FYI that reads like a very ChatGPT-written post. As does the follow-up. The ’ It doesn’t X - it Ys’ negative parallelism phrasing especially.
May I ask why?
When I was entering the title of this post, other titles - some literally using the word “despise” popped up. As I only meant to announce the upcoming series, I reckon I wanted to get a feel for the zeitgeist here. I read a few and got the feeling it was mostly negative. Clearly the book is charged and controversial, so I’ll back off from “despise” and go with “mixed feelings.”
Ah, when you (OP) said it was despised “here”, I took that “here” to be the UK where you live. Not to be the SDMB where you/we hang out.
Agreed, I should have been more specific by saying “on the dope” and all those other adjectives like charged, controversial apply more to the general public around the world than saying “some despise rt / some do not”
Yes, he might have been just an ordinary bully. My remark was made from the perspective of my relative innocence as a fairly sheltered boy of 13.
The book is pure fantasy. There have been several instances of young people marooned without adults, needing to survive, and not one went “Lord of the Flies”. So it is as plausible as the Narnia films.
That happened IRL several times, and nope, never happened.
Right.
I do dislike it, but maybe not “despise”. It is pure fantasy, but many think it really could or even did happen. For that reason, i think making it required reading is wrong.
Yes, the Lord of the flies is a cautionary tale, but it’s not a true exposition of typical human character. We are a highly social species, who need to live in communities to survive, and typical humans care for other members of their community, (at least the ones they know personally) in most situations.
I don’t think i want to watch the movie, because i found the book depressing, and i don’t think i want to watch the violence.
If anyone were assigning it for reading thinking it is a cautionary tale about boys’ behavior, they would be misleading their students. It is an allegory from the small situation on the island to the larger troubles in the world. The ending is especially ironic, as the boys are rescued by a military craft who are themselves in the middle of horrific events. Who is going to rescue them?
Having said that, I think it could happen, but it would be a rare exception. I think a key is the existence of a sizable and very rigidly disciplined group, the choir, with a strong self-willed leader and several sycophantic sergeants to keep order. That situation is tailor-made for abuse. If Jack had been elected leader instead of the charming but feckless Ralph, the abuse might have been much more mild, and everyone (except possibly Piggy) could have survived intact. And you wouldn’t have heard anything about the abuse once they were rescued. And if you did, no-one would have cared.
Not so. Yet fair enough that there was a pattern.
I could not find a phrasing on chatGPT of “assmar” that says it means anything perjorative, negative, what did I say, “mocking”. If there is a way to get it to write that, where did it get it from?
In fact, after locating a PDF of the book, you were closer to being right. Piggy says “asthma” several times. The first gets a reply of just “ass-mar”. No description of why they misheard it or were even so much as teasing him. Only one time does Piggy say “asthma”, and Golding writes:
The response was mechanical.
“Sucks to your ass-mar.”
Never is there cackling, or is Piggy perturbed by it (It is not in the text that it’s said that way for any intent, or that Piggy hears it correctly and just accepts it.)
It’s never described as, “…assmar”, he said with bitter sarcasm. It is just said. It’s almost like the levity Shakespeare often gives to how his characters say something
In my follow-up, as I said I couldn’t (not yet) find anything - and I still cannot find any narrative Golding writes that might sound like a Rod Serling Twilight Zone Intro: “This once unpopulated - by man - island now has 30 boys from various upper class schools and backgrounds who will have to cooperate with eachother till help comes, or else…”
The boys say noble things like, “We will figure this out as we’re English!” and have elections and lots of Disney World fun as the Queen has a map of every island and we’ll be prim & proper when help comes, as soon it shall!
I was googling for parallels in the fall of civilization and whether Lord of the Flies is an allegory. I cobbled the quote and then went poetic about how the boys’ brutality and the island are some kind of projector that lights up their actions.
I’ll try later to find a screenplay (perhaps the movie), and I’m sure there is much more direction in there, such as the way something is said, metaphors for what someone looks at, and surely there will be something about “assmar,” and it’s not just said “mechanically.”
Ahh, DrDoctor
An author could start a young adult fiction book under similar circumstances. Agatha Christie could strand a dozen rich folks - the last survivors of a three hour tour - on an island, and each night one if offed. Yet nothing she wrote was ever true.
It’s said, I don’t know if William Golding said it or if it’s been factually verified, that he witnessed D-Day.
Is Cafe Society the Factual Things That Happened category?
How about the USS Indianapolis (CA-35)? In 1940 it was pure fantasy. In July 1945 (if Wiki is allowed to quote)
Of 1,195 crewmen aboard, about 300 went down with the ship. The remaining 890 faced exposure, dehydration, saltwater poisoning, and shark attacks while stranded in the open ocean, with few lifeboats and almost no food or water.
There’s books and movies. You can believe it or not; but that ain’t no matter.
I mean of course it’s possible. There are instances in real life where children have killed other children. Probable, no. Which is fine, because it’s an allegory.
Sure, but no one teaches that book in HS, and no one claims that is how rich people would really act. In fact this documentary film 
, shows two rich people in a group of seven not killing anyone. Even tho there was cause.
And no it isnt but the question was why do people hate Lord of the Flies, and i answered why I dislike it.
For some reason, hating a fictional novel because it’s pure fantasy (well, planes, oceans, islands and fire had been invented) makes me think
Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale
If we taught Gilligans Island in classrooms as an example of what people would really do, and if it was used over and over again as something realistic that could happen- yes. We dont make that TV show required in your usual classroom.
The show Yellowjackets felt like a darker version of Lord of the Flies.
I read Lord of the Flies for a college existentialism class. It was among the lighter things we read.
The professor told us not to take the class if we were clinically depressed. I didn’t listen.
I like dark stuff, but for dark TV/movies I have to be in the right mood, and I’m way more sensitive about on-screen violence than violence in a book.
Fantasy labeled as Fantasy (pure or diluted) is clearly not your cup of tea. That’s fine.
You may want to spend time railing at the books purporting to be non-fiction or history that are clearly written by the victors.
Fiction says this is not true. Sometimes it will say it’s based on something that might have happened, like the moon landings.
Sometimes non-fiction histories will say something is indeed true, like the moon landings.
You might want to consider the Bayeux Tapestry. Made with really good linen like the great USA dollar, it’s lasted 1,000 years.
It’s considered by some to be:
- First comic: Visual storytelling in sequence — the core grammar of comics — about 900 years before the term existed.
- First cinema: If you walk really fast, you can imagine proto-film editing: cuts, pacing, montage — all done with thread.
- First State-sponsored propaganda: That “state” being the Norman Ruling Class. "Here is why our war was necessary, righteous, and successful.”
It’s in France now, yet coming to the British Museum in September. I look forward to your thoughts on that. In another thread.
Ciao
I mean, is it really that farfetched? I haven’t read it in ages but children can be fucking brutal to each other. I witnessed it all the time and was often enough on the receiving end. I’ve seen kids do things to each other I wish I didn’t know about. I have friends who have real trauma from horrific bullying.
It’s not like children are uniquely horrible. They are human. But as humans, they are as capable of cruelty as they are love. And that capacity is very often influenced by their upbringing and their culture.
Hmm. Reading the wiki, apparently this book heavily influenced Stephen King. I can definitely see it.