The wartime background of these kids and in many people, the desire to be the leader.
Also, trying to be as non-interfering as they could be, there were adults present.
The fact that they are there at all is enough to curb most anti-social expressions and activities. Not that I think children naturally turn savage, not at all. But it would have been a very different book if the pilot (or any forceful adult) had survived.
Which reminds me to wonder: all those kids, including the choir, were on the same plane that crashed, a plane that was so big that none of the kids had apparently seen or gotten acquainted with any of the others, except the choir since they all knew each other in advance; they all ended up some distance apart on the island before Ralph blew the conch; and there were no other adults but the pilot on a plane with children as young as 6 or 7? Oh well, suspension of disbelief and all that.
As promised, The Guardian review (that I reckon everyone can read)
Pretty short (review). I guess the Guardian doesn’t give stars for non-cinema films. The lede pretty much says it all. I’ll probably binge it tomorrow.
Can you imagine if such a thing happened? Not at all nowadays, but 60 years ago?
That may not have happened, yet perhaps the only thing implausible about this book/BBC series is that these kids survived.
My short book review (holding up book with Jack in painted face mode) : Some Rich British school kids in a plane crash during World War Two on an island and mostly survive. I highly recommend it.
My BBC review: Excellent cinematography (especially with the steadycam following Jack in the pig hunt), great soundtrack (none till they strike, then choral.)
ETA: A note about great casting and direction and soundtrack.
No fantasy, questionably plausible (I didn’t know how to make flint-sharp spears when I was 12)
Surreal? In parts. Horror? I’ve seen worse in my lifetime.
Spoiler alert:
The first time Ralph hears “Asthma,” he does seem to mispronounce it, yet there is no more “Sucks to your ass-mar”
There’s still 20 minutes left to ep 4, yet I’ll go ahead and post this,
And I do highly recommend it.
Nitpick: the evacuation from England to somewhere far away was due to a nuclear war, contemporary to the time of publication of the book (early 60s). That background was important to the allegory.
That I’ve not heard. In the book, the war was still going on. The ship that rescued them was amidst the conflict, presumably pre-Hiroshima.
And just to add, in my “book” review, I was parodying Bart Simpson’s “Treasure Island” review.
The blurb on the book (as quoted from Goodreads) starts “At the dawn of the next world war…” which seems likely to have been intended to be a nuclear conflict. That was explicit in the movie.
I read this book long ago.
Goodreads says that?
Perhaps the children were being flown out before December 7, 1941? The British certainly had tons of conflict in Asia/Southeast Asia, so best fly out before the shit hits the fan, yet I still reckon these kids were rescued during wartime.
Wikipedia explicitly states the original drafts had a prologue or introductory chapter that makes it clear the boys are being evacuated from a nuclear war. One of its citations, a Guardian retrospective of the book, says:
Its first in-house reader, a certain Miss Perkins, famously dismissed it as an “absurd and uninteresting fantasy about the explosion of an atom bomb on the Colonies. A group of children who land in jungle country near New Guinea. Rubbish & dull. Pointless.” However, a newly recruited young Faber editor, Charles Monteith, disagreed. He saw that the first chapter (about the aftermath of the bomb) could be dropped
(From The 100 best novels: No 74 – Lord of the Flies by William Golding (1954) | William Golding | The Guardian ; emphasis added.)
Yes, they were rescued by a British naval craft, with the implication that any nuclear strikes had not settled everything and there was still some kind of fighting.
I’m reminded of the rather surreal, vignette-like 1968 film If…, that the young screenwriter based in part on his experience Tonbridge school, of which quote:
Lawrence Waddy took over as headmaster in 1949. The Tonbridge he inherited was still a largely Victorian institution; fagging and ritual caning were still in place, and sport was considered more important than academia.
McCrum, headmaster from 1962 to 1970, abolished the right of senior boys to administer corporal punishment, taking over for himself the duty of administering routine canings.
So as late as the 1960’s there was still a tradition of older teenagers caning younger ones for infractions in some British schools. One imagines that had a bit of an impact on the tendencies towards benevolent coexistence among the youth of Golding’s times. Train children to be brutal authoritarians and they will harden pretty quickly. Lots of quite violent child soldiers in the world.
ETA: Why is that link going wonky 
?
I was going to mention this, but it seems like in most cases where something bad happens, it’s the “regular” folk who pull together and try to help. Now, if it was a several billionaires, corporate executives and high up political people, then it would be like what happened in the book. Elite panic - Wikipedia
This article from The Guardian describes a meeting of five extremely wealthy men planning what they would do if civilization-ending event occurs. One important consideration; they have armed guards lined up to protect them in such an event. But how to pay them when the economy collapses? And what if the guards decide just to take over?
The billionaires considered using special combination locks on the food supply that only they knew. Or making guards wear disciplinary collars of some kind in return for their survival. Or maybe building robots to serve as guards and workers – if that technology could be developed “in time”.
Why would kids from 60 years ago or today have a smaller chance of survival than the several times this happened IRL? The island did have fresh water, and fruit. No predators.
Even a prop plane, flying a bunch of children, from war-torn-wherever-trump-feels-like it, disappearing from radar and crashing? The children could raid the pantry of the plane (that is a plot point in this book - mainly about getting sharp metal parts) or wait like 3 days (at most) till they are rescued.
What do you not understand about the difference in RADAR that wasn’t invested / nascent in the 1940’s between then and now?
What fleet from any nation could nowadays invade Pearl Harbor till the Zeroes started bombing in 1941, knowing they could do so in a surprise?
There is practically no way (outside of Fantasy) that a plane disappears without rescuers within days now.
It was essential to the plot of this novel that the kids had (a few weeks?) to make the author’s point.
True, but the novel is pure fiction anyway.
The people who think unsupervised boys would never turn feral and murder each other clearly didn’t go to a school like the one I went to.
I read the book (at age 14) and loved it. I went to a private school in Australia (based on the English private school system). I hated the English movie, mainly because it was so poorly acted and produced - it looked cheap. I have not tried the later version(s).
None of the boys in that film was a professional actor, and only one went on to do other professional acting jobs as an adult. So in a sense it wasn’t “acted” at all, the director wanted natural-looking behavior and that’s what he got. I don’t share your opinion of the film.
So cinémé verité?