The story of the castaway Tongan schoolboys is really cool. I’m glad I read it. But I have to sigh at the idea that it “disproves” Lord of the Flies.

Even if it were possible to disprove a work of fiction, this feels like a massive misreading of what the novel was trying to say.

The point of LotF isn’t that humans are inherently savage. It is, for one thing, specifically about a particular type of post-War, barely-post-Empire, public-school-educated white English male. And it was written in response to colonialist fantasies starring such people.

Those fantasies all turn on the assumption of the inherent leadership qualities, the inherent “civilizing” effect of that particular class. That’s why the officer who rescues the boys is such a crucial character. He expresses that belief and expectation.

And more importantly, the societal collapse that happens in LotF isn’t because the castaways are all monsters. On the contrary, it’s made clear that they’re generally OK. They have decent principles, and they have, in Ralph, a leader who can direct their impulses productively.

But what they also have is a designated asshole, Jack, who sees the island as an opportunity to grab power. Which he does by undermining Ralph, playing up to the boys’ selfish tendencies, and finding scapegoats in the weak and vulnerable, like Piggy.

The failure in the novel isn’t because the boys are evil. It’s because they’re weak and easily persuaded by Jack’s manipulations. There’s nothing inherent about them that rejects his fascism, and nothing about Ralph’s good qualities that can counter it.

It has been a trip scrolling down my twitter feed and seeing endless variations on “LotF is full of crap!” alongside pictures of Americans protesting for their right to infect and be infected by a terrible disease, as if this wasn’t EXACTLY the dynamic Golding was writing about.

It’s also worth noting that the Tongan castaways had various advantages the characters in LotF lack. They knew each other. They were friends (and thus presumably didn’t have a Jack amongst them). They apparently also had at least some wilderness skills.

(They also had the weird good fortune of landing on an island whose previous inhabitants, stolen away by slavers, had left behind remnants of civilization that could be used for survival. Which in itself feels like an ironic commentary on colonialism.)

But that’s because the point of Lord of the Flies isn’t to illustrate what would “really” happen if a group of boys was cast away on an island, but to hold up a mirror to the processes that allow fascism to take hold in even “civilized” societies.

It's worth noting that generations of teachers have sanded away the novel's specific criticism of a particular culture, not to mention colonialism, in favor of a more universal (and less productive) "humans suck" message. Hard not to see that as intentional.