Teachers have tried this and are amazed when their classes don’t go feral like in the book. It’s almost as if the book was supposed to be satire and not a treaty on the nature of humanity.
there’s a timeskip
THERE’S A TIMESKIP
THERE’S A TIMESKIP
THERE’S A TIMESKIP
after losing control of the signal fire there’s a FUCKING TIMESKIP and when the next chapter starts everyone’s hair is several inches longer and their clothes have rotted to shreds and they’re still just kind of chilling!!!!
IT TAKES THE TERRIBLE IMPERIALISM MIND-POISONED EXCESSIVELY BRITISH BOYS IN THE ACTUAL BOOK SEVERAL MONTHS TO COMMIT A SINGLE ACT OF INTENTIONAL VIOLENCE, EVEN THE ONE (1) CHILD WRITTEN AS AN ACTUAL SOCIOPATH
AND then when they DO turn on each other it is because
THERE’S AN UNSPECIFIED WORLD WAR HAPPENING
AND A PILOT’S CORPSE CRASH LANDS ON THE ISLAND POST-DOGFIGHT AND THE CHILDREN MISTAKE THE PARACHUTE FOR A MONSTER AND SPIRAL INTO PARANOIA
BECAUSE CHILDREN INHERIT THE LEGACY AND TRAUMA OF VIOLENCE FROM THE ADULTS WAGING WAR AROUND THEM
HURR DURR IN THE REAL WORLD IT WOULD NEVER HAPPEN LIKE IN LORD OF THE FLIES -
IT DIDN’T HAPPEN THAT WAY IN LORD OF THE FLIES EITHER YOU JUST HAVEN’T READ IT SINCE HIGH SCHOOL IF EVER AND DON’T REMEMBER WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED IN THE GODDAMN BOOK
#tbf the dude wrote it to be a dick
yes. yes he did. i’m also gonna direct you to the real life ‘lord of the flies’ which occured in the 1960s, when six tongan schoolboys got stranded on a desert island for over a year before being rescued by an australian fisherman (who, it should be noted, later took on all six as crewmembers because the reason they were out in the first place was because they wanted to see the world, and named his ship the Ata after the island they were stranded on). nobody died. the only injuries that occurred were accidental, and when one of the boys broke his leg falling down a cliff, the others braced it and looked after him so well that it healed perfectly. if they argued, then they would literally go to opposite sides of the island until they’d cooled off. after leaving the island, they remained friends for the rest of their lives. here’s a photo of them as adults, with their rescuer (who is third from the left) and other members of his crew.
i read about this in rutger bregman’s human kind, a book i cannot recommend highly enough, but if you don’t want to go and read a whole book about the inherent goodness of humanity (which again, you really should) then the relevant excerpt can be found here.
> sees nihilistic depiction of human nature
> looks inside
> hope :)
reminds me of the acali experiment aka the sex raft, which is always uproariously funny to me.
its like.. if a man tried to make lord of the flies irl, but got increasingly mad that it kept being the tongan boys instead.
in 1973, an anthropologist got a boat. he got 4 men (5 including himself) and 6 women for crew of a ship, ranging 20s-30s. the expedition was to last 100 days. he hypothesized that - like monkeys trapped under similiar conditions - they would all fight and the men and women would all have sex. he insisted that he wanted to see why they fought so he could make World Peace.
but.. they didnt. they got on fine. he tried his best to push it, too, making sure the captain was a women to make the men feel.. emasculated (?) and adding a priest for “shame” and made sure the ship was cramped and offered little privacy but like. They Were All Friends.
he tried harder. he asked them invasive questions and read their answers out and got weird and agressive and tried to undermine the captain and make them all feel agitated.
by the end, everyone on the raft were still great friends - they just.. all hated him. the only times they all thought of violence, in fact - was when they briefly considered Actually Fucking Killing Him because he put them in danger.
in 2018, the five still living were Still Friends and were excited to see eachother when it came time for a documentary!!!
anyway.
