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| Ian_2007 |
I imagine most people will read this for the prurient headline 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/aug/16/will...
But I was more struck by these two paragraphs:
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Golding's papers also described how he had experimented, while a teacher at a public school, with setting boys against one another in the manner of Lord of the Flies, which tells the story of young air crash survivors on a desert island during a nuclear war. ... The author's psychological experiments with his classes at Bishop Wordsworth's school, in Salisbury, caused his eyes "to come out like organ stops", according to his private journal. He divided pupils into gangs, with one attacking a prehistoric camp and the other defending it. |
Now, there's little question that Lord of the Flies is a good book and very insightful. But somehow the thought that it's based on a real experiment (especially one so reminiscent of the Hilterjugend's "mock battles") rather than the thought experiment I had always assumed, suddenly makes me feel more uncomfortable about it....
[The Independent have some slightly different quotes from the same story....]
| 17 Aug 09, 9:59 AM summberblues UK(LS), 7 yrs  |
When reading things about that he does sound a rather creepy kind of bloke. | |
| 17 Aug 09, 12:10 PM ScarlettDeWinter UK(BS), 3 yrs |
I can't quite explain the vast milage we as GCSE students got out of the fact that he lived next door to a boys' school, by the end of the year we'd convinced everyone that he was a known peadophile who's bedroom overlooked the playground. That's what bordem does to girls, which is quite Lord of the Flies within itself, if you think about it. All of us are in the gutter, but some of us are looking up at the stars. Oscar Wilde. | |
| 17 Aug 09, 12:48 PM rocket_wench UK, 3 yrs |
Interesting! Lord of the Flies is the book I suggest a person reads if, in the absence of insightful memories from their own time under-age, they start insisting that children are anything other than innocent little Disney-like creatures. That and some Dahl, Grimms and Andersen. I suspect the story concept was already well-developed in Golding's head simply from observing children 'play' and that the test run warfare was just for more specific material. I hope it taught the boys something about themselves! I wish I could remember the name of that Japanse film now, where the class of teens is taken to an island to fight their way down to a single surviver. Edited 17 Aug 09, 12:50 PM by rocket_wench | |
| 17 Aug 09, 2:29 PM Dovetail UK, 3 yrs  |
Going off at a tangent, I worked with the sister of one of the original cast of the film, one of the main characters. His life has been affected as he had dreams of great things following on from the role, but it never happened. Sad.
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| 17 Aug 09, 2:43 PM ClearBluesEmma UK(DT), 4 yrs |
It is called Battle Royale A sweet disorder in the dress, kindles in clothes a wantonness... | |
| 10 Sep 09, 4:16 PM daitchen UK(SE), 9 yrs |
I read the Guardian's article on Golding with interest over the weekend, and was even tempted to blog about it...but you've saved me the trouble! I wonder if his negative view of his own sexuality as "monstrous" colored his attitude to human nature in general? I think sadists who can't accept their sexual urges as just being part of a much greater whole often spend their lives torturing themselves much more cruelly than their "victims" - with a few awful non-consensual exceptions. But then, I do believe that we are basically good. It just takes a few years for proper empathy and socialization to develop - part of the process of growing up to be a healthy human adult. Edited 10 Sep 09, 4:18 PM by daitchen |
