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It’s interesting to compare Lord of the Flies with a real life example of children being marooned on an island: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/th

by steve_b 9mo ago

It’s interesting to compare Lord of the Flies with a real life example of children being marooned 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 https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/the-real-lord-...

ocschwar 9mo ago
Who could have guessed that growing up in a Polynesian culture is a better preparation for such a thing than going to an English boarding school..
- like_any_other 9mo ago
  You're implying Golding based it on experience on how unsupervised children really behave, but in fact he made it all up. Now (well, 60 years ago) that he has been debunked, we should accept the evidence, not invent arbitrary reasons why it doesn't apply. Especially since the boys in question were "Sione, Stephen, Kolo, David, Luke and Mano – all pupils at a strict Catholic boarding school in Nuku‘alofa."
  - onion2k 9mo ago
    You're implying Golding based it on experience on how unsupervised children really behave, but in fact he made it all up. William Golding was my father's English teacher at school (prior to publication of Lord of the Flies). According to my father, when people talked to Golding at the time, it wasn't based on real children but it definitely was based on what he believed children would be capable of.
    - DoctorOetker 9mo ago
      > [...] but it definitely was based on what he believed children would be capable of. Also Known As "[...] but in fact he made it all up."
      - Andrex 9mo ago
        I take it as a morality tale that applies to all of humans generally and less an indictment of a specific age range. But I may be in the minority it seems.
        marcellus23 9mo ago
        I think that's clearly the way to interpret the novel. The idea that you could even debunk a piece of allegorical fiction is silly. It would be like trying to make a point by claiming that the tale of the scorpion and the frog was made up, or The Metamorphosis.
      - bondarchuk 9mo ago
        Wow, it's almost as if we were dealing with a piece of fiction.
  - ocschwar 9mo ago
    Well, the Tongan boys provide the only empirical data on how unsupervised children behave on a desert island. Everything else written about the idea is speculation, from The Coral Island to The CHildren's Island to Lord of the Flies. But Golding did observe behavior in a boarding school, and while the Tongan boys did also go to boarding school, they also were being raised in Tongan culture, and that culture, including its behavioral norms, was what helped them survive on a desert island.
    - hermitcrab 9mo ago
      'Lord of the Flies' was written at least partly as a reaction to the overly idealist 'The Coral Island'.
  - jhbadger 9mo ago
    He certainly hasn't been "debunked" with a single counterexample, especially one from an entirely different non-Western culture. N=1 isn't a statistically significant sample in any case.
like_any_other 9mo ago
Strange how proving the book utterly false has not dimmed its literary reputation even a little, nor caused a resurgence of the "unrealistic" Coral Island that Golding set out to disprove and displace [1]. In fact being proven false has not been acknowledged at all by the literary world, which show how much respect that world deserves. [1] Golding thought that the book was unrealistic and asked his wife whether it would be a good idea if he "wrote a book about children on an island, children who behave in the way children really would behave?" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_of_the_Flies#Background https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_of_the_Flies#Background
- andy99 9mo ago
  It’s famous for being an allegory isn’t it? Isn’t this like saying Animal Farm remains popular even though we’ve proven that animals don’t actually self organize like in the book?
  - billy99k 9mo ago
    The crazy part is that just looking at how people behave on Reddit and HN, I could easily see adults with the same outcome as Lord of the Flies. It also could be that children are mostly posting, however (since there is no age verification, it's hard to tell these days).
    - bigyabai 9mo ago
      I think you're misconstruing the point of Lord of the Flies. It is not a children's book, and most of it's commentary can be generalized to adults. We see the exact same outcome in the highest echelons of politics, business and academia alike.
  - like_any_other 9mo ago
    Partly. But again, in the author's own words, he "wrote a book about children on an island, children who behave in the way children really would behave". Even his motivation was that Coral Island was "unrealistic". You'd think that would earn the book at least a little asterisk. Meanwhile Animal Farm is obviously intended to be allegorical by using animals as protagonists. While I disagree, one could argue that Lord of the Flies deserves to be so highly regarded despite being so wrong about children. But can one really argue that, when a highly regarded and extremely well known work, that is ostensibly about children, gets shown to be completely factually wrong on children, the appropriate amount of self-reflection for the literary world, that had heaped (and continues to heap) so much praise on it, is zero?
notKilgoreTrout 9mo ago
I always thought there weren't enough boys in Lord of the Flies for the social dynamics, but still it is supposed to be more than 6, enough to break into two groups of the size in this example..
hermitcrab 9mo ago
Rutger Bregman’s book, 'Humankind', covers this and is worth a read.

by steve_b 9mo ago

ocschwar 9mo ago

Who could have guessed that growing up in a Polynesian culture is a better preparation for such a thing than going to an English boarding school..

like_any_other 9mo ago
You're implying Golding based it on experience on how unsupervised children really behave, but in fact he made it all up. Now (well, 60 years ago) that he has been debunked, we should accept the evidence, not invent arbitrary reasons why it doesn't apply. Especially since the boys in question were "Sione, Stephen, Kolo, David, Luke and Mano – all pupils at a strict Catholic boarding school in Nuku‘alofa."
- onion2k 9mo ago
  You're implying Golding based it on experience on how unsupervised children really behave, but in fact he made it all up. William Golding was my father's English teacher at school (prior to publication of Lord of the Flies). According to my father, when people talked to Golding at the time, it wasn't based on real children but it definitely was based on what he believed children would be capable of.
  - DoctorOetker 9mo ago
    > [...] but it definitely was based on what he believed children would be capable of. Also Known As "[...] but in fact he made it all up."
    - Andrex 9mo ago
      I take it as a morality tale that applies to all of humans generally and less an indictment of a specific age range. But I may be in the minority it seems.
      - marcellus23 9mo ago
        I think that's clearly the way to interpret the novel. The idea that you could even debunk a piece of allegorical fiction is silly. It would be like trying to make a point by claiming that the tale of the scorpion and the frog was made up, or The Metamorphosis.
    - bondarchuk 9mo ago
      Wow, it's almost as if we were dealing with a piece of fiction.
- ocschwar 9mo ago
  Well, the Tongan boys provide the only empirical data on how unsupervised children behave on a desert island. Everything else written about the idea is speculation, from The Coral Island to The CHildren's Island to Lord of the Flies. But Golding did observe behavior in a boarding school, and while the Tongan boys did also go to boarding school, they also were being raised in Tongan culture, and that culture, including its behavioral norms, was what helped them survive on a desert island.
  - hermitcrab 9mo ago
    'Lord of the Flies' was written at least partly as a reaction to the overly idealist 'The Coral Island'.
- jhbadger 9mo ago
  He certainly hasn't been "debunked" with a single counterexample, especially one from an entirely different non-Western culture. N=1 isn't a statistically significant sample in any case.

like_any_other 9mo ago

Strange how proving the book utterly false has not dimmed its literary reputation even a little, nor caused a resurgence of the "unrealistic" Coral Island that Golding set out to disprove and displace [1]. In fact being proven false has not been acknowledged at all by the literary world, which show how much respect that world deserves. [1] Golding thought that the book was unrealistic and asked his wife whether it would be a good idea if he "wrote a book about children on an island, children who behave in the way children really would behave?" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_of_the_Flies#Background https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_of_the_Flies#Background

andy99 9mo ago
It’s famous for being an allegory isn’t it? Isn’t this like saying Animal Farm remains popular even though we’ve proven that animals don’t actually self organize like in the book?
- billy99k 9mo ago
  The crazy part is that just looking at how people behave on Reddit and HN, I could easily see adults with the same outcome as Lord of the Flies. It also could be that children are mostly posting, however (since there is no age verification, it's hard to tell these days).
  - bigyabai 9mo ago
    I think you're misconstruing the point of Lord of the Flies. It is not a children's book, and most of it's commentary can be generalized to adults. We see the exact same outcome in the highest echelons of politics, business and academia alike.
- like_any_other 9mo ago
  Partly. But again, in the author's own words, he "wrote a book about children on an island, children who behave in the way children really would behave". Even his motivation was that Coral Island was "unrealistic". You'd think that would earn the book at least a little asterisk. Meanwhile Animal Farm is obviously intended to be allegorical by using animals as protagonists. While I disagree, one could argue that Lord of the Flies deserves to be so highly regarded despite being so wrong about children. But can one really argue that, when a highly regarded and extremely well known work, that is ostensibly about children, gets shown to be completely factually wrong on children, the appropriate amount of self-reflection for the literary world, that had heaped (and continues to heap) so much praise on it, is zero?

notKilgoreTrout 9mo ago

I always thought there weren't enough boys in Lord of the Flies for the social dynamics, but still it is supposed to be more than 6, enough to break into two groups of the size in this example..

hermitcrab 9mo ago

Rutger Bregman’s book, 'Humankind', covers this and is worth a read.