Things that Amuse Me

Like, today we tend to judge Charlotte far more harshly because in Western culture, the turn towards love marriage as ideal has been completed long ago and anything else is seen as mercenary and low - "settling", as it were.

THERE’S A TIMESKIP

THERE’S A TIMESKIP

THERE’S A TIMESKIP

after losing control of the signal fire there’s a FUCKING TIMESKIP and when the next chapter starts everyone’s hair is several inches longer and their clothes have rotted to shreds and they’re still just kind of chilling!!!!

IT TAKES THE TERRIBLE IMPERIALISM MIND-POISONED EXCESSIVELY BRITISH BOYS IN THE ACTUAL BOOK SEVERAL MONTHS TO COMMIT A SINGLE ACT OF INTENTIONAL VIOLENCE, EVEN THE ONE (1) CHILD WRITTEN AS AN ACTUAL SOCIOPATH

AND then when they DO turn on each other it is because

THERE’S AN UNSPECIFIED WORLD WAR HAPPENING

AND A PILOT’S CORPSE CRASH LANDS ON THE ISLAND POST-DOGFIGHT AND THE CHILDREN MISTAKE THE PARACHUTE FOR A MONSTER AND SPIRAL INTO PARANOIA

BECAUSE CHILDREN INHERIT THE LEGACY AND TRAUMA OF VIOLENCE FROM THE ADULTS WAGING WAR AROUND THEM

HURR DURR IN THE REAL WORLD IT WOULD NEVER HAPPEN LIKE IN LORD OF THE FLIES -

yes. yes he did. i’m also gonna direct you to the real life ‘lord of the flies’ which occured in the 1960s, when six tongan schoolboys got stranded on a desert island for over a year before being rescued by an australian fisherman (who, it should be noted, later took on all six as crewmembers because the reason they were out in the first place was because they wanted to see the world, and named his ship the Ata after the island they were stranded on). nobody died. the only injuries that occurred were accidental, and when one of the boys broke his leg falling down a cliff, the others braced it and looked after him so well that it healed perfectly. if they argued, then they would literally go to opposite sides of the island until they’d cooled off. after leaving the island, they remained friends for the rest of their lives. here’s a photo of them as adults, with their rescuer (who is third from the left) and other members of his crew.

the results are in

Okay so basically this all started in 10th grade when my English teacher (idk if this context is needed but she grew up in Yugoslavia in the ‘80s before moving to the US as a teen and she has a VERY thick accent. She’s about 6’4” and has huge black hair that sticks out all around her head. She’s the human embodiment of a corvid bird. Truly such a fascinating person) anyway she was talking about Lord of the Flies in class and mentioned that a few years ago some students of hers tried to convince her that the book couldn’t have taken place during WWII and that she didn’t believe them because “there have been no atomic bombs except during World War Two” and an atomic bomb is referenced as the inciting factor for why the boys were flying over a deserted island in the first place.

But the thing is, if you actually look at all the throwaway historical context details in the book, there is no logical way that it could have taken place in WWII. I realized that all clues point towards an alternate timeline where the Cold War turned hot. About halfway through the book I started bookmarking any scrap of information related the time period and it was getting to the point where each chapter took me twice as long to read because I would continually need to check various articles and Wikipedia pages to cross reference.

Eventually, I ended up writing a 5 -page paper picking the book apart for details which you can read here but I’ll also give you the individual points (a mixture of historical details and borderline headcanon):

Early on in the book, the boys mention that there are probably maps in “the Queen’s library” that show where they are—this was one of the first things that stuck out to me, as Elizabeth II didn’t become Queen until 1952, and WWII ended in 1945

Ralph mentions watching something on television at home. His dad, although a naval officer, would almost certainly not be able to afford a TV in 1945, BUT televisions were already popularized around the time of Lizzy 2’s coronation (or at the very earliest the 1948 London Olympics) and it’s believable that Ralph could have had one at home. There’s also some mentions around space travel/putting a man on Mars that would make more sense during the Cold War

I found Piggy’s character to be very interesting. For one thing, he’s introduced  as being fat due to his Aunt owning a candy store (his parents are both dead). If you know anything about the sugar ration during WWII, you’d know that candy stores would have been non-operational and Piggy would probably not have had access to an excess of sweets.

Continuing with Piggy, I’d place his distinctive accent as either London Cockney or London Estuary. If Piggy was from London, he would have been evacuated to the British countryside via train (the same evacuations in which the Pevensies stay with their uncle in Narnia) long before the dropping of the atomic bombs. Here’s where the headcanon comes in: I’d be willing to bet that Piggy was evacuated to the countryside as a baby during WWII and both his parents were among the 27,000 killed in the London Blitz, hence why he now lives with his aunt. By assuming the years leading up to the book are peacetime instead of wartime, there’s no issue around the candy store.

And finally, the most compelling argument imo…WHY WOULD BRITISH BOYS BE EVACUATED AFTER VE DAY??? In the book, it’s very clear that the LOTF boys are being evacuated from their boarding school after an atomic bomb was dropped. Victory in Europe was May 8th, 1945. The bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in early August. In what world would British boys be evacuated by a plane traveling over tropical airspace (historically child evacuations in the UK were domestic and carried out by train) to protect them from a bomb dropped in Japan four months after the end of the war in Europe?? The only plausible explanation would be that the USSR dropped a bomb on an Allied power and the boys are being evacuated from Briton all together to avoid nuclear fallout and/or future bombings.

Final note, at one point the boys consider building a new plane and decide against the idea because they “might get shot down by the Reds” even though the soviets were literally allies with Britain during WWII. Do you know when they most certainly weren’t allies? The Cold War.

Anyway, I end up giving her this essay which she reads and then promptly says “these are all very interesting points, but there was STILL no nuclear bomb besides the ones dropped on Japan in World War 2” and I’m like “Yes!! I know this!! And I’m saying it’s an alternate future!!” But she never really seemed to understand what I was saying.

Anyway a few weeks ago I was at my job (I’ve been working IT some summers at my high school after I graduated) and I ran into her and she says “I was going through my desk and I found that essay you wrote on LOTF! I read it again and it was a really good argument piece, especially for a 10th grader.”

So of course I ask her “oh really? Well, were you finally convinced?”

And she basically says “it was good…but no :)  <3”