Boys, Bugs, and Bacon

Tribalism. Symbolism. Civilization. Humanity. Chaos. Intellect. Philosophy.

It’s the book that everyone who’s graduated high school has read.

It’s Lord of The Flies.

You’d think after so many decades they would have found a different book to read…. but apparently not, so welcome to what I’ve learnt from the past few weeks of LOTF content.

What Is The Role Of Tribalism In Society?

A tribe is a group of people who strive toward a common goal. They usually have a power dynamic (leaders and followers), and turn to each other for support and comfort. A tribe is a place one can fit in. And nothing shows the dynamics of a tribe better then the savage-turned boys in LOTF. 

Lord of The Flies by William Golding is a well known book. Anyone that has attended high school since its release date (in the 50’s) has read it. It is the PERFECT example of tribalism and society. Why? Well in the book the boys for a tribe, at one point they even split into two separate tribes, and they run with those tribes until the end of the book. 

Lord of The Flies was written as a call out to R.M. Ballantyne, who wrote a book about boys who landed on an island and turned it into a paradise, the book was called Coral Island. Golding saw this as, well, impossible. How does a bunch of school boys turn an island into a haven, when in reality the lack of connection would turn the boys into savages (ei. Jacks Boys in LOTF). The story of LOTF is supposed to show how humanity is connected to civility and how without a connection to civilization we would resort back to the savagery our ancestors once acted upon. 

The book contains 5 main themes, each of which are represented by one of the main characters:

Ralph— Order + Humanity

Jack— Chaos + Anarchy

Piggy— Logic + Intellect

Simon— Philosophy + Goodness

Roger— Savagery + Violence

After weeks of research and literature studies, it came time to move our focus from tribalism within Lord of The Flies to a new tribe of our choice, and with that came the presentation piece. 

I worked with Luca OG and we worked together to create a presentation based around tribalism in the Green Party of Canada. We brought together a pêcha-kucha like presentation and presented in front of our class, the video below contains this said presentation:

Overall, I think that we did a pretty good job. I am always quite hard on myself after live presentations, however I am willing to admit the growth found from when I first began to where I am now, and that was definitely not the worst presentation I have done.

This year in PLP we are putting a stronger focus on learning competencies. As the year goes on I hope to work out a smooth and easy way of reflecting upon these competencies, but for now I am going to do it this way:

Reading and Personal Text Response + The Writing Process

Of course with a project based around Lord of The Flies, it was not possible to not to any reading. As a matter of fact, we did a lot of reading. In school, at home, on the bus, when we were bored. Lots of reading to finish the book in time for our deadline. We had a lot of time, so all was fair. I personally love reading, and although reading digitally kills me, I actually really enjoyed LOTF. Not in a “haha death” kind of way, but I found an appreciation towards the imagery used in the book and how the story layout was. As I read I found myself intrigued by the fore-shadowing and the symbolism in the book. As much as I love those memes where teachers over-analyze small parts of books, I definitely have to say this book had its fare share of actual symbolism within each character and every line. 

We also did our fair share of writing during this project. Mainly focusing on multiple response paragraphs. Throughout the book, it becomes clear that the story is based around civility and human nature, and it shows these things using imagery and symbolism, so it only makes sense that as time went on, my response paragraphs began to focus more on the symbolic side of things from influence of the book, whilst also growing my own writing style. I write in a way that reflects me, as the author writes in a way that reflects him. I write often with mixed grammar of Canadian and Australian, spelling words like “Mom” like “mum”, while also writing to accommodate the two different accents and slangs within my inner dialogue. 

Literary Identification and Analysis + Understanding Language Construction and Intent

Lord of The Flies is written almost like a film. You can see it all in your mind as the story plays out, the way a movie would on a screen. The first thing I noticed when I started reading the book was that it’s written with a lot of imagery. I noticed this first, because I had no idea what was happening. I don’t read a lot of old imagery books, so I had to adjust to reading a book written in 1950’s English, within a totally different style of writing than I am used to. As time went on I began to understand the book, and the things being describe

The book was written in the 50’s, post ww2. It was written as a flip-off to the story Coral Island, and all the charters in the book were based off students that Golding taught in his time as a teacher.

Knowing all these pieces makes it easier to look at the authors life and see how he integrated it into the story. He was scarred from the war, from seeing innocent people turned bad in a certain setting, and that shows in the Innocence VS Evil theme in his book. The flip-off to Coral Island is shown in how almost everyone becomes savages by the end of the book after loosing the things that tied them to society, until the other book which shows school boys thriving on a paradise. The use of school boys as characters related to his time as a teacher and the amount he was surrounded by them.

The book flows in a post-war time of existence (writing style wise), while being set in a war-time setting. It’s pretty epic.

I am a part of many tribes. My family, my friend groups, PLP, band, fandoms, and more. Tribalism is the glue to society. Without all the worlds tribes working together, there would be no society. Without society there would be no humanity, and we would de-evolve back to savagery and eventually probably all die……. so stay in your tribes, unless they’re toxic, then find some new (more positive) tribes to join. 

Thanks for reading!

Have fun, stay safe, surround yourself with inspiration, and go do the things you want to do! You’ve got this.