In a recent issue of a tiny local paper from Mackay, Australia, I came across the headline: “Mates share 50-year bond”. When I searched for him, I had another stroke of luck. Were the boys still alive? And could I find the television footage? Most importantly, though, I had a lead: the captain’s name was Peter Warner. According to the article, the captain had even got a television station to film a re-enactment of the boys’ adventure. The boys had been rescued by an Australian sea captain after being marooned on the island of ‘Ata for more than a year. The story concerned six boys who had been found three weeks earlier on a rocky islet south of Tonga, an island group in the Pacific Ocean. In the 6 October 1966 edition of Australian newspaper The Age, a headline jumped out at me: “Sunday showing for Tongan castaways”. The reference to 1977 turned out to have been a typo.
REAL LIVE ARCHIVE
Sifting through a newspaper archive one day, I typed a year incorrectly and there it was. But sometimes all it takes is a stroke of luck. What do they do, this little tribe? They made a pact never to quarrel.” Caught in a huge storm, the boys were shipwrecked on a deserted island.
After trawling the web for a while, I came across an obscure blog that told an arresting story: “One day, in 1977, six boys set out from Tonga on a fishing trip.
Thus began my quest for a real-life Lord of the Flies. All my examples concerned kids at home, at school, or at summer camp. I began to wonder: had anyone ever studied what real children would do if they found themselves alone on a deserted island? I wrote an article on the subject, in which I compared Lord of the Flies to modern scientific insights and concluded that, in all probability, kids would act very differently. “I have always understood the Nazis,” Golding confessed, “because I am of that sort by nature.” And it was “partly out of that sad self-knowledge” that he wrote Lord of the Flies. I learned what an unhappy individual he had been: an alcoholic, prone to depression. That didn’t happen until years later when I began delving into the author’s life. I remember feeling disillusioned afterwards, but not for a second did I think to doubt Golding’s view of human nature. I first read Lord of the Flies as a teenager. Had Auschwitz been an anomaly, they wanted to know, or is there a Nazi hiding in each of us? Of course, he had the zeitgeist of the 1960s on his side, when a new generation was questioning its parents about the atrocities of the second world war. Golding had a masterful ability to portray the darkest depths of mankind. In hindsight, the secret to the book’s success is clear. An English schoolmaster, William Golding, made up this story in 1951 – his novel Lord of the Flies would sell tens of millions of copies, be translated into more than 30 languages and hailed as one of the classics of the 20th century. Golding had a masterful ability to portray the darkest depths of mankind
“Ralph wept for the end of innocence,” we read, and for “the darkness of man’s heart”. “I should have thought,” the officer says, “that a pack of British boys would have been able to put up a better show than that.” At this, Ralph bursts into tears. And they develop overpowering urges – to pinch, to kick, to bite.īy the time a British naval officer comes ashore, the island is a smouldering wasteland. Before long, they have begun painting their faces. The boys are more interested in feasting and frolicking than in tending the fire. Athletic, charismatic and handsome, his game plan is simple: 1) Have fun. One boy, Ralph, is elected to be the group’s leader. On the very first day, the boys institute a democracy of sorts.
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