(Hmm… This animation looks familiar…)

Driving Question

“How do we convince young people that they should vote?”

I was never one for politics. 

Actually, that’s a lie. Yes, I’m into historical politics… I love reading everything from King Henry and his six wives to Queen Victoria wearing a white wedding dress to the Berlin Wall. I even stayed awake through the entire Napoleon movie. 

But, before this project, I wasn’t really into Canadian politics.

Whenever I turned on the news to find politicians trying to ban TikTok, I would switch it off and sink deeper into the crevices of the couch.

…Wait, actually no. That’s America. 

Despite my indifference towards Canadian politics, when the time came, I was indeed planning on voting. However, I can get how being one vote out of millions can be discouraging. I mean, what can my vote do?

Prevent the downfall of TikTok? 

It may not seem like it yet, but it can. And now after this project, I can tell you why. 

This project was all about the Canadian government and why us teenagers should vote when we come of age. What I found interesting is that Canadians aged 18-28 are the least likely to vote, despite having the most to lose. It’s almost as if we treat it as a constant, instead of the privilege that it is.

But before we dive into government, we need to understand the theory behind it. This means understanding human nature. As someone who dabbles in philosophy and enjoys regularly questioning the meaning of life with a bag of Cheetos, I was quite excited to read William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies.” However, it soon proved to be a lot more challenging than I could ever anticipate. 

I’m going to be entirely honest here. I did not understand this book at first. I still don’t completely grasp it, and it’s been a month of contemplating and debating. It has layers… so many interpretations and projections have been placed on this story, that I don’t even know what it means anymore, and perhaps the truth was lost to time. 

Seriously, I have questions. If learning necromancy and resurrecting William Golding from his grave is how I’ll get answers, I’m very much willing. 

I think it was mainly my own folly, because when I heard “an old white man from the 50s (with trauma from WWII) wrote a book about human nature through boys stranded on an island,” I had a predetermined notion of what kind of story this would be. Without even realizing it, I projected on to Golding my idea of who he was, before I even read the first word. This was unfair, as I would come to understand after listening to him talk about his work. 

Now what do I mean by this? Well, get ready for weeks worth of marinating grief, misery and spite, because I have some things to say (aka prepare for my “hot takes”/ trying to find out what Golding himself meant.) 

1. Piggy is not the voice of reason 

Literally the first thing that comes up when I look up “what does Piggy represent in Lord of the Flies,” is this: 

But, what if he’s not? As William Golding’s daughter recalls, “My father greatly distrusted simple judgments.”

Having Piggy being viewed as “intelligent” and “the voice of reason” bothered me from day one, because seeing him through this specific lens, meant one thing: That Piggy and the “order” that he represents is intelligent and ideal. But I find this problematic, because isn’t his idea of order a colonialist definition?

When I first read the book, I read it as it was said. I was angry, because it seemed as if colonialist ideals were being glorified. I read it as a cautionary tale… a fable, that Piggy’s views were superior and intelligent. Piggy upheld order and was killed for it. Piggy was a martyr.

Woah. That’s quite the statement. Could that really be what Golding is saying?

So then I started to think, ok. The only way that this could be ok is if this book was read with historical context. Perhaps these were common ideologies at the time? 

I felt this way until Piggy said this: “Which is better—to be a pack of painted ni**ers like you are, or to be sensible like Ralph is?”

(Just adding more questionable things into my google search history…)

You would think that this line could further cement this idea of historical context. You could ignore it completely, just label it as another “reflection of the time.”

Or you could consider that Piggy said this line before his ultimate demise… the climax of this struggle… and that Golding used this word choice to emphasize something. 

I believe that the only way for this to make sense is if Piggy is not the voice of reason… or that he isn’t even intelligent at all. I think Piggy is the voice of society… or rather, the voice of civilization/colonialism. 

In the study guide of this novel, it states: 

“From the very opening of Lord of the Flies, themes of colonialism are clearly visible: a group of English schoolboys arrive on an island and try to construct a social system, confident in their ‘English superiority’. Throughout, Golding undermines and corrodes the sense of ‘Englishness’ in the novel; the island certainly does not become a civilized paradise after the boys’ arrival.”

So now it looks like Golding had a little something against the whole idea of “British Civilized Society.” Phew, thank goodness. I was really getting worried there. 

Now, let’s do a little analysis of Piggy’s character throughout the novel. He is definitely the most attached to the past social contract, still wearing his uniform while everyone else discards theirs (even Ralph). He exists as a reminder of what they all came from, every now and then sprinkling words of “wisdom” to the group, echoing rules of the past social order. 

But this is just a repeat of the world he remembers, the world he idolizes as a civilized place. It’s so important for Piggy to recreate the civilized world, because this is what he is conditioned to see as the right thing to do. And so, he urges a mimicry of the society that he can recall, which is from a child’s perspective, and he is ultimately too immature to properly emulate. 

Let’s start from the beginning. There’s a bunch of boys on a deserted island with the primary concern of survival hanging over their heads. As children, they attempt to address this through the only way they know. They emulate a “civilized social structure.” They choose to have an election for a leader. They choose to establish assigned roles, like the “hunters”, to create an order of occupations.

In trying the “civilized route,”  they created animosity between each other. The perception of roles was ultimately unfair, because the system didn’t include consequence and reward. If you did nothing, there was no consequence. If you worked really hard, there was no reward.

Since there was no monetary system, the only thing of value was power and control, whether or not the others would listen to you and do what you tell them. The control of the pack. 

The boys start to feel that this was a restrictive and unfair way to live. They start to question why they were living although adults were telling them what to do, with a system that only worked when survival wasn’t the main concern.

And what did Piggy, “the voice of reason” do to address these problems? He continued to push his upkeep of “order”, which only made the boys more resistant. 

Civilized structure was breaking down. 

It fails. And what do they do to rectify this failure? As immature children seeing life through absolutes, they completely abandon the idea of a “civilized social structure” and embrace its opposite.

Now it was completely about survival of the fittest.  Old morality was thrown out the window. Including murder (sorry Piggy.) And this is when Piggy said the n word.

Goodbye Piggy and your colonialist values. Hello boulder. 

Because they are immature children with only absolutes, they can only replicate a version of society that is black and white. 

You are either civilized or savage. 

And down goes the “voice of reason.” He sinks with the ship. 

Depending on how you view Piggy’s ideals would be whether or not you view him (and his ideals) as the “voice of reason.” If you agree with his ideals, then he’s a martyr and the voice of intelligence. But if you don’t, perhaps he was more of a voice of the past that ultimately led to his demise. 

I guess “Lord of the Flies” was more than just a cautionary “fable.” When being asked if seeing “Lord of the Flies” as a fable was a fair comment, Golding himself says that he’d find it a “tremendous compliment if someone were to substitute the word ‘myth’ for fable.”

He defined a myth as this: 

“I think a myth is a much profounder and more significant thing than a fable… I do feel fable as being an invented thing on the surface, whereas myth is something which comes out from the roots of things… possibly in the ancient sense of being the key to existence, the whole meaning of life and experience as a whole.”

Golding meant “Lord of the Flies” to be a reflection of society… the boys on the island were a microcosm of society. I believe he hoped that by reading this story, we may be able to see the key to existence… “the whole meaning of life and experience as a whole.” And perhaps that answer did not lie in how we lived as a society in the past. Perhaps the future of modern society lies in us. 

AND THAT LEADS US FINALLY TO CANADIAN POLITICS. HOW DO WE RUN MODERN SOCIETY NOW… IN CANADA. 

Let’s hope we’re doing better than those boys on that island. 

Oh no. 

To understand the Canadian government, we first had to understand its structure. To do this, we did Kahoots. No joke, we did like 5 kahoots… (but of course, the only one I win is the off topic one about Vikings.) 

Turns out, it was surprisingly effective, because in my determination to win first place on the kahoots, I actually ended up learning stuff. Shocking. 

(Here’s my diagram of the “branches of government…” Get it… haha.) 

With our newfound government knowledge, we were separated in groups for our final project. I teamed up with Dana, Mateo, and Dylan. (Go check out their blogs!) 

Our final project was to create a presentation to convince our fellow high school students to vote. First up, we created an animated explainer video about the government structure we learned. 

Here’s ours: 

I’m quite happy with the animations for my part, but one thing that I would do differently is have a more consistent aesthetic theme. Overall, I feel like the main issue we had as a group is our consistency and communication, in terms of working together. 

For our presentation, I brought up the idea of making it more interactive with the audience. As a student, I find that when there’s less of a disconnect between speaker and audience that I understand better. Perhaps like one of the simulations we’ve done in past projects (Revolutions on Trial, The More Things Change.) 

Initially, we were really excited to go through with this idea. However, as deadlines creeped along and our idea became more complicated, we had to simplify it a lot. I’m kinda sad that it didn’t turn out how we originally wanted it to be. We ended up with a “what party are you?” sort of activity. But I wish we went into it a little more. 

Anyways, in order to connect with the youth, we also had to research some current politic issues. I chose to research post-secondary education in particular, because, woah, I want to go into that. I found the research process to be very interesting, and I learned a lot about tuition prices. 

You can look into my research here: 

I also worked on some slides to present while we talked about our political issues. I designed the aesthetics and I think it looks pretty cool (thank you Canva.) Unfortunately, during the presentation due to some technical errors, our slideshow wasn’t shown very well. Which is sad, because I really think it would have helped our presentation. 

Here it is: 

I consider myself to be a positive person. At least, when I’m with others (I save my melancholy for weekends after I’ve had my weekly allotment of coffee.) But I feel like it’s appropriate to say that I’m disappointed in how our presentation turned out.

Yes, I’m happy that we managed to complete it and that I didn’t fumble too much with my lines (thank you stage fright for having my back this time.) However, I feel like it didn’t live up to my own expectations. Like, if you look at this blog post in itself (80% of it being “Lord of the Flies”), I feel like in comparison to the passion I typically put into my work, this time, it didn’t turn out exactly how I envisioned.

Which is ok, because we got it done and it fits the criteria. I love how we used facts and evidence to persuade our audience and if you really listened to our presentation, I feel that the information we found would be persuasive enough to get you to vote. But I just didn’t have a lot of fun with this one.

I guess it’s time for spring break (and an end to this monstrously long blog post.)   

Driving Question

“How do we convince young people that they should vote?”

Imagine you are a peasant farmer in a feudal society. King Farquad the Thirteenth just passed away from the Black Death, and now his son, Prince Farquad the Fifteenth must take up the throne (because his older brother, Prince Farquad the fourteenth caught a cold and straight up died.) Well, as a peasant farmer, you have no say when King Farquad raises the tax price a pence higher and now you can’t make ends meet. 

What I’m trying to say from this strange scenario (with many historical inaccuracies) is that it’s a privilege to vote. You may be one vote out of millions, and so is everyone else. Although it doesn’t seem like it all the time, but there is like minded people. 

Democracy and voting can only work if we all play our part. As the youth, if we don’t vote, then the representation in our government is not representative of the needs of the people. So it’s important that we not only vote, but take responsibility to understand what that vote means, what we’re voting for. 

Because, in the end, our system only works if we take responsibility and do our part for society. Or else, we wind up like the boys on the island. 

Once again, we experience what happens when I drink coffee. I want to personally thank the following:

1. Ms. Madsen for making it through this monster of a blog post (I’m so sorry.) 

2. My mom for reading this blog post 5+ times (thank you for your sacrifice) and to my dad who read it once

3. Me for somehow managing to write this and not realize that it’s reached 2000+ words

Now, I’m super ready for spring break and I’m going to disappear. Byeeeeee!