In the second chapter of his book Humankind, Rutger Bregman raises questions about Lord of the Flies, William Golding’s 1951 novel, which has been hailed as one of the classics of the 20th century, has sold tens of millions of copies, been translated into more than 30 languages, and is still taught in classrooms around the world. The book describes how a group of British schoolboys survive a plane crash on a remote island and, after some initial attempts at civilized self-governance, paint their faces, cast off their clothes, and bully and mistreat each other. Before they are rescued, three of the boys are killed.
Golding, a U.K. schoolmaster, created Lord of the Flies after musing to his wife, “Wouldn’t it be a good idea to write a story about some boys on an island, showing how they would really behave?” What made the book so popular is that it skillfully dramatized a widely held belief about what humans are really like just beneath the veneer of civilization. “Man produces evil,” said Golding, “as a bee produces honey.”
Bregman remembers reading the book as a teenager. “I turned it over and over in my mind,“ he says, “but not for a second did I think to doubt Golding’s view of human nature.” It was only years later that he read about the author’s life – his unhappiness, alcoholism, depression, about how he divided his students into gangs and encouraged them to attack one another. “I have always understood the Nazis,” Golding said, “because I am of that sort by nature.” It was from this mindset that Lord of the Flies was born.
Those troubling biographical details aside, did Golding’s book accurately portray the primal nature of homo sapiens? Most people believe it does, or are at least fascinated by that possibility, which explains the book’s extraordinary popularity.
But Bregman had his doubts, and he started looking for an actual instance of young people forced to survive away from civilization. An Internet search led him to a 1966 newspaper story of six boys who set off on a fishing trip from the South Pacific island of Tonga and were swept away by a storm and shipwrecked on a tiny island for more than a year. After more sleuthing and some good luck, Bregman tracked down the name of the captain who rescued the boys, Peter Warner, and traveled to Australia to meet him and see what happened in this real-life Lord of the Flies.
In months of interviews with Warner (then 90 years old) and Mano Totau, one of the surviving boys from the island (then almost 70), and more investigative work, Bregman pieced together the story. The boys, age 13 to 16, were students at St. Andrews, an Anglican boarding school on Tonga. Bored with the school’s strict routines, the teens “borrowed” a boat from a fisherman they all disliked and slipped out of the harbor one night without being seen. A storm came out of nowhere, shredding the boat’s sail and breaking the rudder. After eight days adrift, the boys spotted an island and managed to get ashore. They found it was deserted and quite inhospitable with steep cliffs and very little vegetation and spring water.
Far from descending into savagery and turning on each other, the boys built a hut, hollowed out tree trunks to store rainwater, cultivated a food garden, constructed chicken pens and a small gymnasium, and after many attempts, produced a spark, started a fire, and tended the flame for their entire time on the island. Working in two-person teams, the boys took turns cultivating the garden, cooking food, standing guard, and keeping a lookout for passing ships. They settled disputes by sending antagonists to opposite ends of the island until they calmed down and were willing to apologize. Days began and ended with prayer and songs, accompanied by a makeshift guitar.
There were many hardships. The raft the boys built to escape the island was destroyed in the crashing surf. A storm toppled a tree, demolishing their hut. One boy fell off a cliff and broke his leg and his classmates had to figure out how to fashion a splint. In a period of drought, they were all crazed with thirst. Yet the boys survived, and when they were rescued, all were in top physical condition and the broken leg had healed perfectly.
“This is the real-life Lord of the Flies,” says Bregman. “It’s also a story that nobody knows.” While the boys who so bravely and cooperatively survived on the island “have been consigned to obscurity, William Golding’s book is still widely read.” Building on the book’s dark premise, several reality TV shows have perpetuated the trope that human beings, left to our own devices, will behave like beasts – in the words of one contestant, “stop being polite and start getting real” – lying, cheating, provoking, antagonizing.
We could discount reality TV as profit-making entertainment, but studies have shown that watching Lord of the Flies-type television can make people more aggressive. “In children,” reports Bregman, “the correlation between seeing violent images and aggression in adulthood is stronger than the correlation between asbestos and cancer, or between calcium intake and bone mass.” Stories of innate barbarism also affect how people look at the world. A British study found that girls who watch a lot of reality TV more often say that being mean and telling lies are necessary to getting ahead in life. “It’s time we told a different kind of story,” says Bregman. “The real Lord of the Flies is a story of friendship and loyalty, a story that illustrates how much stronger we are if we can lean on each other. Of course, it’s only one story. But if we’re going to make Lord of the Flies required reading for millions of teenagers, then let’s also tell them about the time real kids found themselves stranded on a deserted island.” As Peter Warner wrote in his memoir, “Life has taught me a great deal, including the lesson that you should always look for what is good and positive in people.”
Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman (Little Brown & Company, 2019)
Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1034 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.
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