This real life ‘lord of the flies’ story is very different from the book

[Valin]

Hot Air

John Sexton

May 8 2020

You probably read this book in junior high school or at some point while you were young. Lord of the Flies by William Golding tells the story of a group of boys who are stranded on a remote island after a plane crash. Initially they rally and make plans to stay alive until they can be rescued, but soon the boys form factions and a power struggle leads to murder. The idea behind the novel isn’t hard to miss. Left alone, children would quickly revert to a semi-feral and warlike state because that is the true nature of mankind.

Today the Guardian published an excerpt from a book by Rutger Bregman which reveals that something very much like the premise of Lord of the Flies actually happened once in the 1960s. A group of boys “borrowed” a boat and wound up stranded on an island for 15 months:

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The journey didn’t go as planned. A storm hit. Their sail was shredded. After drifting on the sea for a full week they saw the island of ‘Ata, the remnant of an ancient volcano, which had been uninhabited by humans for about 100 years at that point.

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While the boys in Lord of the Flies come to blows over the fire, those in this real-life version tended their flame so it never went out, for more than a year.

The kids agreed to work in teams of two, drawing up a strict roster for garden, kitchen and guard duty. Sometimes they quarreled, but whenever that happened they solved it by imposing a time-out. Their days began and ended with song and prayer. Kolo fashioned a makeshift guitar from a piece of driftwood, half a coconut shell and six steel wires salvaged from their wrecked boat – an instrument Peter has kept all these years – and played it to help lift their spirits. And their spirits needed lifting. All summer long it hardly rained, driving the boys frantic with thirst. They tried constructing a raft in order to leave the island, but it fell apart in the crashing surf.

Worst of all, Stephen slipped one day, fell off a cliff and broke his leg. The other boys picked their way down after him and then helped him back up to the top. They set his leg using sticks and leaves. “Don’t worry,” Sione joked. “We’ll do your work, while you lie there like King Taufa‘ahau Tupou himself!”

 

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Lord of the Flies has been made into a movie three times and plans are underway for a fourth adaptation. It’s a shame this real life version of the story has been forgotten.