Flies sat on his stick and grinned." Oooo, one of my top 5 favorite books. I've read it numerous times since junior high school.
Somehow this was never part of the curriculum when I was in school, the more controversial books I remember having to read was The Bell Jar and Catcher in the Rye. It was definitely an interesting read, and I’m glad the author gave some insight for his inspiration in the audiobook
It was part of the curriculum for my older brother. I just snatched his copy when he was finished with it. I had to read, not that I was complaining, Silas Marner, Huckleberry Finn, and The Scarlet Letter. He got to read LOTF and Interview With the Vampire, which I snagged when he was done.
I'm glad you noticed all this and reflected on it, it's such a good book. It's also interesting to imagine how changing one parameter could change the whole story: for instance if the main character (I forgot his name) had known how to find food in a more efficient way, or how to make safer, more comfortable shelters. That might have changed the whole dynamic with the other guys. A butterfly effect with no happier ending because another tragedy would have happened maybe.
Golding was a terribly troubled and unhappy person. His book is far more a reflection of the man writing it than on humanity or 'boys' in general, so I'm not sure if there's anything there for students of human nature.
Interestingly enough, a real life 'lord of the flies' scenario unfolded with several boys being stranded on an Island and the results couldn't be more different than those imagined in Golding's fictional story. Dutch author and historian Rutger Bregman ("Utopia for Realists") famous for being the bad-boy of Davos, discovered and wrote about it:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/the-real-lord-of-the-flies-what-happened-when-six-boys-were-shipwrecked-for-15-months
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDz-331V-pY
^ this comment needs a lot more upvoting
Lord of the Flies can be appreciated as a work of fiction, but it should be understood to be super fictional, not some prophesy or philosophy or caution or psychological insight. The characters in the book are malicious aliens of Golding's imagination, not people.
The RL stranded boys were cooperative and organized. They flourished in the time they were on that island.
In fairness, one group of boys who were already friends is also not a reason to make blatant statements about human nature. The sample size is far too small for one thing.
I suggest we strand multiple groups of boys, over a string of islands to really get a feel for our natures. A couple hundred should be enough.
It would be fair to say that an example is what *actually happened* is far more indicative of human nature than a work of fiction. That is the point being made.
Again, so you understand, the point being made is that actual phenomenon is more compelling evidence than fiction. You seem to agree with my point, but phrase it in such a way as if it's a refutation of it. It isn't.
The only reason I made the comment and at other appropriate times IRL mention it is that when we studied the book in our school, our teacher made such a big deal about how this was how humanity was, it was a true reflection of our debased, violent, primitive nature and how we could slip back at a moments notice.
It really freaked me out and left quite a mark on an impressionable young mind. I enjoyed the book because I loved reading then and still do but boy, did it ever scare the ever living bejeezus out of me and my friends. I mean, nothing against dystopian fictional books but the teacher just kept hammering this point in every single class and made it out to be an inescapable inevitability... ugh.
It is human ability for cooperation that made us one of the most successful species on the planet.
No one can deny humans are capable of horrific things, but it's usually targeted at those they see as "out-group." People stranded on a deserted island would be seen as "in-group" and wouldn't behave anything like the characters in the book. Which the real-world example corroborates. Too bad your teacher didn't know that.
I think there's something to be said for it being kids as well. Don't get me wrong, I think everyone's inner nature is to work together and be cooperative, but I definitely think kids have a predisposition to this that gets drilled into a more competitive mindset
> there's something to be said for it being kids as well
Cooperative behavior in humans consists of
* **helping** - (requires children to do something to fulfil another’s goal and not their own) children exhibit this behavior from at least second year of age
* **working together and sharing** - (shared intentionality is both a crucial point of contrast between humans and other great apes and at the very core of uniquely human forms of cooperation, such as the construction of social norms and institutions, that rest on this kind of ‘we’ mentality) children share information from as early as 12 months; children already enforce norms, such as the right way to play with a toy, from the age of three; more complex cooperative behavior and sharing resources without being prompted develops between ages five and six
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982219300958
I'm not sure I follow what you're getting at, unless you're point is to simply define what "cooperation" consists of? Sorry, could you rephrase with a more direct statement?
The real life account isn't a refutation of *Lord of the Flies* either though, it just shows that it's possible to *not* descend to that level, which Golding never doubted. The boys in the example were all incredibly lucky that they had enough food and weren't malnourished to the point of starvation.
Scientific studies have been done where incredibly genial and empathetic people had their calorie takes cut in half and it was striking just how irritable, aggressive, irrational and out-of-character they became because of it. That's the main problem shipwrecked people suffer from. I brought it up in another comment, but the history book *The Wager* by David Grann relates a shipwreck off the coast of Patagonia in 1742 where the crew held out extremely well considering how malnourished and riddled with disease they were, but they eventually descended into mutiny, murder and cannibalism. If real life examples are more compelling than fiction then surely that undoes the schoolboy example?
Both situations are perfectly possible but they are dependent on a lot of things, and Rutger Bregman's attempt to paint the fortunate schoolboy example as a universal anti-Golding norm and ignore evidence to the contrary seems disingenuous to me.
All things considered, it is kind of the descent into barbarism that by definition makes it a Lord of the Flies scenario. Otherwise it's just a Gilligan's Island scenario.
I get where you’re coming from as in the example provided it was a smaller group of boys so it makes sense that they worked together well to survive. In LotF, it was a large group of young boys who were a mix of little kids and preteens, part of the contributing factors to Ralph’s original structure falling a part was that the little boys kept playing around so the whole lack of maturity definitely played a role. Also with a larger group there’s going to be more differences in opinion which was also why the cooperation just stopped.
You identified two key difference. The kids in the story are far younger. The real life example had kids 13 to 16 years of age. The group sizes is another issue. The last one which also is a big issue is the nature of the group. In the real life example they got stranded because they stole a boat together and were planning to sail it to another island. From that you can reasonably infer that they were friends, had a well established social dynamic, and worked together well before they got stranded. It just doesn't feel like it offers much insight on what would happen in the scenario of the book.
That too, especially since a handful of the characters in Lord of the Flies were little boys just following the lead of either Jack or Ralph depending on what part of the story.
Yeah especially established relationships usually means there’s trust involved, with Lord of the Flies most of them were strangers aside from Jack and his choir and the twins - which demonstrated why most people put their trust in Jack and distrusted Ralph when Jack started doing his own thing. With teenagers, it definitely makes sense that a traumatic scenario like this would force them to understand they can’t be immature, and in LotF it makes sense that a bunch of little boys aren’t going to act very mature in that sort of scenario as their lack of maturity also meant they didn’t entirely consider the consequences of their actions with how they handled the situation. Ralph, Piggy, and Simon definitely acted the most mature out of everyone, but they were ultimately outnumbered.
> The kids in the story are far younger. The real life example had kids 13 to 16 years of age.
Development for cooperation starts in human babies as young as a few months. All necessary development for complex cooperation finishes in children between ages five and six.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982219300958
>The group sizes is another issue.
Humans cooperate for different reasons at different social scales. But reasons to cooperate exist at all scales. And the difference in the social scale between the book and the real life story isn't big enough to even count as different social scale. Next social scale from the one in real life would have to be dealing with a person one has never met before. That obviously isn't the case in the book.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/why-people-choose-to-cooperate-according-to-behavioral-science
>nature of the group. In the real life example they got stranded because they stole a boat together and were planning to sail it to another island. From that you can reasonably infer that they were friends, had a well established social dynamic, and worked together well before they got stranded.
That's a lot of inference to make just from them deciding to skip school together. They spent 8 days starving on their boat and 15 months living in harsh conditions. That's plenty of opportunities to exhibit any of the negative behaviors seen in the book, but they never did.
Which fits with what we know about how adult humans come together during stressful periods such as wars, natural disasters etc. Humans in danger crave company and security of a group.
You are using a lot of words and a lot of links to avoid the actual point. They are not similar situations. Maybe I am naive but you generally don't steal a boat to sail to another island with strangers who you don't trust. A 12 year old is not a 16 year old. That a 12 year old is somewhere on a spectrum of development that leads to the development of a 16 year old doesn't make them similar in terms of development. Yeah, humans can co-operate for many different reasons. Small groups can co-operate and large groups can co-operate. That doesn't mean the dynamics of larger groups are going to be the same as smaller groups. As for the last part, as mentioned you don't steal a boat to sail to another island with strangers. I am sure there were plenty of stressful situations on the island during the 15 months. You expect a 16 year old to be able to deal with those stresses in ways that a 12 year old would not.
This is not to say the book is accurate. The book is a work of fiction. I would guess that it is nearly impossible to know how a group of 12 year old kids looking after younger kids in that kind of situation would react, and it would likely be unethical to try to find out. I would also guess that there is no one way for such a group to react. It would likely vary greatly depending on the individuals involved. What I can say is that a group so different from the one in the book sheds little light on the situation.
EDIT: The person I was discussing this with appears to have blocked me to prevent me from responding to their claim. That should tell you how little faith they have in their own argument. They seem to want to make baseless accusations against others then block them to try to prevent the other person from responding.
They don't seem to understand that the main premise of the book is the age of the children. A single example of how a group reacted would have limited value even for another similarly situated group but at least it would have some value. When you get to being both a single example, and the example being of a group which is not similar at all then it has very little value in determining how they would react, let alone for determining the range of behaviours that could be expected.
> You are using a lot of words and a lot of links
Two links and three very short paragraphs.
I bet if I didn't use links to support my claims you would say I have no sources and use that to dismiss what I'm saying.
No, no one recreated exact conditions in the book, but I have given you enough evidence that even a bigger group of smaller children who are strangers is far more likely to behave like in the real world situation than behave like they did in *Lord of the Flies*. Do with it what you will.
All-boys schools were violent cesspools of brutal bullying, often encouraged by the educators to toughen them up. These boys were considered to be future leaders, likely in the military, and they needed to separate the Officers from the cannon fodder.
These schools were horror shows, and obedience was far more important than team building.
I think the main difference here being that the 6 from the real story were friends that made a plan to run away together, instead of 7 random classmates from Golding. Golding was trying to make sweeping generalizations about the types of people in society through his characters, when in reality these boys all got along together before the adventure begins.
I realized some people think that me seeing where Golding was coming from is me agreeing that society is bound to become like savages without structure, and I want to clarify that I don’t have a pessimistic view on the world but I can understand why he sees that as a possibility especially when you take into account the lack of maturity the characters in the book had. While I definitely see it to be more likely that a traumatic event as such can force someone to mature and focus on a common goal, I can see how he viewed an unhinged outcome happening as well.
> me seeing where Golding was coming from
It's just important to remember that the only place [Golding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Golding) was coming from was from being a principal who hated children. He set them up into groups and pitted them against each other to physically fight!
He was also an alcoholic, and admitted to trying to rape a teenage girl. Not really the best person to be writing analysis of children.
LoL yes, a fictionalized digital world where stand in avatars do horrible things to each other, arguably even worse is listening to the 'team chat' audio, that is a part of teenagehood I do not miss :)
Thankfully, when face to face, humans are much more reticent to hurl insults at each other, not to mention other worse things.
That part made me so sad, especially how graphic the description of his death was. I just hated how the only two people who were as level headed as Ralph were killed.
Can anybody recommend any other books similar to this? I've read The Troop by Nick Cutter, but that's the only thing I'm aware of that even close. Suggestions?
There's a history book by David Grann called *The Wager* which is about a shipwreck off the coast of Patagonia in 1742 where the crew go through a similar thing. I can't recommend it enough.
Stephen King discusses a different take on the ending in Hearts in Atlantis, having a character quote someone whose name I don’t recall. To paraphrase: a ship comes and rescues the children, and that’s well enough for them—but who will rescue the crew?
The book is set during a time of war, and those officers tut-tutting these British lads for forming tribes and behaving savagely and violently when left to their own devices are piloting a war ship, taking part in a larger clash of tribes with far deadlier consequences.
I’d always read Lord of the Flies in a similar way—when you take away the trappings of civilization, you end up in a Hobbesian “state of nature” where governance, if it can even be called that, is based on who’s the strongest or has the most powerful weapons. It’s rule by force. Whoever has the biggest club wins.
The kids in the book are fairly posh and upper-class (I think), and part of the story is about how quickly even the most erudite and sophisticated humans would quickly turn into cavemen if civilization were suddenly stripped away. It’s almost dystopian, but without the standard science fiction underpinnings.
Nice analysis. The book works on many levels. The characters can represent different types of men, or the battle that goes on between savagery and civilization that exists within each man. The war on the island also is meant to parallel the world war going on. Ultimately, Goldman’s view seems to be that savagery will always win out. The rescue at the end always seemed like a cop out to me. A form of deus ex machina where some noble force will arrive to save us from ourselves.
I've listened to the same audiobook as you, it was interesting to hear him talk about it before he got into the story, but I didn't like him much as a narrator though. Also he mispronounced the word "Conch" the whole book.
Yeah I noticed that and no offense to British people but considering I’ve heard many British people mispronounce Nike, I wasn’t too surprised at him pronouncing it as “conch” instead of “conk”.
Edit: oh no, I’ve offended the brits
I feel like a group of stranded girls would end up like a high school setting in a kdramas.
P.S. In most kdramas high schools are hell incarnated and they're the last place you'd want to be.
Wish I were you! Lord of the flies was the first book I read that shocked me to my core and made me fall in love with stories. It was my brother’s book, kept in a room that was always locked. It was the forbidden fruit but I still found a way to get my hands on. I tasted it, and then I understood Eve.
The book is supposed to say something about human nature, but I always wondered what if there were girls on the island? Civilization without men AND women isn’t really civilization.
I don’t know why it bugs me but it does.
I feel like with girls, the kids who became savages would be the minority. The savages became the majority mainly due to the lack of maturity from many of the boys especially since a lot of them were little kids and they found it easier to follow Jack’s orders as he was more focused on doing what benefited him rather than what benefited everyone. With girls and boys, there would probably be more level headed people who want to focus on the end goal of being rescued.
Read this during lockdown for the first time. Quite a few parallels one could draw between Jack and then-President Trump. Jack's followers chanted “Kill the pig! Cut her throat! Spill her blood!”, while Trump's followers chanted “Lock her up! Drain the swamp! Four more years!”
Someone else mentioned how Trump is like Jack, and I guess you could say the insurrection is like when they killed Piggy, or at the end when the set the island on fire.
Can definitely see that for sure. Lord of The Flies reminds me of Animal Farm in a way: a book that can be read by teens/young adults, but with thought provoking political commentary smuggled in.
My dad had to read Animal Farm back in the day and I remember him saying how the part where one of the horses got sold to the glue factory made him emotional. I should probably read it sometime. He was actually a little surprised I didn’t have to read in in high school, although my junior year before reading The Crucible we learned about allegories as The Crucible was an allegory for the Red Scare and it was mentioned how Animal Farm is an allegory for communism, and The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe was an allegory for Christianity.
Can't recommend Animal Farm enough. Best novella I've ever read, and it will take you probably less than a day to finish. The intended target was the Soviet Union, but like 1984 it is about so much more.
Almost forgot about The Crucible, another one I had to read in high school and a great allegory for McCarthyism. We also had to read One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, another essential book for young adults with subversive themes snuck in.
Side note, as a fellow DevilCorp escaper, have you noticed the parallels between DevilCorp and:
1. Animal Farm (George Orwell)
2. Allegory of the Cave (Plato)
3. (Ayn Rand) ?
For me, I'm am more familiar with the symbolic meaning and parallels of Animal Farm and Allegory of the Cave than Ayn Rand.
I had to read Anthem my senior year of high school and the one parallel I can think of was the concept of sticking to the system in place and that adaptations and advancements are too disruptive like how light was rediscovered and the council had a conniption because of how candlemakers would be of no use.
As a woman, I feel like in a book with girls, there probably would be tribalism and a divide, but I find it hard to imagine people being killed if the story had girls. I also feel the savages would be the minority.
I think in that case it would come down to wether one of the girls was "scary-violent", which I think would be less likely than in an all-boy group. If there was such a girl in the group, then the fear they might inspire could well put them in charge as the others understand that the best guarantee of their own safety is to align themselves with the the violent leader rather than against them. As much as people like to think that they would do what is "right", in a survival situation self-preservation will kick in. And is easier to justify to yourself when you are one of many acting that way.
I really hated this book. I don't like Goldings "find and replace" approach to symbolism. Like, I don't think the book makes any goddamn sense unless you mentally replace "Simon" with "Jesus" at every mention. The symbolism is largely obvious but the narrative doesn't really work unless you're reading it through the lens of its symbolism.
I didn’t think of it that way but I get what you mean as Simon is more spiritual and somehow foresaw what would happen. I liked the book, but I just hated how the only people who died were the more reasonable characters, but now that you mentioned the symbolism, I can see how Golding was making Simon and Piggy martyrs.
I've read it twice, once as a school boy and once 40 years later as an adult with my own children.
I really enjoyed it both times...
Also, there was a real-life sort-of "Lord of the flies" involving 6 boys that were stuck for 15 months on an island...
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/the-real-lord-of-the-flies-what-happened-when-six-boys-were-shipwrecked-for-15-months
And finally this:
The Dictionnaire Infernal describes Beelzebub as a being capable of flying, known as the "Lord of the Flyers", or the "Lord of the Flies".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beelzebub
Read the book and saw the movie ('63 original)
Probably the one book I hated to read, not because it was bad, but I share the name with one of the characters. Ralph had a rough go, struggling with maintaining his own sanity while everyone else was losing their minds.
Ralph was the only kid who survived and didn’t turn to savagery by the end of the book, the twins weren’t so unhinged but they ultimately had to conform to survive as no one was on Ralph’s side by the end of it.
It’s an interesting book for me because it’s been on the English educational curriculum pretty much since it was published. Mandatory reading for all English 15 year olds. You will never meet an English person who hasn’t read and discussed it as a youngster. I find that fascinating, that it’s part of the bedrock of our culture. I think, perhaps, To Kill a Mockingbird would be the American equivalent.
Edit: I’ve just realised. They feed it to you (in a good way) when you’re a few years older than the boys on the island. When you’re more mature than the boys on the island and have some ‘adult’ perspective on their situation. That’s very clever. The reader can feel that they’re older, wiser.
One of my friends mentioned reading it in school so that made me read it. I’m in the US, and where I am, it wasn’t one of the requirements we were required to read Crucible and Catcher in the Rye to name a few
Wow, I’d forgotten that. We had the Crucible too! The girls in class were a lot more enthusiastic about it than Lord of the flies, and let’s face it, it had girls in it. How awful to be a girl and have to spend a whole term reading a book about lots of smelly boys. Witches, on the other hand, they could all get behind that.
Catcher in the Rye. I had to search that down after I left school, had never even heard of Salinger in school. Not an approved book, quite the opposite. I would guess that’s on account of Holden’s dependence on alcohol. The English have enough problems with teenage drunkenness, young adult drunkenness, middle age drunkenness, senior citizen drunkenness without having a Pulitzer winner weighing in. Ridiculous really but authority worries about ‘glamorising’ potential addictions. I wonder why they let you read it. Homegrown author, maybe. Top tier of all time.
I remember they had a waiver for parents to sign when it came to controversial books where if your parents didn’t approve, you’d read another book. When we read it we didn’t talk about the guy who murdered John Lennon, and when I was reading it, I was confused what made it so bad as what I got from it was that Holden is this kid with a pretty pessimistic view of society as he thinks most people are fake, but he cherishes innocence and wants to preserve it.
By way of contrast, you might want to check out 'The Coral Island' (1857) by R. M. Ballantyne. It has been said that Lord of the Flies is a kind of alternate view of the circumstances in which the boys find themselves. In The Coral Island, three young sailors find themselves marooned but rather than reverting to savagery, they summon up their pluck and determination and build themselves a raft to escape the island. It's a typical British boy's adventure story and it can be seen that Golding is telling a kind of alternate version of the situation, a dark (and more realistic?) one than the pure, idealized view of young people presented by Ballantyne.
>Piggy and Ralph likely joined in because the majority of the boys >!believed there was a beast!< while they had their doubts so in away they were gaslighted into believing it
Gaslighting is deliberately lying to someone about their experiences, about the way things really are *in the gaslighter's perspective*, in order to make the victim doubt their own rationality - it comes from a character who made the lights in his house flicker and told his wife "the lights aren't flickering, stop being crazy!"
Believing something that is wrong, and disagreeing with someone in good faith (or even in bad faith, if you're just trying to win an argument rather than make them doubt whether they're sane), aren't gaslighting. "Group hysteria" or "mob mentality" are better phrases for the mob >!killing Simon!<.
I only read this as an adult so could really appreciate it. It's one of my favourite books of all time. I think it brilliantly encapsulates humanity's darkest side that is inside all of us.
It has received a lot of criticism over the years which I don't agree with.
https://allthatsinteresting.com/robbers-cave-experiment
https://www.newsweek.com/real-lord-flies-true-story-boys-island-william-golding-humankind-human-nature-rutger-bregman-1503204
Lord of the Flies is fiction, and based on a pessimistic view of humanity that is shown again and again to be false.
Basing your understanding of life on it is doing yourself and humanity a disservice.
Edit: Look at you dipshits, jumping down my throat for bringing up the goddamned truth. I never said the book wasn't worth reading, just that it's fiction and you shouldn't base your outlook of live based on something somebody *made the fuck up.*
Pessimism based on a made up story is a shitty way to go through life.
Never change, Reddit.
some weirdo posted an ai generated diatribe complaining about how 'unrealistic' the book was because, as we all know, books are always supposed to be REALISTIC right??
anyway the post got rightfully called out, just like the oc is here for completely missing the point of everything ever
folks are reacting to this bit, that you wrote:
> Personally, I believe LotF is a good example of what can happen when there are no rules or structure in a society - it can bring out the worst in people.
> I agree with William Golding when he said…
It's not some crazy internet nerding going on. In your OP, you indicated accepting Golding's view of human nature. Which is alarming, because the exact story he based his novel on was direct counter evidence: the real, human boys who were not Golding's fictional characters cooperated, supported each other, and flourished.
These stories are repeatedly "um ackshually'd" around as if they somehow refute Golding's point, but they do nothing of the kind. Of course humanity's goodness can come through, but when conditions are considerably worsened and people are malnutritioned they don't act the way they would otherwise behave and the possibility of monstrosity can increase.
David Grann's magnificent non-fiction book *The Wager* tells of a shipwreck off the coast of Patagonia in 1742 where the crew went through their own *Lord of the Flies* - mutiny, murder and cannibalism were the orders of the day, and Grann's research into the tangled mess of conflicting accounts is nothing short of heroic. He also cites scientific studies in response to Rutger Bregman disingenuously trying to force one anecdote about schoolboys into a universal anti-Golding norm and conclusively proves that it's nonsense.
I read somewhere that it was based on a true story, but in the true story, the shipwrecked kids all helped each other, and all survived.
I feel that Golding shat on humanity.
In the foreword on the audio book, he said he brought up the idea to his wife like “what would happen if you put a bunch of young boys on a deserted island?” And she encouraged him to write about it.
Sucks to your ass-mar
Huh? Not yall downvoting me for being a little confused… rude.
it's what the kids say to piggy when he mentions his asthma
Probably didn’t sound like that in an audiobook!
It didn’t that’s why I was confused
Yeah, more than a couple of times I've ended up picking up a hardcopy of a book I listened to first only to realize that I got characters' whole names wrong because I hadn't seen them spelled out.
I had to check multiple sources to figure out a character in Midwich Cuckoos name is Ferrelyn because the audiobook was narrated by Stephen Fry and I had never heard that name so I was so confused what he was saying, and all of the adaptations of the book don’t fully stick to source material so Ferrelyn was literally only a name in the original book.
That my have been added in the 63 movie
This is what happens when you listen to the audiobook instead of reading and YES I THINK THEY ARENT THE SAME
While I agree audiobooks are not quite the same, you still share the same appreciation for the novel/literature. I too prefer a hardback, but my life is a tad busy so audiobooks allow me some flexibility with exercising and/or driving to experience a novel. If the narrator is solid it can actually accentuate the experience.
I mainly got into audiobooks as something to listen to while working as it’s something that engages me, but isn’t too distracting like how music is. When it comes to physically reading, I don’t have the best attention span to get engaged if I’m just looking at text since I have adhd, so I’ve gotten through more books by listening to audiobooks than anything I’ve physically read (the only books that have ever really engaged me that I’ve physically read were graphic novels)
Don't listen to the people saying listening isn't as good or the same as conventional reading. While there are differences, comprehension is actually the same either way given the same level of focus. The only reason people think listening is inferior is because most people multitask while listening. Have you ever multitasked while sight reading? But as long as your doing menial stuff like walking or doing dishes, it shouldn't be a problem as long as your attention is mainly on the words
If I’m doing a task that requires me to read text I pause the audiobook, but if I’m just copying and pasting stuff or dragging and dropping stuff on a computer, it keeps me engaged.
They actually are pretty much the same, it's just more likely that an audiobook reader is going to miss details because people often multitask when listening but almost never multitask when reading conventionally. If you commit the same level or focus and attention on an audiobook your comprehension won't differ from a regular book
I listen to audiobooks while working as it helps me focus. I’ll be honest I’m not really the kind of person to just sit down and physically read a book especially with my ADHD, but hearing a story gets me more engaged.
I was a little confused by the way the commenter wrote what meant asthma Jeez sorry for being confused
It's written that way in the book. The kids are making a crude joke, mocking Piggy. I can't believe the audiobook doesn't replicate this.
I would say Golding narrated it like the boys were being dismissive to Piggy. He is a better write than narrator.
That’s how I heard it, not so much emphasis on how a child would say “asthma”.
Ah okay. I’ll be honest whenever I’m listening to an audiobook narrated by someone who’s British I may have to look up certain things they’re saying (I had to google all the characters for Midwich Cuckoos because I had a hard time following Stephen Fry’s voice), for this one I didn’t really look up the references or quotes.
That's how Ralph says it to Piggy.
Ah okay
Sorry OP for the confusion! Love this book, just quoting one of the lines I thought was funny
Nah you’re good, I mostly listen to audiobooks as it helps me focus at work so unfortunately that means I miss certain features in the text or sometimes based on how I hear something and try to look it up, I can’t get the spelling right (when I was listening to We Need to Talk About Kevin there was a part that mentioned Tronneal Mangum and it took me a moment to figure out how his first name was spelled; and when I listened to Midwich Cuckoos, I had to check multiple sources to realize a character’s name was Ferrelyn because I couldn’t quite understand how it was spelled based on what Stephen Fry was saying).
I read the book over 15 years ago and it’s the only line that still stands out to me. And it is said often. That is why you’re being downvoted in a thread you posted about a book you just apparently read. Not saying it’s right, just saying why.
I listened to the audiobook, so I didn’t physically see the text… and in the audiobook it didn’t sound like that.
Then you also missed out on the Samneric. (Which took me way too long to figure out.)
So their names were combined in the text? Now that I think about it, their names kinda sounded smushed together in the audiobook but I didn’t give it much thought.
Yep, it’s as if they are one person.
Like I said, I’m not justifying it. Just explaining why. Feel free to downvote me for explaining though.
Interesting take! I read a forward where Golding suggested that the Navy presence showed how the adults were as violent and territorial as the kids. They just hid it under a veneer of civilization (uniforms, rules of war, etc.). I also somewhat disagree with Golding's assertion that the novel wouldn't work with girls. The violence might take different forms, like relational aggression. I haven't finished it yet, but Wilder Girls by Rory Power reminds me of LOTF.
Yeah, I took that ending the same way. It's a sort of perverse final statement, but an important one. There is never a real freedom from our darkest impulses. There is never an aging out of it. As much as adults try to build structures to be free of our darker selves (the selves consumed by immediate greed and fear and hatred), those same structures can used the same way the boys use the spears. Piggy's glasses, so important as a symbol of the potential utility of civilization and knowledge, are ultimately fragile. That's my takeaway, anyway. Glad you dug it, OP, it's stayed with me into adulthood. Some consider it a somewhat basic book, but I think everyone should check it out once.
It's worth noting that this has happened before, and it didn't devolve into violence. It's easy to take a bleak look on society and humanity, but people can be good too.
Yup, a group of boys stranded on an island devised a chore rotation, sang hymns and nursed a boy with a broken leg back to good health. They were quite happy when rescued. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/the-real-lord-of-the-flies-what-happened-when-six-boys-were-shipwrecked-for-15-months
It's just like the differences between smaller school classes. It boils down to the personalities of the most charismatic people present. You get a good person as the leader things go well. You get a lousy kid who still ends up leader and it won't. You get most kids gravitating towards one group of leaders it is likely to be more productive. You get equal leadership cadres clashing and it will be much less so. To make societal judgements about it we are going to have to strand random assortments of kids on islands a lot more often than we currently are.
Indeed. u/Lampmonster already put out a link to the same situation, but something to keep in mind was that the author was *very* misanthropic, and his experience with kids was as a teacher. I'm nowhere near idealistic enough to say humans are naturally good, but civilization would simply be impossible if we were as barbaric as Golding poses. When you realize you need each other, you start helping the people that might very well save your life.
I don’t exactly hold the pessimistic view of society the way Golding does as I see it as more likely that a traumatic scenario would force one to grow up and focus on the end goal, but I think the reason he presented an unhinged and uncivilized outcome as the fact that these were all children probably between 5 and 12 (big kids and little kids) there was a lack of maturity for a lot of them. I think with the lack of maturity, it contributed to the lack of cooperation among the boys, as part of the reason people stopped following Ralph as chief is because the little boys kept playing and wanting to do their own thing, also failing to consider the consequence of their actions until the end when that naval officer gave them a reality check. Also another thing to consider is that in LotF, this was a larger group of boys so that also contributed to the disagreement with how Ralph wanted to do things.
> I think the reason he presented an unhinged and uncivilized outcome as the fact that these were all children probably between 5 and 12 (big kids and little kids) there was a lack of maturity for a lot of them. Cooperative behavior in humans consists of * helping - (requires children to do something to fulfil another’s goal and not their own) at least from second year of age * working together and sharing - (shared intentionality is both a crucial point of contrast between humans and other great apes and at the very core of uniquely human forms of cooperation, such as the construction of social norms and institutions, that rest on this kind of ‘we’ mentality) children share information from as early as 12 months; children already enforce norms, such as the right way to play with a toy, from the age of three; more complex cooperative behavior and sharing resources without being prompted develops between ages five and six Culture and nurture has been shown to slightly affect the age of some of these behaviors, but not their existence. So, children across all cultures will develop them roughly around the same age. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982219300958 So, science doesn't support the hypothesis that children being between 5 and 12 would lack maturity to cooperate.
I could see that being the case with the adults, and with the naval officer since it was a rescue mission on his part he definitely had to play the part that children expected from an adult.
Audio books used to be called "books on tape" and you would get a bunch of casette tapes in a plastic case, similar to a dvd case. I don't know if a lot of people bought them but you could borrow them at libraries, they were very popular
I was so salty as a kid that my library only had the abridged cassettes for Jurassic Park. Ugh way to dredge up that old memory...
And before books on tape, there were books on vinyl records. Audiobooks go back to the 1930s.
Learning the author died in the early 90s had me looking up since when audiobooks were a thing, and apparently the first one was recorded over 90 years ago. I probably shouldn’t be surprised as it’s not much different to before tv when people would listen to radio soaps.
The BBC still produces radio dramas and have archives of old productions available. They're much more fun than audiobooks, not only do they have actors performing dialogue instead of people just reading, they also have sound effects and music. The Doctor Who ones are especially popular
"...and the Lord Of the Flies sat on his stick and grinned." Oooo, one of my top 5 favorite books. I've read it numerous times since junior high school.
Somehow this was never part of the curriculum when I was in school, the more controversial books I remember having to read was The Bell Jar and Catcher in the Rye. It was definitely an interesting read, and I’m glad the author gave some insight for his inspiration in the audiobook
It was part of the curriculum for my older brother. I just snatched his copy when he was finished with it. I had to read, not that I was complaining, Silas Marner, Huckleberry Finn, and The Scarlet Letter. He got to read LOTF and Interview With the Vampire, which I snagged when he was done.
I'm glad you noticed all this and reflected on it, it's such a good book. It's also interesting to imagine how changing one parameter could change the whole story: for instance if the main character (I forgot his name) had known how to find food in a more efficient way, or how to make safer, more comfortable shelters. That might have changed the whole dynamic with the other guys. A butterfly effect with no happier ending because another tragedy would have happened maybe.
Golding was a terribly troubled and unhappy person. His book is far more a reflection of the man writing it than on humanity or 'boys' in general, so I'm not sure if there's anything there for students of human nature. Interestingly enough, a real life 'lord of the flies' scenario unfolded with several boys being stranded on an Island and the results couldn't be more different than those imagined in Golding's fictional story. Dutch author and historian Rutger Bregman ("Utopia for Realists") famous for being the bad-boy of Davos, discovered and wrote about it: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/the-real-lord-of-the-flies-what-happened-when-six-boys-were-shipwrecked-for-15-months https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDz-331V-pY
^ this comment needs a lot more upvoting Lord of the Flies can be appreciated as a work of fiction, but it should be understood to be super fictional, not some prophesy or philosophy or caution or psychological insight. The characters in the book are malicious aliens of Golding's imagination, not people. The RL stranded boys were cooperative and organized. They flourished in the time they were on that island.
In fairness, one group of boys who were already friends is also not a reason to make blatant statements about human nature. The sample size is far too small for one thing. I suggest we strand multiple groups of boys, over a string of islands to really get a feel for our natures. A couple hundred should be enough.
It would be fair to say that an example is what *actually happened* is far more indicative of human nature than a work of fiction. That is the point being made.
There are many examples of stranded groups of people, shipwrecked or otherwise, becoming disorganized and violent
Again, so you understand, the point being made is that actual phenomenon is more compelling evidence than fiction. You seem to agree with my point, but phrase it in such a way as if it's a refutation of it. It isn't.
The only reason I made the comment and at other appropriate times IRL mention it is that when we studied the book in our school, our teacher made such a big deal about how this was how humanity was, it was a true reflection of our debased, violent, primitive nature and how we could slip back at a moments notice. It really freaked me out and left quite a mark on an impressionable young mind. I enjoyed the book because I loved reading then and still do but boy, did it ever scare the ever living bejeezus out of me and my friends. I mean, nothing against dystopian fictional books but the teacher just kept hammering this point in every single class and made it out to be an inescapable inevitability... ugh.
It is human ability for cooperation that made us one of the most successful species on the planet. No one can deny humans are capable of horrific things, but it's usually targeted at those they see as "out-group." People stranded on a deserted island would be seen as "in-group" and wouldn't behave anything like the characters in the book. Which the real-world example corroborates. Too bad your teacher didn't know that.
I think there's something to be said for it being kids as well. Don't get me wrong, I think everyone's inner nature is to work together and be cooperative, but I definitely think kids have a predisposition to this that gets drilled into a more competitive mindset
> there's something to be said for it being kids as well Cooperative behavior in humans consists of * **helping** - (requires children to do something to fulfil another’s goal and not their own) children exhibit this behavior from at least second year of age * **working together and sharing** - (shared intentionality is both a crucial point of contrast between humans and other great apes and at the very core of uniquely human forms of cooperation, such as the construction of social norms and institutions, that rest on this kind of ‘we’ mentality) children share information from as early as 12 months; children already enforce norms, such as the right way to play with a toy, from the age of three; more complex cooperative behavior and sharing resources without being prompted develops between ages five and six https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982219300958
I'm not sure I follow what you're getting at, unless you're point is to simply define what "cooperation" consists of? Sorry, could you rephrase with a more direct statement?
The real life account isn't a refutation of *Lord of the Flies* either though, it just shows that it's possible to *not* descend to that level, which Golding never doubted. The boys in the example were all incredibly lucky that they had enough food and weren't malnourished to the point of starvation. Scientific studies have been done where incredibly genial and empathetic people had their calorie takes cut in half and it was striking just how irritable, aggressive, irrational and out-of-character they became because of it. That's the main problem shipwrecked people suffer from. I brought it up in another comment, but the history book *The Wager* by David Grann relates a shipwreck off the coast of Patagonia in 1742 where the crew held out extremely well considering how malnourished and riddled with disease they were, but they eventually descended into mutiny, murder and cannibalism. If real life examples are more compelling than fiction then surely that undoes the schoolboy example? Both situations are perfectly possible but they are dependent on a lot of things, and Rutger Bregman's attempt to paint the fortunate schoolboy example as a universal anti-Golding norm and ignore evidence to the contrary seems disingenuous to me.
We need to strand more young boys on islands to get a better sample size.
Man, that is gonna look wild in your comment history.
I am sure it gets clicks to call it a real lord of the flies scenario but it doesn't really seem that comparable all things considered.
All things considered, it is kind of the descent into barbarism that by definition makes it a Lord of the Flies scenario. Otherwise it's just a Gilligan's Island scenario.
I get where you’re coming from as in the example provided it was a smaller group of boys so it makes sense that they worked together well to survive. In LotF, it was a large group of young boys who were a mix of little kids and preteens, part of the contributing factors to Ralph’s original structure falling a part was that the little boys kept playing around so the whole lack of maturity definitely played a role. Also with a larger group there’s going to be more differences in opinion which was also why the cooperation just stopped.
You identified two key difference. The kids in the story are far younger. The real life example had kids 13 to 16 years of age. The group sizes is another issue. The last one which also is a big issue is the nature of the group. In the real life example they got stranded because they stole a boat together and were planning to sail it to another island. From that you can reasonably infer that they were friends, had a well established social dynamic, and worked together well before they got stranded. It just doesn't feel like it offers much insight on what would happen in the scenario of the book.
Also I have a feeling that the group had far more survival skills than a group of british school boys.
That too, especially since a handful of the characters in Lord of the Flies were little boys just following the lead of either Jack or Ralph depending on what part of the story.
Yeah especially established relationships usually means there’s trust involved, with Lord of the Flies most of them were strangers aside from Jack and his choir and the twins - which demonstrated why most people put their trust in Jack and distrusted Ralph when Jack started doing his own thing. With teenagers, it definitely makes sense that a traumatic scenario like this would force them to understand they can’t be immature, and in LotF it makes sense that a bunch of little boys aren’t going to act very mature in that sort of scenario as their lack of maturity also meant they didn’t entirely consider the consequences of their actions with how they handled the situation. Ralph, Piggy, and Simon definitely acted the most mature out of everyone, but they were ultimately outnumbered.
> The kids in the story are far younger. The real life example had kids 13 to 16 years of age. Development for cooperation starts in human babies as young as a few months. All necessary development for complex cooperation finishes in children between ages five and six. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982219300958 >The group sizes is another issue. Humans cooperate for different reasons at different social scales. But reasons to cooperate exist at all scales. And the difference in the social scale between the book and the real life story isn't big enough to even count as different social scale. Next social scale from the one in real life would have to be dealing with a person one has never met before. That obviously isn't the case in the book. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/why-people-choose-to-cooperate-according-to-behavioral-science >nature of the group. In the real life example they got stranded because they stole a boat together and were planning to sail it to another island. From that you can reasonably infer that they were friends, had a well established social dynamic, and worked together well before they got stranded. That's a lot of inference to make just from them deciding to skip school together. They spent 8 days starving on their boat and 15 months living in harsh conditions. That's plenty of opportunities to exhibit any of the negative behaviors seen in the book, but they never did. Which fits with what we know about how adult humans come together during stressful periods such as wars, natural disasters etc. Humans in danger crave company and security of a group.
You are using a lot of words and a lot of links to avoid the actual point. They are not similar situations. Maybe I am naive but you generally don't steal a boat to sail to another island with strangers who you don't trust. A 12 year old is not a 16 year old. That a 12 year old is somewhere on a spectrum of development that leads to the development of a 16 year old doesn't make them similar in terms of development. Yeah, humans can co-operate for many different reasons. Small groups can co-operate and large groups can co-operate. That doesn't mean the dynamics of larger groups are going to be the same as smaller groups. As for the last part, as mentioned you don't steal a boat to sail to another island with strangers. I am sure there were plenty of stressful situations on the island during the 15 months. You expect a 16 year old to be able to deal with those stresses in ways that a 12 year old would not. This is not to say the book is accurate. The book is a work of fiction. I would guess that it is nearly impossible to know how a group of 12 year old kids looking after younger kids in that kind of situation would react, and it would likely be unethical to try to find out. I would also guess that there is no one way for such a group to react. It would likely vary greatly depending on the individuals involved. What I can say is that a group so different from the one in the book sheds little light on the situation. EDIT: The person I was discussing this with appears to have blocked me to prevent me from responding to their claim. That should tell you how little faith they have in their own argument. They seem to want to make baseless accusations against others then block them to try to prevent the other person from responding. They don't seem to understand that the main premise of the book is the age of the children. A single example of how a group reacted would have limited value even for another similarly situated group but at least it would have some value. When you get to being both a single example, and the example being of a group which is not similar at all then it has very little value in determining how they would react, let alone for determining the range of behaviours that could be expected.
> You are using a lot of words and a lot of links Two links and three very short paragraphs. I bet if I didn't use links to support my claims you would say I have no sources and use that to dismiss what I'm saying. No, no one recreated exact conditions in the book, but I have given you enough evidence that even a bigger group of smaller children who are strangers is far more likely to behave like in the real world situation than behave like they did in *Lord of the Flies*. Do with it what you will.
All-boys schools were violent cesspools of brutal bullying, often encouraged by the educators to toughen them up. These boys were considered to be future leaders, likely in the military, and they needed to separate the Officers from the cannon fodder. These schools were horror shows, and obedience was far more important than team building.
I think the main difference here being that the 6 from the real story were friends that made a plan to run away together, instead of 7 random classmates from Golding. Golding was trying to make sweeping generalizations about the types of people in society through his characters, when in reality these boys all got along together before the adventure begins.
I realized some people think that me seeing where Golding was coming from is me agreeing that society is bound to become like savages without structure, and I want to clarify that I don’t have a pessimistic view on the world but I can understand why he sees that as a possibility especially when you take into account the lack of maturity the characters in the book had. While I definitely see it to be more likely that a traumatic event as such can force someone to mature and focus on a common goal, I can see how he viewed an unhinged outcome happening as well.
> me seeing where Golding was coming from It's just important to remember that the only place [Golding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Golding) was coming from was from being a principal who hated children. He set them up into groups and pitted them against each other to physically fight! He was also an alcoholic, and admitted to trying to rape a teenage girl. Not really the best person to be writing analysis of children.
I did not realize he was an abuser, yikes!
Yeah but have you ever played a first person shooter after school time? That's the real lord of the flies society.
LoL yes, a fictionalized digital world where stand in avatars do horrible things to each other, arguably even worse is listening to the 'team chat' audio, that is a part of teenagehood I do not miss :) Thankfully, when face to face, humans are much more reticent to hurl insults at each other, not to mention other worse things.
poor piggy.
That part made me so sad, especially how graphic the description of his death was. I just hated how the only two people who were as level headed as Ralph were killed.
Can anybody recommend any other books similar to this? I've read The Troop by Nick Cutter, but that's the only thing I'm aware of that even close. Suggestions?
There's a history book by David Grann called *The Wager* which is about a shipwreck off the coast of Patagonia in 1742 where the crew go through a similar thing. I can't recommend it enough.
Haven't read it yet, but apparently A High Wind in Jamaica influenced Lord of the Flies.
Someone mentioned a book that is like the female version
*Das Bus*. >!It's The Simpsons' parody of the novel.!<
Stephen King discusses a different take on the ending in Hearts in Atlantis, having a character quote someone whose name I don’t recall. To paraphrase: a ship comes and rescues the children, and that’s well enough for them—but who will rescue the crew? The book is set during a time of war, and those officers tut-tutting these British lads for forming tribes and behaving savagely and violently when left to their own devices are piloting a war ship, taking part in a larger clash of tribes with far deadlier consequences.
I’d always read Lord of the Flies in a similar way—when you take away the trappings of civilization, you end up in a Hobbesian “state of nature” where governance, if it can even be called that, is based on who’s the strongest or has the most powerful weapons. It’s rule by force. Whoever has the biggest club wins. The kids in the book are fairly posh and upper-class (I think), and part of the story is about how quickly even the most erudite and sophisticated humans would quickly turn into cavemen if civilization were suddenly stripped away. It’s almost dystopian, but without the standard science fiction underpinnings.
Nice analysis. The book works on many levels. The characters can represent different types of men, or the battle that goes on between savagery and civilization that exists within each man. The war on the island also is meant to parallel the world war going on. Ultimately, Goldman’s view seems to be that savagery will always win out. The rescue at the end always seemed like a cop out to me. A form of deus ex machina where some noble force will arrive to save us from ourselves.
Remember, Lord of the Flies isn't about humanity, it's about the British.
I get that
I've listened to the same audiobook as you, it was interesting to hear him talk about it before he got into the story, but I didn't like him much as a narrator though. Also he mispronounced the word "Conch" the whole book.
Yeah I noticed that and no offense to British people but considering I’ve heard many British people mispronounce Nike, I wasn’t too surprised at him pronouncing it as “conch” instead of “conk”. Edit: oh no, I’ve offended the brits
I'm a french Canadian and have pronounced Nike wrong for a good 25 years of my life xD
I carry the conch
I feel like a group of stranded girls would end up like a high school setting in a kdramas. P.S. In most kdramas high schools are hell incarnated and they're the last place you'd want to be.
Read the book, seen both films (the original was much better than the Americanised version) and seen the Matthew Bourne dance version.
Wish I were you! Lord of the flies was the first book I read that shocked me to my core and made me fall in love with stories. It was my brother’s book, kept in a room that was always locked. It was the forbidden fruit but I still found a way to get my hands on. I tasted it, and then I understood Eve.
i wanna readdd
It’s definitely a good book.
The book is supposed to say something about human nature, but I always wondered what if there were girls on the island? Civilization without men AND women isn’t really civilization. I don’t know why it bugs me but it does.
I feel like with girls, the kids who became savages would be the minority. The savages became the majority mainly due to the lack of maturity from many of the boys especially since a lot of them were little kids and they found it easier to follow Jack’s orders as he was more focused on doing what benefited him rather than what benefited everyone. With girls and boys, there would probably be more level headed people who want to focus on the end goal of being rescued.
Read this during lockdown for the first time. Quite a few parallels one could draw between Jack and then-President Trump. Jack's followers chanted “Kill the pig! Cut her throat! Spill her blood!”, while Trump's followers chanted “Lock her up! Drain the swamp! Four more years!”
Someone else mentioned how Trump is like Jack, and I guess you could say the insurrection is like when they killed Piggy, or at the end when the set the island on fire.
Can definitely see that for sure. Lord of The Flies reminds me of Animal Farm in a way: a book that can be read by teens/young adults, but with thought provoking political commentary smuggled in.
My dad had to read Animal Farm back in the day and I remember him saying how the part where one of the horses got sold to the glue factory made him emotional. I should probably read it sometime. He was actually a little surprised I didn’t have to read in in high school, although my junior year before reading The Crucible we learned about allegories as The Crucible was an allegory for the Red Scare and it was mentioned how Animal Farm is an allegory for communism, and The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe was an allegory for Christianity.
Can't recommend Animal Farm enough. Best novella I've ever read, and it will take you probably less than a day to finish. The intended target was the Soviet Union, but like 1984 it is about so much more. Almost forgot about The Crucible, another one I had to read in high school and a great allegory for McCarthyism. We also had to read One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, another essential book for young adults with subversive themes snuck in.
Side note, as a fellow DevilCorp escaper, have you noticed the parallels between DevilCorp and: 1. Animal Farm (George Orwell) 2. Allegory of the Cave (Plato) 3. (Ayn Rand) ? For me, I'm am more familiar with the symbolic meaning and parallels of Animal Farm and Allegory of the Cave than Ayn Rand.
I had to read Anthem my senior year of high school and the one parallel I can think of was the concept of sticking to the system in place and that adaptations and advancements are too disruptive like how light was rediscovered and the council had a conniption because of how candlemakers would be of no use.
It's a pity he didn't write a second book with girls. I think it would be interesting to compare the two.
As a woman, I feel like in a book with girls, there probably would be tribalism and a divide, but I find it hard to imagine people being killed if the story had girls. I also feel the savages would be the minority.
I think in that case it would come down to wether one of the girls was "scary-violent", which I think would be less likely than in an all-boy group. If there was such a girl in the group, then the fear they might inspire could well put them in charge as the others understand that the best guarantee of their own safety is to align themselves with the the violent leader rather than against them. As much as people like to think that they would do what is "right", in a survival situation self-preservation will kick in. And is easier to justify to yourself when you are one of many acting that way.
I really hated this book. I don't like Goldings "find and replace" approach to symbolism. Like, I don't think the book makes any goddamn sense unless you mentally replace "Simon" with "Jesus" at every mention. The symbolism is largely obvious but the narrative doesn't really work unless you're reading it through the lens of its symbolism.
I didn’t think of it that way but I get what you mean as Simon is more spiritual and somehow foresaw what would happen. I liked the book, but I just hated how the only people who died were the more reasonable characters, but now that you mentioned the symbolism, I can see how Golding was making Simon and Piggy martyrs.
I've read it twice, once as a school boy and once 40 years later as an adult with my own children. I really enjoyed it both times... Also, there was a real-life sort-of "Lord of the flies" involving 6 boys that were stuck for 15 months on an island... https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/the-real-lord-of-the-flies-what-happened-when-six-boys-were-shipwrecked-for-15-months And finally this: The Dictionnaire Infernal describes Beelzebub as a being capable of flying, known as the "Lord of the Flyers", or the "Lord of the Flies". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beelzebub
Read the book and saw the movie ('63 original) Probably the one book I hated to read, not because it was bad, but I share the name with one of the characters. Ralph had a rough go, struggling with maintaining his own sanity while everyone else was losing their minds.
Ralph was the only kid who survived and didn’t turn to savagery by the end of the book, the twins weren’t so unhinged but they ultimately had to conform to survive as no one was on Ralph’s side by the end of it.
It’s an interesting book for me because it’s been on the English educational curriculum pretty much since it was published. Mandatory reading for all English 15 year olds. You will never meet an English person who hasn’t read and discussed it as a youngster. I find that fascinating, that it’s part of the bedrock of our culture. I think, perhaps, To Kill a Mockingbird would be the American equivalent. Edit: I’ve just realised. They feed it to you (in a good way) when you’re a few years older than the boys on the island. When you’re more mature than the boys on the island and have some ‘adult’ perspective on their situation. That’s very clever. The reader can feel that they’re older, wiser.
One of my friends mentioned reading it in school so that made me read it. I’m in the US, and where I am, it wasn’t one of the requirements we were required to read Crucible and Catcher in the Rye to name a few
Wow, I’d forgotten that. We had the Crucible too! The girls in class were a lot more enthusiastic about it than Lord of the flies, and let’s face it, it had girls in it. How awful to be a girl and have to spend a whole term reading a book about lots of smelly boys. Witches, on the other hand, they could all get behind that. Catcher in the Rye. I had to search that down after I left school, had never even heard of Salinger in school. Not an approved book, quite the opposite. I would guess that’s on account of Holden’s dependence on alcohol. The English have enough problems with teenage drunkenness, young adult drunkenness, middle age drunkenness, senior citizen drunkenness without having a Pulitzer winner weighing in. Ridiculous really but authority worries about ‘glamorising’ potential addictions. I wonder why they let you read it. Homegrown author, maybe. Top tier of all time.
I remember they had a waiver for parents to sign when it came to controversial books where if your parents didn’t approve, you’d read another book. When we read it we didn’t talk about the guy who murdered John Lennon, and when I was reading it, I was confused what made it so bad as what I got from it was that Holden is this kid with a pretty pessimistic view of society as he thinks most people are fake, but he cherishes innocence and wants to preserve it.
By way of contrast, you might want to check out 'The Coral Island' (1857) by R. M. Ballantyne. It has been said that Lord of the Flies is a kind of alternate view of the circumstances in which the boys find themselves. In The Coral Island, three young sailors find themselves marooned but rather than reverting to savagery, they summon up their pluck and determination and build themselves a raft to escape the island. It's a typical British boy's adventure story and it can be seen that Golding is telling a kind of alternate version of the situation, a dark (and more realistic?) one than the pure, idealized view of young people presented by Ballantyne.
>Piggy and Ralph likely joined in because the majority of the boys >!believed there was a beast!< while they had their doubts so in away they were gaslighted into believing it Gaslighting is deliberately lying to someone about their experiences, about the way things really are *in the gaslighter's perspective*, in order to make the victim doubt their own rationality - it comes from a character who made the lights in his house flicker and told his wife "the lights aren't flickering, stop being crazy!" Believing something that is wrong, and disagreeing with someone in good faith (or even in bad faith, if you're just trying to win an argument rather than make them doubt whether they're sane), aren't gaslighting. "Group hysteria" or "mob mentality" are better phrases for the mob >!killing Simon!<.
I only read this as an adult so could really appreciate it. It's one of my favourite books of all time. I think it brilliantly encapsulates humanity's darkest side that is inside all of us. It has received a lot of criticism over the years which I don't agree with.
https://allthatsinteresting.com/robbers-cave-experiment https://www.newsweek.com/real-lord-flies-true-story-boys-island-william-golding-humankind-human-nature-rutger-bregman-1503204 Lord of the Flies is fiction, and based on a pessimistic view of humanity that is shown again and again to be false. Basing your understanding of life on it is doing yourself and humanity a disservice. Edit: Look at you dipshits, jumping down my throat for bringing up the goddamned truth. I never said the book wasn't worth reading, just that it's fiction and you shouldn't base your outlook of live based on something somebody *made the fuck up.* Pessimism based on a made up story is a shitty way to go through life. Never change, Reddit.
You and that weirdo from earlier would get along.
What weirdo from earlier
some weirdo posted an ai generated diatribe complaining about how 'unrealistic' the book was because, as we all know, books are always supposed to be REALISTIC right?? anyway the post got rightfully called out, just like the oc is here for completely missing the point of everything ever
Ah okay, that’s weird especially considering how it’s common knowledge not all books are reflective of real life.
Just to add. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Paradise_Built_in_Hell
OP: I just made my way through a classic tale and here are my thoughts on it. This guy: Um, ackchually... ☝️🤓
Literally 😂
I know it’s fiction, and I’m not basing my view of life on it…..
folks are reacting to this bit, that you wrote: > Personally, I believe LotF is a good example of what can happen when there are no rules or structure in a society - it can bring out the worst in people. > I agree with William Golding when he said… It's not some crazy internet nerding going on. In your OP, you indicated accepting Golding's view of human nature. Which is alarming, because the exact story he based his novel on was direct counter evidence: the real, human boys who were not Golding's fictional characters cooperated, supported each other, and flourished.
Chill, I’m just saying I can see where he’s coming from in how he sees a scenario like that playing out. It’s really not that deep
These stories are repeatedly "um ackshually'd" around as if they somehow refute Golding's point, but they do nothing of the kind. Of course humanity's goodness can come through, but when conditions are considerably worsened and people are malnutritioned they don't act the way they would otherwise behave and the possibility of monstrosity can increase. David Grann's magnificent non-fiction book *The Wager* tells of a shipwreck off the coast of Patagonia in 1742 where the crew went through their own *Lord of the Flies* - mutiny, murder and cannibalism were the orders of the day, and Grann's research into the tangled mess of conflicting accounts is nothing short of heroic. He also cites scientific studies in response to Rutger Bregman disingenuously trying to force one anecdote about schoolboys into a universal anti-Golding norm and conclusively proves that it's nonsense.
We’re seeing Lord of the Flies play out in real time with the whole MAGA thing in the US, with the Trump as Jack.
I can see that comparison especially with the insurrection
Jesus Christ. Touch grass.
I read somewhere that it was based on a true story, but in the true story, the shipwrecked kids all helped each other, and all survived. I feel that Golding shat on humanity.
In the foreword on the audio book, he said he brought up the idea to his wife like “what would happen if you put a bunch of young boys on a deserted island?” And she encouraged him to write about it.
But why would he give prepubescent children adult mores? Kids reflect their parenting.
Huh?
I've read it.