Introduction to Tribalism
This unit was launched by the exploration of the meaning of the term tribalism, and what connections it has to our society today, and in the past. Here formed our driving question:
“What is the role of tribalism in society”
Before we worked towards creating a definition of tribalism for ourselves, and an answer to its role in society, we had to do some research, and learn about some examples of connections between tribalism, and modern day society, made by other people.
Learning Through Lord of the Flies
We did this by reading, and analyzing William Golding’s Lord of 
the Flies. Topics such as: what makes a leader, fair societies, and types of tribes, were revisited constantly. As our class read the book we wrote “journal responses”, to reflect on the information we had absorbed. Each week we’d have a prompt to write on, these prompt wouldn’t always be directly connected to Lord of the Flies either; some of the prompts were along the lines of: violence within people, different characters in the same situation, and human behaviour.
A couple of times throughout the unit, we were assigned prompts that weren’t “journal responses”, such as: what is a tribe, and languages within tribes. All of these written responses, had me thinking beyond the text I was presented with, which in this case was Lord of the Flies, and making connections that I would have never made before.
Character Analysis
At first, reading Lord of the Flies, I thought of the story for what it was, a group of boys, on a desert island. But once we worked as a class to analyze these boys, I began to realize how much power there is in literature. And the abstract ideas that can be hidden behind names, and dialogue. We used character analysis worksheets, and class discussions to understand the deeper meaning of the story we were reading.
After exploring how language can be used in this way, I have a better grasp on the technique in which a writer creates a story. I did some of my own research on the author of Lord of the Flies: William Golding, to understand where the inspiration for a Nobel Prize winning book comes from. What I learned, is that Golding served in World War II, and once he returned home, Golding said “I must say that anyone who passed through those years without understanding that man produces evil as a bee produces honey, must have been blind or wrong in the head.” (William Golding. Nobel Prize Speech. 1983.). He used this idea, and portrayed it throughout Lord of the Flies, with characters, events, and objects.
The Final Presentation
The exploration of the topics above, all came down to my groups answer to the driving question. We did this by using research from Lord of the Flies, tribalism, and then using the Hitler Youth epidemic as support for our answer. I worked with Marshall, and Kai to put together an impactful, and well researched presentation. Together we created a keynote, to visually represent our ideas, and an engaging script to expand on the basic ideas of each of our covered topics.
While creating this presentation, as a group we came up with endless connections between Lord of the Flies, and the Hitler Youth, it was astonishing. Analyzing literature, and making connections to the real world is extremely interesting, and forces you to look at the world with different lenses.
I believe our presentation went really well, it went quite smoothly, everyone understood their parts within the presentation, and we all used improv to our advantage, with bits of script, and other parts of bullet points. I do wish that our group could’ve rehearsed a couple times, and I also wish that I could’ve looked at my iPad less for my script.
What I Took Away
This definitely isn’t a one sentence answer. I took away much more than I thought I would from this project, I worked on analyzing literature, studying character development, responding to text, and creating new media after analyzation. These are skills that will not be left behind in grade 11, they are ones that I will continue to use throughout my academic career, and my life.
I don’t think I will be reading books the same way as before, I will continue to analyze, and search to find a deeper meaning within the characters I read about. I believe it’s good to be an analyst, to consider another meaning besides the obvious.