So, white British dude imagines that boys marooned on an island will become murderous "savages." Actual children -- Tonga people, "savages" as imperialism endlessly frames them -- built a commune and took care of each other.https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/the-real-lord-of-the-flies-what-happened-when-six-boys-were-shipwrecked-for-15-months …
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Like the book LotF is a parody of, The Coral Island, literally is about shipwrecked British prep school boys having the education and character to just take over a community of "savages" and civilize them into an ideal society and as an actual teacher Golding was like pfffft
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Yeah, Golding was commenting on imperialism.
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It does, and I figured this out later. But when I first read it, my HS teacher didn't even understand that the boys were upper class, if I recall. She didn't get that their "public school" is what we would call private.
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Yeah I'm looking back on it now and realizing how many of us got some generalized "oh look all of humanity are savages when left to their own devices" when what Golding MIGHT have actually been going for was: "no just the British people, we need to stop sucking now guys,"
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That was always the lens I read it through. Especially as I went to an alternative hippy school with low teacher supervision that would have outbreaks of Lord of the Flies behavior. It was apt for how folks pick their prey.
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That's how I've always read it, as specifically a pisstake of that social order/class system.
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