The Big Lie of Lord of the Flies: How Boys Really Lived on a Desert Island

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

In any incomprehensible situation, people lose their human appearance - dystopian novels teach us. Some of the situations described in them are difficult to reproduce in real life in order to check how much the author is right. But with the famous "Lord of the Flies" it turned out differently: its plot can be compared with the real story of boys on a desert island.

Wild boys from the church choir

The novel by the Nobel laureate William Golding, recognized as a masterpiece of literature, is usually praised not only for the plot, psychology and well-conveyed atmosphere of what is happening. He is considered a good model for understanding what happens to a group of quite cultured people in an extreme situation, especially when the police are not over their souls.

According to the plot of the novel, a plane crashes over a desert island carrying evacuated boys, some of whom are singers of the church choir. After the disaster, only children survive. Very soon, most of them lose all remnants of civilization. The boys come up with a primitive religion for themselves and begin to kill those comrades who try to talk to them from the standpoint of a civilized person. Since we are talking about children, the process of becoming savage is going on rapidly.

Of course, one cannot discount the fact that Golding did more than just put the boys in extreme conditions without state control. They were saved from some kind of war. They could see many terrible things before the evacuation. Boys from church choirs are often victims of harassment, which does not make them psychologically stable. Some of the boys probably attended classical British closed schools, where bullying was actually encouraged as a form of relationship. Finally, they all had the experience of near-fulfilling their own deaths after going through a plane crash.

All of this taken together would clearly have an impact on more than just a lack of control. Nevertheless, it is generally accepted that the book vividly shows how thin the raid of civilization and altruism is on us and how little it takes for it to fly off.

This is not to say that a book with such an idea was happy to be published. Golding was refused by twenty-one publishers, and twenty-second undertook to publish on the condition that a clarification about the war was thrown out of the plot - initially it was a very specific nuclear war, marking the imminent and inevitable end of the world. To many, her mention would have seemed speculation on the fears popular at that time.

And real boys on a desert island

Eleven years after the novel's release, in 1965, six school-age boys were stranded on a desert island for more than a year. Fate provided an opportunity to see how real children behave in such circumstances, and compare with the famous novel. Of course, these boys did not survive the war and the plane crash, but these factors are still not taken into account when discussing the plot of Lord of the Flies.

In 1966, Australian Peter Warner, passing by his fishing boat past an uninhabited, tiny, rocky islet south of Tonga, noticed a child there. A completely naked black teenager with long hair jumped off a cliff into the water and swam to the ship. Other boys appeared on the rocks. They screamed with all their might - clearly out of fear that Warner would leave. Peter waited for that first boy to board.“My name is Stephen,” said the teenager. "There are six of us here, and we seem to have been here for fifteen months."

Warner immediately contacted the shore … and learned that the boys on the island were officially buried a long time ago. "It's a miracle!" shouted into his walkie-talkie. The teenagers were students at the Nuku'alof Catholic boarding school. Over a year ago, they stole a fishing boat to escape the strict school somewhere in Fiji. The oldest of the fugitives was sixteen, the youngest thirteen.

The schoolchildren took food (bananas and coconuts) and a gas burner with them - but they did not think about a compass or a map. They stole a boat from a man with whom they had long been in bad relations - so as not to upset some good man. As the boat sailed out into the night, the boys quickly fell asleep. We woke up from the fact that they were flooded with water: a storm began. They raised the sail - it was blown to shreds by the wind. The steering wheel was damaged. The teenagers were not only lost in the sea, carried away from the coast, but also could not manage the boat. They miraculously survived eight days of drifting without food and almost without water - they managed to collect some rainwater in a coconut shell, which they carefully and honestly shared with each other.

Rock of life

More than a week later, they saw an unfriendly-looking rock sticking out of the sea. Until now, they have not been able to see any other land, so the boys swam to the rock. Fortunately, it was large enough to accommodate trees and other plants. After several weeks of living on fish and birds' eggs, the boys climbed to the top of the cliff and found there something like an abandoned farm, with a banana orchard and a vegetable garden filled with wild taro. The same feral chickens roamed the garden.

The boys gouged troughs from the tree trunks to store water. They were also able to make a fire and kept it unquenchable for over a year - due to the fact that there were enough plants. Their lives were not limited to obtaining food and water. In order not to go crazy, they arranged for themselves places for entertainment - they played badminton, swayed on a swing.

The teenagers were divided into teams that were engaged in gardening, kitchen and hunting and security. They managed to make a kind of guitar for themselves to cheer up in the evenings. By agreement, as soon as a big quarrel broke out, they went to the sides to cool off. Everyone understood that cohesion is the key to survival. At some point, when the rains stopped for a long time, they almost went mad with thirst - but still did not rush into mutual accusations.

One day the same Stephen who rushed to intercept Warner's ship fell off a cliff. He survived, but broke his leg. The rest lifted him in their arms over the rocks and made him a tire, as they said at school - from sticks and vines. In order for the leg to heal as evenly as possible, the boys decided that it was better for Stephen to lie down for a longer time, practically not moving, and distributed his work among themselves. Later, the doctor was surprised to see how well the teen's leg had healed.

Unhappy end. No happy

After the six boys returned to civilization and were examined by a doctor, they were … They were put under arrest at the police station. Having learned that the hijackers of the boat were alive, its owner decided that the moment to apply for them was the most appropriate.

But Warner was, I must say, a young man from a wealthy family with connections. He managed to convince TV people that this story is worth their attention and that a documentary can be filmed on it. With the consent of the TV crew, he came to the owner of the boat and pleaded with him, inviting him to the filming and refunding the cost of the hijacked boat (even with interest). The boys were released from arrest, and Peter made sure they got to Tonga, where their sobbing relatives were already waiting for them.

Soon, the King of Tonga invited Peter to an audience. He called Warner a national hero of Tong and asked if he could do something for the savior of his six young subjects. Peter asked and got permission to fish for lobsters off the coast of the kingdom and start his own business. Needless to say, six teenagers from a lonely cliff were the first to get a job on a lobster catcher ship - and that they were happy to become real sailors, even if they only traveled near their native shores. Their future was secured. And the ship was named after the rock that saved them: Ata.

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