Lord of the Flies

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Alright, so a lot of the hate sounds a bit death of the author.

[ChiggyvonRichthofen]

I'm reading this for the first time right now. I was familiar with the basic story, but what surprises me is that it really is just a young adult adventure yarn in some ways (so far). There's definitely the sense that you're dealing with archetypes, symbolism, and allegory, but unlike something like Orwell's Animal Farm, the story can function without trying to create a lot of 1:1 analogies. Of course that's just my opinion halfway through.

Speaking of the generally pessimistic conclusion about human nature that the book is famous for, I'm fine with the idea in principle. I do think a lot of the popular works in disaster/survival/apocalyptic genres underestimate just how much a person or society can withstand or misread what exactly it is that drives communities together or apart. But I don't think a work like this is obligated to give a complete picture of human nature, about which there are countless differing opinions. I don't think an author necesarrily needs to communicate what he thinks would actually happen in his particular nightmare scenario.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Thanks!

[Antiboyscout]

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/the-real-lord-of-the-flies-what-happened-when-six-boys-were-shipwrecked-for-15-months

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

In the case of how likely it is that a group of boys would result in chaos as depicted, I've never been of the mind that say each situation would depict such events. It might end up with kids like in the book and it might end up like that TNG episode where everyone loses their memory but they systematically determine how each one formally acts in order for them to all survive.