Lord of the Flies is bullshit. When a group of boys actually got stranded together, they peacefully cooperated with each other to solve their problems.
For those who would like a book recommendation, that explores reading history through this lens, take a bit and read Rutger Bregman’s “Humankind: A Hopeful History” https://archive.org/details/humankindahopefu0000breg
The author dives in deep on why the Lord of the Flies trope is so persistent and why people believe it more, the richer they are. TLDR: dopamine is a hell of a drug.
I don’t think it’s complete bullshit. Not a universal truth as some make it out to be, but not completely false. Cultural background plays a role, as well as social setting.
The Tonga boys were all from the same group for one.
In Lord of the flies, they were separate groups.
Tonga boys had a shared culture.
Lord of the flies groups had 2 separate cultures: 1 religiously militant, the other not.
That second factor might be the most important one. If you’re taught growing up to villainize and hate an “other”, that’s what’s more likely to happen.
Or to put it in a more US centric way: if 7 kids from deeply racist families were stuck on an island with 4 black kids in the 1960s, would they still have gotten along as well as the Tonga boys?
I think this is a great point. However, and I don’t think this takes away from what you are saying, the kids (in your US-centric example) would have a better chance of getting along than if they were kept together in society. For one, shared hardship has been shown to be a very effective means to breaking down tribalism. For two, being left in society would mean they’d have external forces bearing down on them to keep them in tribal lines. It’s precisely “civilization” that creates and inculcates these prejudices. But people take the opposite lesson home: that apart from “civilization”, humans become brutal and violent.
Not every group is going to adapt and react the same way though. It’s not out of the realm of possibilities for the lord of the flies situation to happen, but what’s the rate. 10%? 1%? 50%?
Partly the issue with N=1 statistics.
Studies on the phenomenon called Elite Panic suggest that people in general are more cooperative in disastrous events than normally assumed by the elite, and often a lot of the rest of us too.
Like, the elites would panic in a survival situation. But I have real survival skills that would allow me to survive until rescue. Someone like Bezos or Musk would starve quickly, or eat something poisonous without knowing whether it was safe or not.
True. It is plausible. At the same time I have to think that if the human race hasn’t evolved to factor cooperation in tribes in most cases, we wouldn’t be here discussing this.
Cooperation is beneficial to each individual’s survival when most in the population are cooperative. Pragmatic self-interest is beneficial to each individual’s survival when most in the population are selfish and pragmatic. I think most people tend to be cooperative, but there are plenty who will opportunistically fuck over cooperative people. The results would probably depend on the tendencies of the majority of the individuals in that situation.
I feel like more than likely, the kids would just end up dying from exposure or starvation. Especially if it was all toddlers.
Great read but I am highly sceptical of Rutger Bregman, just from watching his attitude in motivational videos. He reminds me of people mostly interested in promoting themselves. I hope I am wrong.
Um, isn’t it allegory and sociopolitical commentary? Like, it’s not meant to describe a realistic scenario.
Is it? A lot of people seem to have come to the conclusion that its characters are realistic.
The novel is styled as allegorical fiction, embodying the concepts of inherent human savagery, mob mentality, and totalitarian leadership. However, Golding deviates from typical allegory in that both the protagonists and the antagonists are fully developed, realistic characters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_of_the_Flies
Golding’s work is a powerful exploration of the inherent capacity for savagery within human beings when societal structures are removed. The novel touches on themes such as the loss of innocence, the struggle between civilization and savagery, and the fragility of societal norms.
https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/flies/
it serves as an interesting look at the dark side of human nature and how no one is beyond its reach. Plus, anyone who had a bit of a rough time in high school will probably not find the events in this book a huge leap of the imagination
The scary thing about this book is how real it is. The Lord of the Flies bespeaks the brilliance of realistic dystopian fiction, it gives you a possible world scenario, a bunch of very human characters and then it shows you want might happen when they are thrown into a terrible situation: they act like monsters (or humans?)
the author very realistically portrays human behavior in an environment where civilization no longer has meaning.
If you have never experienced the amount of destructive power that is possible in that short time-span, you might think Golding exaggerates. Unfortunately, I can see any group of students turning into the characters in The Lord Of The Flies if they are put in the situation.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7624.Lord_of_the_Flies
If it’s not supposed to be realistic, he did a shitty job of communicating that.
However, Golding deviates from typical allegory in that both the protagonists and the antagonists are fully developed, realistic characters.
For whoever put that on wikipedia, that’s an odd point of contention to hang your hat on when judging how allegorical something is.
Besides, are all of them are fully developed? Are they more developed than those of Animal Farm, which is undeniably an allegory?
The link above had this to say about the author:
I learned what an unhappy individual he had been: an alcoholic, prone to depression. “I have always understood the Nazis,” Golding confessed, “because I am of that sort by nature.” And it was “partly out of that sad self-knowledge” that he wrote Lord of the Flies.
So not necessarily allegory. It seems more a bleak worldview portrayed through fiction.
I just happened to stumble upon the Lord of the Flies film on IFC one night at the perfect age of a kid. Was like, “oh wow cool bunch of kids trying to survive on an island this looks like a cool movie!” … an hour later and I grew up real fast.
Same here. I was the age of the kids in the movie or a little younger. Learned some things that day.
Funny thing is I’ve heard of a study where they did something similar (safer and more controlled I’m sure), and the boys all cooperated with each other and got along very nicely.
Deep. Testing.
only 1 child gets killed
Teacher: “congrats! You did better than they did in the book!”
I love this book. It deserves all the praise it gets