/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.19585818]

This book is just unabashed pro-state propaganda.

[Tired No.19585833]

Fuck off piggy we now its you

[Anonymous No.19585891]

>>19585818
No, it's a story about dumbfuck kids doing dumb kid stuff. There is no allegory. This is perhaps the least allegorical book ever but is treated the opposite.

[Anonymous No.19585907]

>>19585818
You are pro retard propaganda

[Anonymous No.19585951]

>>19585891
The kids being dumb is the point. The core theme of the story is that man is dependent on the state to survive, and not to kill eachother. It has the very basic intent of sowing distrust between one and his common fellows.

>"Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of a true, wise friend called Piggy."

Meanwhile in reality the basic ruthless pressure of survival would not allow the boys to engage in such petty conflicts and paranoia. Something called cold and hunger would force them to become dependent on and cooperate with producers, and that feedback loop of cooperation would rapidly deepen companionship. The civilized man would be disgusted at the idea of huddling with strangers to share warmth, but it's a basic act of necessity and comfort in a survival situation. Crisis causes people to come together, not fall apart.

The conflict of the story was entirely contrived. If the world worked like lord of the flies man would've been extinct before the stone age.

[Anonymous No.19585961]

>>19585818
Hunter-gatherers are unironically extremely violent though.

https://akarlin.com/2009/10/violence-is-reality/

[Anonymous No.19585973]

>>19585961
Hunter-gathers have extreme in-group preference precisely because survivalism has such strong bonding qualities. The stronger the group preference, the easier it is to harm out-groups. Also there's obviously a conflict of interest between the ones writing the stats and the ones compared in them.

[Anonymous No.19585979]

>>19585961
"Hunter Gatherers" is a fake category.

[Anonymous No.19585981]

>>19585961
Before checking the link I'm more than a little sceptical of this figure. How could we measure annual war related deaths as a percentage of the population so well

[Anonymous No.19586002]

>>19585833
t. Jack

[Anonymous No.19586044]

>>19585818
I have news for you friend, the state tends to win in real life

[Anonymous No.19586057]

>>19586044
So the book is propagandistic as a metaphor for state propagandism?

[Anonymous No.19586090]

It's literally just about how evil kids are. The trial-by-fire bullying everybody both experiences and participates in for the first 18 years of their life

The most extreme acts of human cruelty I've ever personally witnessed were on the back of the schoolbus home I took through 5 years of secondary

[Anonymous No.19586098]

>>19586090
> The most extreme acts of human cruelty I've ever personally witnessed were on the back of the schoolbus home I took through 5 years of secondary

Which is why Golding's book is just a facile, over-exposed thesis on something obvious to anyone with eyes. Very little literary value.

[Anonymous No.19586138]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongan_castaways
The book was too unrealistic, men have no problems cooperating. He should have made them girls, than it would make sense

[Anonymous No.19586149]

>>19586090
You've been in close prolonged contact with children, you haven't been in close prolonged contact in people with, say, military or political power. This is why LotF is so effective at demonizing the former and idealizing the latter, especially when you give it to highschoolers that exaggerate all of the principles I pointed out to such an extreme degree.

[Anonymous No.19586153]

>>19586098
But it makes people tell on themselves when they see their own actions or inclinations represented by children lol

[Anonymous No.19586996]

>>19585818
Unless I'm remembering incorrectly, I believe LOTF was always intended as a harsh parody of the literature of the time, which was wildly optimistic about human nature and the virtues of English civilization

Much like Clockwork Orange, which is a harsh parody of Skinner's hardline, "black box" behaviorism - if you aren't familiar with the history of psychology as a discipline, that book will have only aesthetic value for you

[Anonymous No.19587058]

>>19585818
LOTF is a critique of the evolution of cultures, fascism, and war. they'll be no submarine to come pick us up from the island when it's wwiii and sticks are sharpened on both ends.

LOTF is timeless.

[Anonymous No.19587430]

>>19586090
>The most extreme acts of human cruelty I've ever personally witnessed were on the back of the schoolbus home I took through 5 years of secondary
Glad I'm not the only one. I'm honestly surprised nobody was killed on my schoolbus, they were animals.

[Anonymous No.19588296]

>>19585951
People don't cooperate by default, neither they enter a war of all against all for that matter, but your idea of social ontology is wrong in the former rather than latter way.

[Anonymous No.19588303]

>>19585981
Ethnographic record. Lot's of these tribes are small enough that everyone knows who died and more or less when.

[Anonymous No.19588327]

>>19585818
Hey, cool it with the antisemitism

[Anonymous No.19588365]

>>19586090
The "evils of humanity" represented in the book can really be boiled down to Jack and Roger, who were both charismatic repressed sociopaths who managed to win everyone else over. How do they represent humanity, really?

[Anonymous No.19588371]

>>19585818
There's nothing wrong with being pro-state

[Anonymous No.19588397]

>>19588365
Humanity has it's share of charismatic leaders you know. Look to history and you'll find more than handful.

[Anonymous No.19588457]

I hate americans so much it's unreal

[Anonymous No.19588475]

>>19585961
>though

[Anonymous No.19588563]

>>19588475
Please kill yourself.

[Anonymous No.19588569]

>>19588475
based

[Anonymous No.19588723]

>>19585818
>propaganda
Most overused word. Define it. What makes it different from legitamely advancing your own ideological beliefs?

[Anonymous No.19588886]

>>19588475
Please go back to /int/

[Anonymous No.19588907]

>>19588296
Who said anything about by default? They're under duress to cooperate, as man as a social creature is inherently under duress to cooperate to survive. They will literally be coerced by nature to cooperate. This idea that young boys will by nature rebel against basic survival necessity to kill eachother and by extension themselves is fully malicious and irrational.

[Anonymous No.19588956]

>>19586996
The villains literally start imitating tribals they've probably never encountered in their lives and are only stopped when english civilization comes back to save them. How the fuck is that anything other than statewank?

The book is a gigantic hysterical strawman against unrestrained individualism.

[Anonymous No.19588969]

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/the-real-lord-of-the-flies-what-happened-when-six-boys-were-shipwrecked-for-15-months

actually a heartwarming read.

Golding's vision was lame. Humans are a lot better bunch than we give ourselves credit for.

[Anonymous No.19589221]

>>19588956
The boys are helpless to bring the enlightened civilization of their fathers to the island because they're a bunch of shitty children, and they are only found and rescued because that same enlightened civilization is waging a (pretty uncivilized) war in the region. The implication is that the only difference between the savage children and the adults is a false veneer of civility over their appetites for violence and sadism. And that the "innocence" of children is an artificial construct of human civilization. I don't think Golding is saying the state is good or bad, just that civilization itself is a mask over our worst impulses that can vanish very quickly under the wrong circumstances.

[Anonymous No.19589281]

>>19585818
If I was in this book I’d try to join up with the evil boys and become some kind of prison warden that uses tickle torture

[Anonymous No.19589619]

>>19588969
Institutional powers want us to think we're a species of psychopaths that needs the state/the pope/etc to keep eachother in line, when it's those very powers that are run by the biggest psychopaths to begin with. It's basic bitch psychological isolation tactics and LOTF shamelessly pushes this mentality on impressionable children as well.

>>19589221
Not bringing civilization to the island is fine. This somehow turning into them LARPing as stereotyped murderous savages and killing eachother for literally no reason and only to their own possible detriment was a hamfisted strawman. The book used the common man's arrogance and contempt toward children to try to pass off an I AM SILLY situation as a serious, plausible examination of human nature. There is no neutrality when it's blatantly obvious what most people would prefer between a bunch of boys brutally murdering eachother and the "fake" safety and comfort of civilized life. It's just another piece of christian/white/first worlder guilt trash that condemns people as internally evil even if they are externally fine. This type of fundamental evil and intrinsic guilt is of course one of the favorite excuses of statists for promoting their various slave ideologies.

[Anonymous No.19589661]

>>19589619
Interesting take, I can see how you formed that interpretation. I don't agree that Golding is arguing for the necessity of the state, but what he's saying about human nature would lend itself easily to arguments for authoritarianism.

I haven't read it yet myself but you might be interested in the Han Feizi, which takes a basically evil view of human nature and advises that the people must be controlled through fear and awe, from what I understand of the summary. I decided to read some of the foundational texts of legalism because I'm writing a story in which one of the point of view characters would need to be familiar with it. You would probably side with Han Fei's predecessors and opponents but it might help you strengthen your own beliefs

[Anonymous No.19589687]

I remember reading this book and asking my mom to buy pork. I used to dream about roast pig, had an obsession to the point that I wanted to kill a pig myself.

[Anonymous No.19589818]

>>19589661
My point isn't particularly to say that human beings are fundamentally good rather than evil. What I take issue with is how incompetent LOTF portrays humans as being. This is something that's starkly different between western mentality and eastern mentality. In eastern stories, man is usually portrayed as fundamentally selfish, but as an extension also pragmatic (at least, within their ability). The boys would probably briefly conflict to establish a pecking order, but their disagreements and superficial concerns would evaporate in the face of genuine problems: Hunger, cold, etc. Humans are selfish, but they work things out anyway, in a selfish way.

In western stories, man is portrayed as wicked and helpless without god and the state. This is the case of the boys in LotF as well, they're not just flawed or selfish, they're suicidal. They feared the beast because they strayed from god, and they descended into savagery because they lost the guidance of the state. Someone that took LotF as a documentary would have to seriously wonder how human beings survived to their current state in the first place, to which the typical westerner would answer "the state and/or the grace of god", naturally in LotF it was only through an intervention that the boys were saved. It's no surprise that western civilization is racked with fears of the apocalypse every decade or so, when such a low opinion of man and its ability to persist in adversity is commonplace.

Not that eastern philosophy doesn't have its own philosophical condemnations of humanity as evil, (I think the aforementioned legalism may be one such example,) but that should be no surprise considering the east has had its fair share of authoritarianism as well.

[Anonymous No.19590080]

>>19588397
The problem is charisma in kids is different than adults, the "cool kids" probably change dramatically after puberty/high school/college/etc. and "let's dress in war paint and beat up/kill the non-believers" is not the same as how it would play out in real life because all that requires confidence as well, and to an extent translates into good leadership, probably because they tend to attract the right people.

Many times these leaders fall because of a fatal flaw or make a move in war that goes incredibly badly, or piss off enough people that an assassination is called for. In Ralph's case, he didn't even have the choice, because the kids weren't looking for leadership, they were looking for the "cool kids", which Jack was, and Roger later "enforced" if you had doubts. Meanwhile Ralph hanging out with Piggy wasn't exactly helping his reputation.

[Anonymous No.19591028]

>>19585818
So?

[Anonymous No.19591153]

>>19585818
You fucking mongrel, how the fuck it is a state propaganda. Haven’t you read the last page?

[Anonymous No.19591427]

>>19588397
>>19590080
Charisma has almost nothing to do with establishment of leadership, especially in a proto-civilization like the island. Leadership is determined by military superiority first and foremost, which Jack and Roger did have, while continued leadership is determined by competent rule that maintains the health of that very military superiority, which charisma can be a factor in. Where things went wrong is Jack and Roger being incompetent at the latter, and devolving into petty bandits, and thus LotF becoming an example of a failed social order. Had Jack and Roger been competent enough to realize that the boys, including themselves, who were left with pretty much nothing and living in extreme discomfort, had better things to do than pretend to be archetypical tribal savages, cower to mirages, and infight amongst eachother, things would've ended differently.

[Anonymous No.19591461]

>>19585951
>The core theme of the story is that man is dependent on the state to survive, and not to kill eachother.

I saw it as an allegory of colonization

>natives play war and the most violent ones are in charge(the kids butchering each other)
>you can't play that game with advanced civilizations/Europeans(the adults who land at the end)
>the most civilized among the natives can have their way by dealing with Europeans(the kid going to talk with the adults)

I read it at least 7 or 8 years ago though, so I don't remember very well

[Anonymous No.19591466]

>>19591461
For what it's worth, that's still an anglo-idealist conclusion which was the author's main goal in the first place.

[Anonymous No.19591497]

>>19591461
>>19591466
>>19585818
As pointed out by >>19591153 the last page makes the meaning pretty fucking clear. British school boys descend in anarchy and violent tribalism, the officer is disappointed in their behaviour but is oblivious to his own hypocrisy, that adult civilisation is equally tribal and violent, just with better technology and high minded justifications.

[Anonymous No.19591645]

>>19591497
Self-blame and misanthropy are still anglo-idealist because they support authoritarianism, which in this case is anglo-authoritarianism. The adult wasn't an asshole, he wasn't Jack 2.0, they weren't going back to be executed in some hellhole, they were going back to their comfortable civilized lives at the hand of a man oblivious to the tragedy they experienced and the new-found fear and contempt it spawned within them. It's blatantly obvious who the reader will prefer between going back or remaining trapped on an island with Jack. It further uses an ego trip to manipulate the reader: the boy who sees the "darkness of man's heart" that even the adult is oblivious to returns to civilization, just as the teenager who reads this in highschool returns to his mundanity with a newfound sense of misanthropic arrogance toward his "innocent" peers.

This is the very same psychological process is described in the very last page of the book: The boys thought they could work together (content as common boys), they are dropped into despair with failure, and now they return, aware of something that the officer is clueless to- superior to him. The story paints the misanthropy induced by the strawman named Jack as a rare, expensive, and valuable lesson on human nature that elevates them over others. It's classic manipulative writing.

[Anonymous No.19592387]

>>19591645
>The adult wasn't an asshole, he wasn't Jack 2.0, they weren't going back to be executed in some hellhole, they were going back to their comfortable civilized lives at the hand of a man oblivious to the tragedy they experienced and the new-found fear and contempt it spawned within them. It's blatantly obvious who the reader will prefer between going back or remaining trapped on an island with Jack.
They were going back to a world of warfare and destruction that ends with two nukes. It's not about which the reader would prefer, it's an allegory to show that civilised peoples aren't very far removed from feral children.

[Anonymous No.19592588]

>>19592387
Give me a fucking break, the sailor being immediately preferable to Jack is direct proof that your so-called allegory is faulty.

[Anonymous No.19592596]

I thought it was about how toxic masculine behavior reifies itself

[Anonymous No.19592601]

>>19585818
yes

[Anonymous No.19592624]

>>19585961
>fatality rate
>violence
Which one is more violent? Puncturing someone's torso with a spear or carpet bombing? The difference is that the 'hunter gatherer' does not have access to surgery and will certainly die while the maimed victim of industrial violence can be brought back to productive baseline by a surgeon, even though his injuries are far worse.

once again the so called 'civilized' asset is dishonest and must spread his lies to further his cult.

[Anonymous No.19592784]

>>19592588
That doesn't break the allegory you stupid nigger. Golding practically hits you over the head with it in the last line. If you have a problem with it take up with him.

[Anonymous No.19592972]

>>19585818
Jack was Based.

[Anonymous No.19592977]

>>19586090
They were all muggers.

[Anonymous No.19592978]

>>19592784
You're just cherrypicking one theme and trying to use it to cover another. Suppose man is fundamentally evil either way and the island merely made Ralph realize that, the fact still remains that civilization is better than the island, that he'd live in civilization and die in the island, that civilization saved him at the end of the story. The OP interpretation already accounts for both the fact that the story portrays man as evil and civilization as superior to anarchy, with the former as a subtle supporting argument to the latter. All you're doing is pointing out the former and covering your ears to the existence of the latter. An interpretation that can't account for all factors is inferior.

And no, you can't mental gymnastics your way into an argument that angloid civilization and the island are equal in preference when you've already admitted to it being preferable. Even if you didn't you'd have to be sociopathic and devoid of self-awareness to try to argue they are equal no matter how many war-guilt arguments you tried to back it with. War-guilt that, according to you, the book tries to blame on the nature of children and not the warmongering rulers. Laughable.

[Anonymous No.19593246]

>>19592978
Jesus titty fucking christ. It is not about whether the island is preferable or civilisation, it is trying to demonstrate how a bunch of seemingly respectable nations began dropping bombs on each other like crazy.

[Anonymous No.19593956]

>>19593246
>this blatant takeaway isn't a takeaway because... IT JUST ISN'T OKAY????!?!

[Anonymous No.19594040]

>>19585818
Are you a 14 yo from /pol/ who just read this in school

[Anonymous No.19594328]

>>19594040
>being disingenuous on /lit/
Where did it go wrong for you?

[Anonymous No.19594340]

>>19586090
Give us the details of the story please. Are you a Brit?

[Anonymous No.19594669]

>>19585891
this
>b-but there's layers to this bro
no there isn't shut up

[Anonymous No.19594704]

>>19585818
Reading this post made me pro abortion

[Anonymous No.19594729]

>>19585818
Young me: agrees with OP, thinks things would work out in the real scenario.
Old me: it would go much worse in real life, and all or most of them would die. This book is too optimistic about humanity.

[Anonymous No.19595518]

>>19593956
> Muh blatant takeaway
Anon your autistic obsessed interpretation which nobody else relates to or has ever heard of cannot possibly be a blatant takeaway

[Anonymous No.19595555]

>>19585818
zoom out a little bit; replace image with word.jpg

[Anonymous No.19595640]

>>19585818
No it’s anti male propaganda from a confirmed liberal pussy who once said he thinks women’s re superior to men because he obviously had no testosterone and resented the fact that women preferred real men

[Anonymous No.19595746]

>>19595640
In the context I read his quote it seems more like trying to avoid outrage from butthurt women than anything else. He implies women are not representative of society, but it’s ok because they’re ‘superior’ to men and always have been. Well… the only way women have been superior to men has strictly been through sexual market value and selective mates. Could be me spitballing but considering the context of his quote it doesn’t seem far fetched.

[Anonymous No.19595830]

>>19588907
First of all the irrational is more than evidently present in all primitive cultures, it's what drove people throughout history. Secondly you're looking at it way too simply, killing a man in a group means both 2 less hands to work but also 1 less mouth to feed. Factionalism and extermination for territorial control is something that happens among chimps for fucks sake. Humans are not rational utilitarian cooperation machines, they're tribalistic mystical zealots always hungry for blood of the other.

[Anonymous No.19595943]

>>19593246
>>19594040
Go easy on him, lolberts have to cope with the entire world refusing to work as they say.

[Anonymous No.19596120]

>>19595943
>>19588969

[Anonymous No.19596463]

I would have killed to survive longer
This isn't a continent with de facto infinite resources
Cooperation isn't an option

[Anonymous No.19596479]

>>19592624
cope more
hunter gatherer societies are literally more violent than modern ones by far

[Anonymous No.19596481]

>>19589818
shutup faggot

[Anonymous No.19596486]

>>19596120
>dude because a few boys managed to survive on an island it ignores hundreds and thousands of years of hunter gatherer warfare and violence
why are civilised weaklings like this?

[Anonymous No.19596488]

>NOOOO HUMANS ARE LE ESSENTIALLY EVIL AND WE NEED TO ERECT HUGE OPPRESSIVE STATE INSTITUTIONS TO KEEP THEIR SELF-DESTRUCTIVE TENDENCIES AT BAY
>NOOOOO HUMANERINOS ARE ACTUALLY LE GOOD AND IT'S PRECISELY THE INSTITUTIONAL POWER THAT CORRUPTS THEM AND MAKES THEM BAD
Give me a fucking break. Hundreds of years of pointless debates concerning the "nature" of human beings and still no one has been able to point an actual human being in a state of nature i.e. a presocial human being.
>inb4 savage tribes
They are already socialized precisely for the reason that they form tribes. Trying to discover the nature of humans, distilled and removed from all constraints imposed on it by society, seems to be a fruitless endeavour and so far it has produced little results.

[Anonymous No.19596502]

>>19596488
no, killing, rape, pillage and warfare are all good things. they are the state of human nature. it's industrial oppressive society that stops us from enganging in these age old instinctual practises but you're a civcuck who thinks raiding an enemy village is le BAD

[Anonymous No.19596528]

>>19596120
You don't get it, do you?
You're so mindbroken you're trying to deboonk a FICTIONAL story, because if you squint from a distance and ignore a few key details it almost looks like that work of FICTION mighy possibly be seen as an argument for a political position incompatible with your own.
Of course, nobody has ever used Lord of the Flies to make such an argument, but that doesn't stop you from making a fool out of yourself.

[Anonymous No.19596574]

>>19596488
Nobody is arguing the latter greentext, you're making a false dichotomy. the issue is LOTF just being a strawman argument for the former, targeted at young adults.

[Anonymous No.19596576]

>>19596528
You are absolutely pissed that someone called a book disingenuous. Why?

[Anonymous No.19596591]

>>19596576
>if they laugh at me that means they're pissed!
>this FICTIONAL book for kids is disingenuous because it doesn't pander to my extremely rigid ideological framework!
You're a one man freak show, I'm here to laugh at you.

[Anonymous No.19596597]

>>19585818
>highschool reading has an authoritarian preference
Whoa big surprise, next you'll be saying That Was Then, This Is Now was telling kids to rat out their friends and family to the cops.

[Anonymous No.19596599]

>>19596591
You're spamming buzzwords and decade-old strawman ms paint comics on /lit/. This is clearly affecting you on a personal level.

[Anonymous No.19596604]

>>19595830
>First of all the irrational is more than evidently present in all primitive cultures
Yeah, according to the people who wiped them off the face of the earth. Are the Sentinal Island people irrational when they kill people on sight?
Humans are social animals who cooperate, this is a fact. It's also a point to note that no one in history ever gave up hunting and gathering willingly, they were instead killed and enslaved until their way of life didn't exist anymore.

[Anonymous No.19596605]

>>19596599
>can't read filenames
>nooo u r strawmanning me!!!!!
You got triggered by a decade old star wars shitpost, lmao.
Keep dancing, monkey.

[Anonymous No.19596625]

>>19596605
Not even reading more than the first sentence of your posts at all, desu

[Anonymous No.19597320]

>>19596625
You're not reading filenames either, newfag

[Anonymous No.19597553]

>>19596528
> You're so mindbroken you're trying to deboonk a FICTIONAL story
I’m not the one trying to claim my argument is against a ‘world view’. From my chair, you’re coping because reality ain’t how you liked it to be.
>>19596486
>Brooo duuuddeee capitalism killed waaayyy more than communism mannnn.
Get real with your false equivalencies faggot.

[Anonymous No.19597622]

>>19596604
>It's also a point to note that no one in history ever gave up hunting and gathering willingly, they were instead killed and enslaved until their way of life didn't exist anymore.
Or they did so to kill and enslave others. Remember, you can do both - cooperate with "your guys" and fight the "other" and this is what lies at the bottom of all social ontology. Known hunter gatherers in Papua and what have you are exactly like that. Go there and ask if they're the cannibals you've heard about, you will hear that it's the other tribe, go to other tribe and they'll tell you the opposite, investigate further, they only practice it ritualistically, it's just a series of blood feuds between tribal lines at work. The Noble savage is supposed to be the opposite of the evil civilisation, but this is false dichotomy. Both are irrationally driven to violence between each other.

[Anonymous No.19598848]

>>19596604
>Humans are social animals who cooperate, this is a fact. It's also a point to note that no one in history ever gave up hunting and gathering willingly, they were instead killed and enslaved until their way of life didn't exist anymore.
then how did the first farmers emerge you autistic faggot?
humans are warlike. human tribes fight. hunter gatherers are extremely warlike. stop coping and crying about it nigger. nature is violent, and that's a good thing

[Anonymous No.19600266]

>>19596488
Cope

[Anonymous No.19600362]

>>19585961
Another chart:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-violent-deaths-prehistoric-archeological-sites

[Anonymous No.19600634]

>>19585818
>Two Years' Vacation (French: Deux ans de vacances) is an adventure novel by Jules Verne, published in 1888. The story tells of the fortunes of a group of schoolboys stranded on a deserted island in the South Pacific, and of their struggles to overcome adversity. In his preface to the book, Verne explains that his goals were to create a Robinson Crusoe-like environment for children, and to show the world what the intelligence and bravery of a child were capable of when put to the test
Perhaps you like the original better?