Also I kinda wanna do say that this is the problem with any reading of any book (intended by the author or not) as being about "human nature" There isn't one human nature, there's as many human natures as humanshttps://twitter.com/NussbaumAbigail/status/1259386486643924992 …
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That sense of inevitability that you just have to have weapons, you have to have hunters, and the hunters must become soldiers, that's a specific thing It's specific to their culture, to their class, and very obviously to their gender
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A lot of stuff is like that Ralph is the charismatic leader, the one who can unite people with his face and voice without the need to bully and intimidate, but he's not smart enough to use that He keeps letting Jack fuck him over, undermine him
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Even though the original book says Jack *isn't* good looking or charismatic or a natural leader, all he's got is the bullying and intimidation That's the tragic narrative and it's a specific narrative of a tragic flaw
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Ralph and Jack could've just been the same person and then there'd be no tragedy, no sad tale of lost hope, it'd just be "An evil bully leader landed on an island and continued to be an evil bully"
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Or Jack could've never existed and the story would've been hunky-dory, but boring Or, tantalizingly, Ralph could have been just a little smarter or a little tougher, a little less of a dick himself and able to see what needed to be done to stop Jack
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Which is also a huge part of the theme of the book, this tragedy that *Piggy* is the one who actually is smart enough to do those things but nobody respects him Ralph and Piggy need to be one person but they're split into two
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That's hammered in at the end of the book, the second to last line has Ralph mourning "most of all for the friend called Piggy" Everything irrevocably goes to hell when Piggy dies
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And like it's obviously not somehow inevitable or universal that the popular kids are kind of dumb and don't know how to do anything about bullies and the smart kids who know what's going on are fat and ugly and nobody listens to them
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It's not a universal human truth, but it is a particular familiar dynamic that *when it happens* causes things to get ugly in a particularly tragic and painful way, and that's what Golding, as a teacher who saw this kind of shit play out, wanted to write about
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(If I wanted to go into allegory, a debased form of criticism but compelling, it's really hard not to see Ralph the Student Body President, Jack the Recess Bully and Piggy the Insufferable Nerd as mainstream liberals vs. fascists vs. the left intelligentsia)
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(And the infighting between Ralph and Piggy and the way they constantly undermine each other even though they know they should be on the same side because Jack is so dangerous is why Jack wins A hoary narrative but one that kind of gripped the mind in the post-WWII era)
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It's about some pretty specific things that were on Golding's mind as a British schoolteacher in the 1950s and to over-universalize it in a way that makes it easy to dunk on - What if they were girls? What if they were working class? What if they were Black? - misses the point
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Like the single biggest thing about the Tongan kids that contributed to their irl survival is THEY WERE FRIENDS WHO KNEW AND TRUSTED EACH OTHER BEFOREHAND The tragedy of LotF is none of the survivors manage to actually develop that kind of bond with each other
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The only real social relationship on the island is bullying Ralph and Piggy genuinely *want* to be friends but they, tragically, don't quite make it - Ralph can't get over Piggy being fat and ugly and annoying, Piggy can't stop condescending to Ralph because he's dumb
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I think it's obvious that Golding's view of "human nature" is not so dim that he doesn't think friends who genuinely trust each other can ever exist Just that it's sometimes tragic when you feel like people obviously desperately need a relationship like that but fail
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And that you see that happen - A LOT - in middle class schoolyards And those same ugly dynamics crop up disturbingly often in the halls of state in this supposedly advanced civilization of ours
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(I reveal my bias here but I think a lot about Ralph looking at Piggy and just thinking how funny his fat little face and whiny little voice is when he's trying to be serious and warn him about Jack "Ugh stop calling everyone you disagree with a Nazi you fucking nerd")
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("I don't know if he's right about all this wonk shit but I just wanna shove that guy into a locker you know what I mean")
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End of conversation
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