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Related: Culture Forums, Support ForumsThe real Lord of the Flies: what happened when six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months
The real Lord of the Flies: what happened when six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months
Society books
When a group of schoolboys were marooned on an island in 1965, it turned out very differently from William Goldings bestseller, writes Rutger Bregman
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/the-real-lord-of-the-flies-what-happened-when-six-boys-were-shipwrecked-for-15-months?utm_source=pocket-newtab
Rutger Bregman
@rcbregman
Sat 9 May 2020 04.00 EDT
Last modified on Sun 10 May 2020 01.53 EDT
<snip>
I was bursting with questions. Were the boys still alive? And could I find the television footage? Most importantly, though, I had a lead: the captains name was Peter Warner. When I searched for him, I had another stroke of luck. In a recent issue of a tiny local paper from Mackay, Australia, I came across the headline: Mates share 50-year bond. Printed alongside was a small photograph of two men, smiling, one with his arm slung around the other. The article began: Deep in a banana plantation at Tullera, near Lismore, sit an unlikely pair of mates ... The elder is 83 years old, the son of a wealthy industrialist. The younger, 67, was, literally, a child of nature. Their names? Peter Warner and Mano Totau. And where had they met? On a deserted island.
<snip>
But Peter noticed something odd. Peering through his binoculars, he saw burned patches on the green cliffs. In the tropics its unusual for fires to start spontaneously, he told us, a half century later. Then he saw a boy. Naked. Hair down to his shoulders. This wild creature leaped from the cliffside and plunged into the water. Suddenly more boys followed, screaming at the top of their lungs. It didnt take long for the first boy to reach the boat. My name is Stephen, he cried in perfect English. There are six of us and we reckon weve been here 15 months.
<snip>
The kids agreed to work in teams of two, drawing up a strict roster for garden, kitchen and guard duty. Sometimes they quarrelled, but whenever that happened they solved it by imposing a time-out. Their days began and ended with song and prayer. Kolo fashioned a makeshift guitar from a piece of driftwood, half a coconut shell and six steel wires salvaged from their wrecked boat an instrument Peter has kept all these years and played it to help lift their spirits. And their spirits needed lifting. All summer long it hardly rained, driving the boys frantic with thirst. They tried constructing a raft in order to leave the island, but it fell apart in the crashing surf.
<snip>
They survived initially on fish, coconuts, tame birds (they drank the blood as well as eating the meat); seabird eggs were sucked dry. Later, when they got to the top of the island, they found an ancient volcanic crater, where people had lived a century before. There the boys discovered wild taro, bananas and chickens (which had been reproducing for the 100 years since the last Tongans had left).
This is an adapted excerpt from Rutger Bregmans Humankind, translated by Elizabeth Manton and Erica Moore. A live streamed Q&A with Bregman and Owen Jones takes place at 7pm on 19 May 2020.
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The real Lord of the Flies: what happened when six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months (Original Post)
marble falls
May 2020
OP
One thing that got me was Golding saying he took the tenor of Lord of te Flies from what he felt ...
marble falls
May 2020
#4
underpants
(182,788 posts)1. 👀
Reading this later
marble falls
(57,080 posts)2. You'll be glad you did.
Mike Nelson
(9,954 posts)3. Well...
... I love this story!
marble falls
(57,080 posts)4. One thing that got me was Golding saying he took the tenor of Lord of te Flies from what he felt ...
was his own inner weakness.
The Velveteen Ocelot
(115,683 posts)5. The Lord of the Flies seems to be a pretty accurate description
of Trump's White House.
Baked Potato
(7,733 posts)6. Fascinating story!