Jeni’s comment > Likes and Comments

I disagree intensely that savagery only comes into play when there is panic.

Cases of feral children come immediately to mind as an example.

When there are no consequences, or there is no chance of being caught, people DO regress and make choices against societal convention.

To your point, though, at what point during a plane crash and being stranded without food or adults or any hope of going home would there not be panic of some kind?

Again, I think Golding was just pointing out that we are creatures that behave one way under the structure of society, but are just savage brutes without those confines.

I believe wars are invariably instigated by the ruling elite, the so-called "upper class," never by the people, whose bodies and family members will actually be sacrificed. The upper class sees savagery as a necessary means of acquiring and protecting wealth, as in the Boer Wars, slavery, and the Opium Wars. Vietnam was about oil, as have been the recent Middle East invasions.

Among the average working class, savagery comes into play only when panic sets in. The boys in LOTF were never in a panic; so their savagery feels contrived and unrealistic to me.

In the US pioneer days, law and order was generally maintained in organized groups like the wagon trains. We had cannibalism in the Donner Party, but those people were indeed starving and no one was killed for food.

During the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina there were looters and even the police were prosecuted for wanton killing. But these were the exception, not the rule.

Among the civilized, I see savagery as a potential only in cases of panic, and then we are capable of anything. Absent panic, as in LOTF, Golding was making a statement of some sort. I'm just not certain what it was.

Did you delete and re-post? Because my response above was to this statement of yours.

Yes, I had to delete and repost. Goodreads wouldn't let me edit.

Feral children don't apply. I stipulated "average working class."

In the book I saw no evidence of panic. Ralph, in the beginning, was actually smiling and rejoicing about his freedom.

There are some notorious examples of savagery in modern times: 1) Slavery, 2) The Opium Wars, 3) The Boer atrocities, 4) Russian Cossacks murduring civilians, 5) The Nazi Holocaust, 6) Japan's "Rape of Nanking, 6) Hindu/Moslem atrocities, 7) Hutus vs Tutsis in Africa, 8) Serbia/Bosnia 9) the Lybian resurrection, 10) Syria (today).

In the vast majority of cases, a ruling class was/is responsible.

The working class just wants to get along, feed and clothe their families. There will always be criminals, but the community will organize to control them. In a modern civilized society, savagery is unnatural. People are basically rational, not evil. The clerics teach it the other way around so we'll come to church. (That's how they get fed and clothed.)

I think you're misunderstanding me. Savagery is unnatural in society because society demands order. Out of that society, humans will regret because there are no consequences and no rules.

Jon (below me here) states it quite well. A thin veneer separates us from savagery.

The message of this book is much simpler than you're making it, I believe.

Regress, not regret.

Okay I'll simplify it. In a civilized society of working class individuals, adult or teen, it is only panic that triggers savagery.

Put any such average group in the wild where there are no police or government, and they will organize to cooperate and survive. They instinctively know that they are better off individually by uniting their efforts and organizing to spread the work according to skill, knowledge and capability. The wagon trains headed west in the US pioneer days proved this many times. For this reason alone the book is unrealistic.

I disagree. Every man for himself is more normal than combining to help each other out.

So the wagon trains didn't happen?

Another example is in Steinbeck's Depression-era when starving farm workers organized and struck to get higher wages. The savagery came from the corporate farmers, not the workers, who were just trying to survive. They knew that individually they could do nothing. Only by banding together could they overcome starvation.

I think we are going to have to agree to disagree on this one. Kids are inherently selfish and can be very cruel. Organizing a labor union is not the same as being stranded on an island. I don't equate unethical business practices with survival.

Or savagery. Sorry. No edit thing again.

It wasn't business practices that I was referring to. The farmers hired thugs who went after the strikers with bats, guns and ax handles. Killing and maiming is savagery.

I still think we are on opposite sides on this. None of your examples have felt the same as the one described in this book in my opinion. I felt the conflict strongly and thought it was an amazing commentary on the inherent brutal nature of humans and you thought it fell flat and attacked the upper British class.

I have enjoyed our discussion though!

Jeni wrote: "I still think we are on opposite sides on this. None of your examples have felt the same as the one described in this book in my opinion. I felt the conflict strongly and thought it was an amazing ..."

You sound like me, 20 years ago. Self-reliance is laudable, but then I learned how to trust. We tend to find what we seek.

But yes, it's been fun.

I must be tired because I have no idea what you mean by that. It seems condescending and insulting and I really hope that I am misreading it in my weariness.

I simply believe our definitions of savagery are too vastly different to reach consensus about what this book's message is intended to be.

Philosophical, nothing else. Sorry if it sounded that way.