Another book club book. It was a quick replacement last month because the woman who recommended the book that we were supposed to read wasn't going to be at the meeting, and it was difficult to get ahold of. So we thought we would re-read a classic that most of us had read earlier in life.
The consensus was that the things that struck you about the book as a kid were not the same things that stood out as an adult. What was traumatic as a kid was almost de rigeur as an adult, and what was insignificant (or perhaps just confusing) as a kid seemed monumental as an adult. It's the same experience I had re-reading 1984, Animal Farm and Brave New World as an adult. That probably says something about the social commentary in those texts.
That same social commentary is in Golding's text too of course. The force of his argument - that society is degenerate and easily could become so - is diffused by the time frame of the novel. It's difficult to know if the boys are on the island for only a few weeks, or a few months or even a year, and so the speed at which their schoolboy manners and sense of society deteriorates is hard to guage. If only over a few weeks, the criticism that society is degenerate is more potent. If over months, or even a year, well, then the boys actions seem more comprehensible simply as the kind of degeneration that any human being might experience in the same time frame, and excusable since they are after all boys and not men who are trying to deal with being stranded on a deserted island.
Useless aside: ["Stranded on a deserted island" - now there's a cliched phrase if ever there was one. After all, have you ever heard of anyone stranded on an inhabited island? It's not really stranded then, is it?]
One thing that the group did discuss (Angela was there too, to provide a young person's perspective) was whether the story would unfold differently if it was a group of girls stranded on the island. We decided it would.
For one thing, the conflict would likely not have been over hunting, even if it had been about food. We also figured that girls would dig an animal trap for the pigs rather than go after them with sharpened sticks. And instead of warpaint, feathers and braided hair. They may have been even more afraid of the 'beast' than the boys and that might have been what the conflict that led to the split would have been about. And they would have likely (or at least some) been a bit more maternal about the 'littluns'. The conflict might then have arisen between the ones who wanted to take care of the littluns and those who expressed an everyone-for-herself kind of attitude.
But the one thing we decided is that conflict would have happened regardless of gender. [There wouldn't be much of a story without a conflict for one thing] Though the more I think of it, the more I wonder if the conflict would have had to have happened if adults were stranded. Not that I'm saying adults don't have egos that would lead them into conflict, but adults also usually have developed more skills for avoiding open conflict either through compromise and concilliation, or through subterfuge. Kids just aren't that subtle. The boys responses on the island are perfect examples. And Ralph's 'blank' moments when he can't think of what to say next are probably signs of immaturity, not of some kind of mental illness or disability (as they would be, say, in an adult). It would make for an interesting re-write/take-off on this classic story.