Lord of the Flies Lesson 17

Note- there is no homework with this lesson. Study for Wednesday's essay.

Aim: Was Stephen King right about this book?

Read these excerpts from our class’s introduction to Lord of the Flies. It was taken from The Stephen King story, Low Men in Yellow Coats.

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Bobby glanced into the sandbox and saw a little boy sitting there and wailing as if his heart would break while another, bigger kid sat beside him, unconcernedly playing with the Tonka truck he had yanked out of his friend's hands.
And the book's ending — happy or not? Crazy as such a thing would have seemed a month ago, Bobby couldn't really tell. Never in his life had he read a book where he didn't know if the ending was good or bad, happy or sad.

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'William Golding wrote an interesting thing about that book, one which I think speaks to your concern about the ending.'
'Tell me what he said about the ending. I mean what Mr Golding said.'
'As best as I can remember, it was something like this: "The boys are rescued by the crew of a battle-cruiser, and that is very well for them, but who will rescue the crew?"' Ted poured himself a glass of rootbeer, waited for the foam to subside, then poured a little more. 'Does that help?'
Bobby turned it over in his mind the way he would a riddle. Hell, it was a riddle. 'No,' he said at last. 'I still don't understand. They don't need to be rescued — the crew of the boat, I mean — because they're not on the island. Also . . . ' He thought of the kids in the sandbox, one of them bawling his eyes out while the other played placidly with the stolen toy. 'The guys on the cruiser are grownups. Grownups don't need to be rescued.'
'No?'
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THIS WILL BE COLLECTED TODAY!

One thing we did not discuss in detail was the world outside the island. It is a world at war. The boys crashed because of the war, the “Beast” landed on the island because of the war, the rescuers are there because of the war (they are from a battleship) and the boys are returning to a world at war.

William Golding intended this book to have a strong anti-war message.

Using what he have learned about humanity, savagery, civilization, etc, explain if you believe the boys have been taken to a better place.

LENGTH- one page