Professor David Peimer
Lord of the Flies
Professor David Peimer - Lord of the Flies
- So David, whenever you’re ready I’m going to hand it over to you, and then start when you feel ready. Thank you.
Thank you, Wendy so much, and all the best to you and your new little one, and health and happiness to your family.
Thank you, thank you. And thank you and welcome back, everybody, to the first Saturday evening, I guess of this new year. Thanks, David. Bye-bye.
Okay, thank you. And as always, thank you so much to Judy as well. And on this auspicious day, because obviously everybody knows it’s the 11th of September. So I just mention it, and the sort of strange feeling of looking at “Lord of the Flies” on this day. You know, 20 years ago, memories, I’m sure, which many people, obviously everybody has, and I’m sure far more profound, many people having been there, and literally they’re me. So just hope for some kind of health, and a little bit of some happiness in life. So all thoughts to everybody on this day of the 11th of September. Okay. And the strangeness of doing this novel, which, I mean, when Wendy asked me to do it kind of a long time ago, and just when I realised it was actually on this day, the 11th of September, actually, it shifted the whole sense of meaning because of that. And I don’t want to talk about 9/11, but it can’t all be there in the background I’m sure, for everybody, myself. And looking at it again after so many years of studying it pretty intensely at high school, as I’m sure many have, it strikes me that there’s one core idea that speaks to us today, and perhaps for all time, and that is what I think Golding is really looking at.
The main idea is our propensity for savagery, whether it’s wars, which are obvious, or crimes, but also the day to day, the psychological savagery and cruelty that we all know, and we’ve all done, and are part of, part of being human. On the micro and macro level, our propensity for cruelty, savagery, and I think the question that Golding poses is is it induced by societal norms, structures, institutions, values, whether intentionally or not? We all feel the echo of Freud’s wonderful book, “Civilization and Its Discontents”, is it induced from the outside, as it were, from social systems, political systems, or is it innate to us as a species? And I think this is the core question that William Golding explores, and in this particular novel, and others of his work. And this is the key question I want to look at today, and I will refer to it, looking at it in various ways as we go through. I think in the end, I want to argue is that Golding, I think, suggests it is innate in all of us as humans, but it requires certain social political structures in order to be expressed vehemently or less, or in order to be managed or trapped or held down, or given Hyde Park Corners of outlets of release as it were.
So many ways to deal with it. The Ancient Greeks, besides their wars and slaves and everything, they had the Dionysian Festival, which was Dionysus, the spirit of excess, pleasure, wine, women, song, and that’s when all playwrights could write and put any play on, which could savagely attack any political leader and so on, it was a moment of complete safety of all release for the culture. And I think smartly so. So anyway, I think this is what Golding is looking at. And if we look at him in his times, as we all know, he won the Nobel Prize in 1983 for it. And he studied at Oxford, where he studied natural sciences, then gave up after a short period, and then went to study English literature. And in 1940, he served in the British Navy. He was part of the sinking, part of the entire expedition, to sink the German battleship Bismarck, as we all know. And he also took part in D-Day, and many, many other battles over the four years that he was in the British Navy and military. He then taught at a school in Cornwall for many years. 1954, he wrote “Lord of the Flies”. And he often spoke about his war years, and the influence it had on him. Obviously he was very aware, and had not witnessed but saw the pictures and all the writing about the Holocaust, but he had seen up front the absolute industrialised savagery of the war, and what that had produced. And seeing it, I think, on the ship, sailors drowning, being blown to bits, everything, and then D-Day, et cetera. 1963, Peter Brook made, Peter Brook, the fantastic, for me, one of the best theatre directors of the second half of the 20th century, one of the most remarkable and unique theatre directors.
He directed the film of it in ‘63, and then in 1990, there was another film made, which was American. The '63 one Brook made was with English actors. And I’m going to show some clips from both as we go through today, and then I’m going to end with a very contemporary production made some years ago by the brilliant British choreographer, Matthew Bourne, and his dance choreographic performance of “Lord of the Flies”, which is remarkable in many ways, and I think I would almost call it a magnificently beautiful question mark. Because it shows so much so powerfully, but is it the aesthetics of it being so beautiful, does that undermine something of the extreme raw violence? It reminds me a little bit of thoughts I’ve often had about the movie “Apocalypse Now”. Brilliant in its understanding of the savagery of human nature, but is it so grotesque and so almost beautiful in the aesthetic, and what is that fascinating dramatic clash between the two? Okay, then one other point I want to make is that Golding, I think, was so influenced by the war, I think he was really shattered by it. And so many ideas that were shattered by the war from the Holocaust to all sorts of other things, and he said quite an interesting comment about the Jews, which I’m going to mention later today. But that is what influenced this novel, to give the context, and Golding as a writer. I see “Lord of the Flies” as a savage satire, in the great spirit of “Gulliver’s Travels”, and so many other, it’s a satire. I mean it’s not a satire we belly laugh, and all of that.
It’s not that kind of a satire. It’s a brutal satire, on everything that little boys, little children are taught at school, about the values and the culture of civilization, et cetera, and how incredibly thin the membrane is between that and an innate quality in all of us humans, which given political or social powers for it to be expressed, come out in such an extreme way. In addition, I see it as a satire on the whole colonial narrative, which he was very aware of, Golding. And this whole idea of the Brits going out, not only the Brits, but anyway, going out to these islands, lands, new lands, continents, of the savages in order to civilise and sending the missionaries. We’re not only going to colonise, but given the ideology of sophisticated uplifting of the local peoples, we will civilise them. We will help them become full of values and democracy and human rights and understanding, and learn to be superior like us and civilised like us, the colonial narrative. And having just finished a remarkable new history book called “King Leopold’s Ghosts”, and you see what the Belgians were doing in the Congo for many years, and the slaughter of 11 million Belgians, and how it was done, chopping off hands, I mean, just so ruthless you don’t even think about it.
And how it was justified through the language and ideology of we are civilising the local natives. We’re superior, they’re inferior. We’re helping. Okay. And I think he’s very aware of that. Then the other idea with Golding and “Lord of the Flies”, this is just a picture of him here, 1911 to 1993 lived. As I say, mostly in Cornwall or parts over South of England. This is a picture from Matthew Bourne’s, the dance movement performance of a very recent one, of a few years ago in England and Australia of “Lord of the Flies”, of the novel. A fascinatingly beautiful production. So for me, “Lord of the Flies” is, as many know, the two influences of the Robinson Crusoe novel of Defoe, Daniel Defoe, and the 19th century children’s classic of R.M. Ballantyne, “Coral Island: A Tale of the Pacific” of 1858. And Golding talked about how Ballantyne’s book from 1858, “The Coral Island”, that’s actually the one that he was much closer to. It’s not only, then there’s also “The Swiss Family Robinson” “Robinson Crusoe”, et cetera. But it was actually Ballantyne’s book “The Coral Island”.
And many of the situations are similar. Many of the plot elements, the character names are similar. “Coral Island”, three boys are stranded on a desert island, and through their courage and resourcefulness as young English lads, they have the courage to strengthen, mature, the coming of age experience, the coming of age novel, it’s idealised, and the ideology of colonial times of how to bring up the colonial master-to-be as a young boy to be the colonial English master, is all there. No matter how primitive it is, throw them on a desert island, they will have the courage, the resourcefulness, the civilised qualities to overcome it, and to set up a civilization for themselves in the island. Ballantyne’s book. And Golding’s tale is very similar, but obviously it’s dark, it’s foreboding, and it’s, for me, it uses, and this is where it’s satire, because it uses the technique of irony all the time. And when the technique of the ironic, what we call the ironic voice in theatre, when we have irony, as Aristotle mentioned, and Shakespeare knew inside out, and many others, you take the theatrical experience, or the literary experience of reading a novel, whatever, film, you take it to another whole level of artistry. For me irony, the ironic voice is so essential.
And in this case, it gives it a satirical edge. And I’m going to give some examples of how the ironic voice works in the film and in the book. Is it a Victorian presentation of children? As pure and innocent? Like Ballantyne’s “The Coral Sea”, or Defoe? Or is it saying how do we prepare young lads to be the colonisers of the earth? Not only the British, but the Romans. Whoever else. Any other peoples that need to be, go out and colonise whatever, throughout history and globally. How do we produce people who can do that? Well, I think they need to add it to motion. And Golding eludes to this, and Orwell has a fascinating series of writings, George Orwell, where he speaks directly to it as a product of the school. Prepare the lads for colonisation. Is it about ripping the trappings of a civilised world? Exposing them to savagery, metaphorically on an island, or in the school, and then teaching them ways to overcome with courage and grace and resourcefulness, and with civilised values? The impulse of the missionary, the ideology we are bringing civilization to the world, even if we conquer, take the raw materials, enslave the peoples, or make them workers, whatever.
How does one actually colonise? What actually happens to the individuals who go out there? Not only the few that are well known, but the thousands, if not millions, who are sent, the soldiers, everyone else. So the idea of civilising, and the ideology, not only of the missionaries, but the values of human rights, civilization, and superiority, how to take the primitives to a better state. And this is the fable, or the parable, that Golding is looking at, and inverts everything of Ballantyne’s “The Coral Sea”, and of course “Swiss Family Robinson”, and all the others. So with “Lord of the Flies”, what’s going on outside is a nuclear war. And as we all know, a group of schoolboys are being evacuated from the UK, their plane crashes. They’ve been shot down, and they’re in an abandoned little island. It’s plentiful with fruit and running fresh water, so it’s all fine. So what do they do? Well, they start to set up a civilised, in inverted commas, semi-democratic society. That’s what they’ve learnt. They mimic what they’ve learnt. Then we watch the descent to tyranny, to fascism, raw, bestial brutality.
Okay, that we all know. Ralph is the figure of the little boy, a 12-year-old. We have to remember, these are 12-year olds, 10-year-olds, 8-year-old boys. And of course, him being a high school teacher, Golding, he’s trying to do it from their perspective. So they try to mimic, which is interesting itself, and there are fascinating studies on when you teach young little babies and young little children, one, two, three, four years old, so they learn through mimicking what the adult does, or what the other does, whether it’s to get food, or whether it’s to get milk or anything, learning through mimicking, and compare that to other animal species, and how they learn, this fascinating new, very recent discoveries, which I don’t have time to go into, of looking at the two, setting up exactly the same experiments for dogs, monkeys, and little babies. Okay. So they mimic, but that starts to change. We have Ralph as the leader, and he’s the calm, thoughtful, reasonable young boy. Jack is the choir boy, because they are meant to be, and he got a whole lot of boys part of the choir who are also abandoned on the island. And Jack is the one who turns them all to brutality and savagery so that he becomes the little tempered dictator, but ruthless.
Ralph is elected the leader, and Jack is the chief hunter. And then of course Jack turns against Ralph and sets up his own band of inverted comma savage boys and takes power. There’s this constant echo of the beast on the island, in the dark, and that it’s hunting them. And Jack, consciously or unconsciously, uses this to convert all the boys the fear of the other. It could be Jews. It could be black people. It could be white, it could be Muslim, could be people with orange shirts, yellow shirts, short, tall, whatever. We all know the fear of the other. And they’re all so scared that they flock to Jack, because he offers security. They make spears. They go hunting. They all learn and teach each other hunting and how to kill to get meat and food, not only eat the plentiful vegetables and plentiful food that is on the island.
They take delight in killing. And that turns to blood lust very quickly. And of course the “Lord of the Flies”, also called Beelzebub, and there’s lots of religious echoes in the novel as well. So those are the two main characters. Then Simon is the other interesting third character, who is epileptic. He has visions. And he’s the one who is driven by the search for truth. Going fine, well what is this beast? It’s not just the pig. And he goes and he discovers it’s the parachutist. It’s a human, it’s a pilot who was shot down, and there he is with the parachutes, and the moment that he runs back, which I’ll show later, he runs back to tell everybody it’s fine, there’s no real beast, is when they all turn on him and kill him in a blood lust of young boys in a fake savage ritual around the fire, their little spears, and kill him. And his body gently, slowly, drifts into the dark water, the ocean, sea at night. And the other friend, of course, and Simon is set up almost like a Christ-like figure, because he’s got wisdom, so wise for his age. He’s 11. 10, 11.
And little Simon wants to know the truth, wants to understand, has compassion, has forgiveness, wants to try and help everybody. He can’t see, really, how brutal they’ve all become. And he’s killed, ironically, at the end. And of course it’s the Christ myth, or the martyr myth. Then of course there’s the other friend, the other important character, Piggy. Piggy is overweight and he has glasses, and they mock him for his spectacles and his weight, and they call him Piggy, as we all know. Piggy is the intellect. He’s the rational mind. He can see exactly what’s going on. And he’s the brains informing Ralph. He’s got asthma, he’s got spectacles, he’s overweight. So he’s a target for 10, 11 boy kids, not only at school, but on the island, for mockery and torment and I suppose what could begin as teasing. And eventually he’s pushed off a cliff and is killed by the boys as well. Finally, Ralph is hunted, Ralph is alone. He’s lost his two best friends. He’s alone, and finally he’s hunted down by Jack and the choir boys, who by the way, in the entire novel, they never say one prayer, and they never sing one prayer, although they’re choir boys at their school in England, singing all these prayers in Latin in church. What they’d been taught to do. But on the island, not once.
But they all arrive dressed in the garments of choir boys. The irony there is obvious, and the meaning of the symbol. And at the end, Jack is hunted down, the entire island catches fire because they let the fire get out of control, their savage rituals. And I’m always using that word with inverted commas, the word savage, and ritual. And they hunt for Ralph. And they go screaming through the night. The fire attacks, it burns the entire island, so much smoke that there’s a Naval officer, there’s a ship that sees it, comes to the island, and they hunt, and Ralph just runs for his life, and he ends up on the beach, and the waves coming in, and all these little boys hunting, rushing after him with their spears, and arrows, and screaming, blood lust. 10-year-olds. 9-year-olds. To stab him to death. And there we see the feet of the Naval officer, dressed so smartly in his Naval uniform, shined shoes, his Naval jacket epaulettes.
Of course he’s got a machine gun, and other things. His cap, well-shaven, and so on. The civilised image of the barbaric, the barbarism of what is going on. Offstage of the novel, there’s a nuclear war. We have a massive war going on in the world. So we understand the ultimate irony is that the veneer of civilization presented by the adults, first adults who arrive, is actually a soldier, and he’s involved in mass slaughter, savage killings globally. So the ironic, he comes to rescue the boys, and says I never thought, come on lads. This is not British. You shouldn’t be so, you know. But of course, he’s engaged, as Golding saw the Second World War, in a most extreme savage war, virtually in human history, if not in human history. So the ironies upon ironies are set up all the way through. This is just a brief outline of the story, and I think it’s important to remind, because I needed to remind myself, I hadn’t read it again for so long, the technique of irony is so powerful in Golding, and in the novel, and I think this is what gives it so much of its dramatic power, and at the end, unlike so many books, or plays, or pieces of literature, normally we have redemption of some kind. There isn’t redemption. But what there is is an act of recognition. We recognise for ourselves, as Ralph, Jack, all the boys suddenly are aware, here’s an adult. Yes, he’s a representative of barbaric war that’s going on, soldier. But he’s clean-shaven, he has the image, at least, of civilization.
And suddenly they’re confronted with what they were only weeks or months before. So the ultimate irony is it makes us aware, it’s not about redemption. It’s an act of recognition for us at the end. Is the evil innate in us as a species? Is it when we create certain social political structures that allow for it or encourage it? Or is it a mixture of both? The one couldn’t do without the other? Or could it? The question, I think, that Golding poses, set up ironically all the way through. Okay, we have the obvious references to Caliban, the so-called savage on the island of Prospera, where there actually has got the most intelligent and beautiful language in Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”. Far more beautiful than Prospera, in others, but he’s the savage cannibal, the savage beast, uncivilised, doesn’t know language, et cetera. Caliban Prospera, Shakespeare’s last play “The Tempest”. Many others. There’s the portrayal of Cain. There’s the Cain and Abel story. There’s the fall of man. There’s allusions to John Milton’s “Paradise Lost”. All the religious poetry and symbols come all the way through. The obvious connection to the rise of Nazis and the Second World War is clear.
So in all these characters and the stories, in a sense, I think, he speaks to us today, because of the obvious creeping totalitarianism, call it populism, whatever, in our world today. And I’m not just talking about one country or another, but in our world, and we feel it in the society at large, in any society, almost globally, in so many. We feel original sin. With questions of the Garden of Eden image, because of course it’s a metaphor on that, the pure island, as it were. What happens to it? The original sin idea. The Garden of Eden, Cain and Abel, all of these things resonate subtly through the novel. We have, talking of “Lord of the Flies”. It’s actually just the head of a pig stuck on the end of a stick. It’s called the “Lord of the Flies”. It’s the ultimate symbol, of one would say dance, and it’s given by little human boys, it’s given all these ridiculously extreme qualities. It’s like giving the sun, or I suppose many ancient gods of many ancient times, stone, the statue of this or that, Ozymandias comes to mind. Giving them, imbuing them with so many human meanings. Zeus, god of thunder, Poseidon, the sea. Wonderful fable stories, but taken too far, and start to become literal, whoa. I think Golding’s intentionally tried to say recognise it. Not redemption, but recognise it, wake up. Also important that these little kids aren’t juvenile delinquents, at all. That category, for me, has always been too strange. I don’t buy it. They’re cute little human boys. They’re boys.
They’re eight, nine, 10. 11 years old. I mean, they’re little kids. They start to realise for themselves their own innate cruelty, their own innate brutality, and there are phrases from Ralph and the others that mention this. The conch, we all know, that Piggy sets upright, whoever’s got the conch can speak, so again, they’re mimicking what they’ve learned from the adult world, little semi parliament, little bit of equality, court of assembly, everyone can talk, then we decide. When the conch is smashed, it’s an obvious symbol, and it’s got ridges, and many other connotations, in essence, the values of what we might call civilization, or as Gandhi said, I’ve heard of English civilization, it’d be an interesting idea. But we hear the ideas of civilization and democracy, are literally smashed in the conch. I’m going to read you a little bit from Golding, when the discovery of the parachute. And Simon coming, rushing to tell them. Because something in the language I want to mention of. “And so a great wind blew the rain, "cascading from the forest trees. "On the mountaintop, the parachute "filled, swayed, and moved suddenly. "The figure slid, rose to its feet, "spun, swayed down through a vastness of wet air, "falling, falling, still falling. "It sank slowly towards the beach, "and the boys rushed screaming into the darkness, "the wet darkness.” It’s an amazing image for me, the parachute falling, the fall of man, Milton. So many of religious and poetic myths come to mind, but the parachute just falling, and the language that William Golding uses is a combination of realism and mythical. Realism and allegory. Or if you like, naturalism and parable.
He combines the two. And that’s a very hard way of writing. It’s a very difficult way, because it can easily fall into one or the other, or fall into the trap between the two, so it’s not quite satisfying on either level. George Orwell for me is much more allegorical, mythical, “Animal Farm”, all the others, et cetera. He’s not trying to be realistic or naturalistic, and nor are the characters. Kafka is also trying to fall into the level of allegory and mythical. For me, more successfully in certain ways, more obviously, but more successfully, because he still links to a trait of realism. And I think Golding is influenced, he’s trying to write both, and I think it, for me, it succeeds. In terms of writing in this way I mentioned here, which is poetic and mythical, and also with a thread to realism as well. Okay. Just in the beginning with the lagoon. The lagoon had protected them from the Pacific. “Slowly the water sank among the rocks, "revealing pink tables of granite, "strange growths of coral. "Down, down the waters went, whispering like the wind "among the heads of the forest.” After they’ve killed Simon whose told them the truth. Then, “Along the shore, the shallows, "the shallow waters, the advancing clearness, "was full of strange moon beamed bodied creatures "with fiery eyes, little boys with eyes of fire. "The tides swell in over the rain-pitted sand "that touched the broken body. "The water rose, rose, and dressed Simon’s coarse hair "with a little brightness.”
I mean, it’s beautiful writing. It’s beautiful poetic. He’s trying to find that, the mythical, the allegorical, together with the reality, that these little boys have stabbed Simon to death. And then Ralph starts to become aware of a few things. Ralph, this is Golding writing of Ralph’s self-awareness at the age of 12. “Ralph found himself understanding the wearisomeness "of this life. "Was every path just an improvisation?” And then again, “Ralph fell into that strange mood "of speculation. "The faces were different, when lit from above or below, "what was a face? "What was a boy? "What was anything?” A little bit of a coming to age, coming to consciousness, ancient myth and story of Ralph the 12-year-old trying to understand human nature. The big world. And then at the very end, Ralph weeps. And when he cries at the foot of the soldier, the Naval officer who’s arrived to rescue them all, and they’re all standing to silence, because the savage little boys are behind with sticks and spears, and they all look suddenly, and Ralph weeps. And he weeps for the end of innocence, for the heart of darkness in all of us. But mostly, and this is in Ralph’s words, “I wept for the death of my true wise friend, Piggy.” Piggy’s the one he chooses to cry for the most. That’s who comes to mind. Not Simon, or any of the others. Not even thoughts of his own family, siblings.
Where are they? Well, this is a whole generation brought up under boarding schools, and there you get taught toughen up. Be tough. Go on, go be a soldier, a leader. Got to be a coloniser. Go out there. Or a superior species. Go out there, and got to do things. How else do you make a man out of a boy? Let’s be honest. Okay, I’m reminded, of course “Gulliver’s Travels”, all of these which Golding was very aware of. Swift’s version of primal savagery, in inverted commas, and greed, and our civilization of course, that mask is so thin. So the tension between the realistic novel and the allegorical fable, is so well captured for me by Golding. And I think many writers have tried it since. Marquez comes to mind, in the jargon of magical realism. And many others that we know. Coetzee tries to do the same for me. In a lot of his novels from South Africa. A combination of realism, the realistic novel, and the allegorical fable. Which is, I think, a very powerful novelistic form of our times. Okay. And then of course the one other character briefly mentioned is Roger, who is the leader’s hangman and henchman. So Jack sets him up as the equivalent of a plantation overseer, or the leader of the centurions. Not the emperor, not the general, but the guy, the sergeant, who carries out the harsh orders, and gets everybody to do everything brutal. And that’s the Roger character.
And many plays and forms and novels use that character. Pinter’s plays and many others, very important. You’ve got to have your plantation overseer, not only plantation owner and slave labourers, for obvious reasons, because that’s the one who enforces the brutal orders. Okay. So all of these ideas come into the novel for me, and as I’ve said, and Ballantyne, Golding talked about Ballantyne’s “The Coral Island”. They’re meant to be stark English lads who overcome the difficulties, they show that they are superior to the natives. This is Golding writing. And for him, this is me paraphrasing, he tried to show that evil is within us. It’s not about only out there, you’ve got to face it, and are we able to overcome it and maintain our civilised values. And Golding mentions about how to keep the empire shipshape, in the words of the time. And Golding, in another letter he wrote, “And I often thought to myself, "well who is the real inferior? "Who is the real primitive, and who is the real savage, "in all our endeavours to make empire? "Who was it for the Romans?” Okay. And then of course the phrase which is stuck in my mind ever since I was a kid, kill the pig, cut his throat, spill the blood.
It’s such fantastic resonance for a ritual around a fire, of dancing, and savagery, and blood lust, and spears with arrows, and when you get into that little ritual, and start to scream it, acting students do it often, for mixed reasons. And after 10 minutes of just chanting that, it becomes quite powerful inside. And then Golding in another letter wrote, “Man suffers from an appalling ignorance "of his own nature.” That’s what I’ve tried to look at. “Man suffers from an appalling ignorance "of his own nature.” As Pinter said, we tried to evade understanding our own nature. For Golding, it’s an appalling ignorance of our own nature. And in Ballantyne’s “The Coral Island”, Ballantyne writes, the character says, “After all, we’re not savages. "We’re English. "And the British are best at everything.” That’s direct from Ballantyne’s “The Coral Island”. Okay, and then of course at the end, when the Naval officer arrives, and at the end of the book, of “Lord of the Flies”, the Naval officer says, “I should have thought "that a pack of British boys, "you’re all British, aren’t you? "Would have been able to put up a better show.” I love it. It’s got wit, it’s got irony, it’s got satire. It’s so self-aware of the irony, because he’s part of a barbaric massive global war of millions, coming to rescue the boys from their own savagery.
The island is a microscope, obviously, of what’s going on globally. It’s a microscope of what’s innate in all humans, and Golding’s argument, for all of us as adults. Okay. And also, “Coral Island”, this reference that Golding mentioned of Ballantyne, to Hedda Gabler, at the end of the play when Jack Brack says about Hedda Gabler’s suicide, well people don’t do things like that. All these phrases echo each other because they’re written all at similar times, of a great hope of civilization and values. And then this I wanted to mention, which is about Golding on dues. Then I’m going to show a whole lot of clips. “It’s bad enough to say,” this is in a letter than Golding wrote. “It’s bad enough to say "that so many Jews were exterminated. "A terrifying word, exterminated. "But there were things done during that period. "And when I think about it, "I get physically sick again and again. "Even just that word makes me physically sick. "These things were not done by the headhunters "of New Guinea, or by a primitive tribe in Africa. "They were done skillfully, coldly, "by educated doctors, lawyers. "Educated by men with the great tradition "of civilization behind them. "Our social system, political systems, "are such that we must fight each other, "and perhaps learn that compassion is weakness, "that and our need to kill, and kill, and kill again "makes us quite a species.”
This is fascinating, Golding writing, and this is the only real connection that I’ve found that I know of, and I’m sure the others, of when he actually talks about the Second World War in relation to the Holocaust, and that terrifying word, extermination, and relating to the Jewish people. And at this time, not only September the 11th, but at this time, obviously of the year, for everybody Jewish, participating here, and everywhere in the world, for me, it’s a moment, not a warning from history, it’s more an act of recognition, that I tried to mention earlier, talking about this novel. Why look at it? Why look at it now? Not so we all get scared and jump around, are we anxious, are we this or this. Not to press the panic buttons of any kind. But a moment of contemplation. A moment of reflection.
Well, if the human species does have this innately, what can we do? What can be done, what can’t be done in our own lives, day to day, on a bigger picture. That’s all. And I think it’s a, perhaps Golding speaks to us today because the way he writes is so metaphorical and allegorical, it can speak to us now and at any other time. And now as all these in a sense, hints of threatening forces happening everywhere, it does act as a moment of recognition of just simple contemplation. Okay, I want to show a couple of images, a couple of scenes from the movies. This is from the trailer of Peter Brooks’ ‘63 production. CLIP BEGINS
[Announcer] Comes a brilliant exciting motion picture. “Lord of the Flies”.
Sorry.
[Announcer] Comes a brilliant exciting motion picture. “Lord of the Flies”.
Piggy.
Huh?
That was real murder.
You stop it! What good are you doing talking like that? It was dark! There was that bloody dance! There was thunder and lightning and rain! We were scared! It wasn’t what you said.
Oh, Piggy!
[Announcer] The artful chilling story of castaways degenerating into savagery. “Lord of the Flies”.
Okay, that’s just a little bit from the trailer of Brook’s production. And I wanted just to, because it reminds us of the images of the cricket at school, the cultivated gardens, and the buildings where they all go to live and study in the boarding school, compared to the savagery which they degenerate into on the island. This is from the other film early on.
Okay, listen up. Whoever holds the conch-
The American version.
Gets to speak. That’s the rule.
Is this like assembly, sir?
Yeah. Except anybody-
That’s Ralph.
Who wants to speak gets to.
Piggy.
But not before they get the conch.
Right.
There doesn’t seem to be anybody here except us.
And a pig.
It was a wild boar!
No! It was a regular pig! Big, but regular!
If it was a regular pig, then it must have got here from people!
Yeah! If there’s pigs, there’s people!
Okay, cadets. Like I said, this island’s probably uninhabited.
That’s Jack.
But we don’t know. We’ve got to explore more.
[Jack] Right. There’s a lot of things we got to do. But the main thing is we’re not by ourselves. We got Captain Benson.
Can I speak?
Piggy holding the conch.
The most important thing is who knows we’re here? Nobody knows we’re here. They know where we were going, but they don’t know where we are because we never got where we were going.
[Boy 1] Where were we going?
We were going home.
I’m sure they’re out looking for us. We should set up some kind of steady signal. Like a fire, and keep it going all the time. And we’re going to have to have rules.
Can I have the conch?
Yes. Ralph’s right. We definitely got to make a fire.
Sir, are you the leader?
[Boy 2] Jack’s the oldest.
But Ralph’s the colonel!
[Boy 3] I think it should be Ralph!
Yeah!
Yeah, Ralph!
He’s the colonel!
I vote for Ralph!
Yeah!
Yeah, for Ralph!
[Boy 4] He’s the colonel, Ralph!
I guess you just won the election.
Doesn’t matter who’s in charge. We’ve just got to work together.
Okay. I guess you just won the election, doesn’t matter who’s in change, got to work together. We get the meaning in a contemporary context globally. Ralph, Jack, the blond hair, first is on his side, and made chief hunter, and then of course has this power with him. Piggy, the intelligent one, trying to bring his brains in to understand everything. The hunt. The cadets, in the American version of the film in 1990, they’re cadets, they’re not just schoolboys. They kill the pig, bringing it into the fire.
Put it here. Sharpen a stick at both ends.
Few weeks before, they were all choir boys and cadets.
[Jack] This is a present for the monster.
Ralph watching them. The scene with Ralph and Piggy and the others. Piggy holding the conch.
Come on Jack! Yeah!
Come on Jack!
Come on Jack!
Kill him!
Go Jack!
Kill him!
Come on Jack! Just push him! Get him! Kick his ass! Come on Jack! Kill him, Jack!
Yeah!
Kick his ass!
Get him Jack!
It’s Ralph and Jack.
[Piggy] I’ve got the conch! Let me speak!
Get out of here, Piggy!
[Boy 1] Blow it out your ass, fat ass!
Get out of here!
Yeah!
Stop that, Roger! Let Piggy speak!
Please! This is serious!
Get out of here fat ass!
Get away!
Go back to your own camp!
What I want to say is if we don’t get rescued, we might have to live here for a long time!
Leave!
Maybe the rest of our lives!
Leave, fat ass!
If we are stuck here until we get old, then we can’t go on acting like kids! We’ve got to be sensible and make things work!
No! You’re not going to get away with this.
Yeah? And what are you going to do? Huh? What are you going to do about it? You’re out of it, pal. You’re on your own!
And then here, this clip is from again, the American film version from 1990, where Simon discovers the so-called beast, which is a parachutist, and comes to tell all the boys as they’re having their wild ritual around the fire, and then kill him.
Come on, hunters! Billy’s the monster! The monster! It’s the real monster! Kill him!
[Boy 1] It’s the monster! Get the monster!
CLIP ENDS
- That’s the body of Simon at the end. Then look to the bottom showing finally when the Naval officer arrives. So that’s the picture with Simon being killed at the end, and all he’s doing is trying to tell them the truth, there’s no monster. It’s the parachutist who died there. Okay, so this is from the Peter Brook version of the 1963 film, that we saw in the clips. And from the 1990 American version. And both together trying to capture a lot of these qualities that I’m trying to mention which I find in the novel. This is from Matthew Bourne’s dance choreographed production which opened in England and Australia some years ago, in the last decade. Quite stunning.
CLIP BEGINS
Fabulous. From start to finish, it was amazing.
The cast was amazing. Really excited to see so many people who’ve only been learning their parts for such a short period of time, and how much they put into it.
There’s good opportunities, because you don’t really see that many young people onstage.
We loved it.
Absolutely loved it.
We love the idea of seeing encouraged young people from our area, as well.
Some of us here haven’t danced before, and it’s amazing that we’ve got in, so just go for it. Like me and Matthew, we hadn’t danced before this, and we’re absolutely brilliant now.
Everyday kids work with professionals. It’s wonderful. And getting boys involved in dance as well is fantastic.
You can’t really tell which are the professionals and which are the non-professionals, so it’s really, really incredible.
To actually say to young men, it’s all right to do this, it’s all right to be involved in this. It’s something you need to do, want to do. Fantastic idea. Really brilliant.
If you’re a fan of Matthew Bourne, if you’re used to surprising and exciting things, then this definitely delivers.
It’s really adventurous and exciting.
I think it’s really great that non-professional dancers are being used.
Brilliant performance. Just the way they move, I just really love it.
You couldn’t keep your eyes off it. Really, really nice.
It’s been amazing, all the adrenaline has gone through us. We’ve got to get back on stage, and I feel really pumped up and ready for the action.
This is a brilliant show. A fantastic idea, and to see all those young people on board, and so full of energy and life, it’s fantastic. I mean, it’s brilliant. I really recommend the show.
CLIP ENDS
- A brilliant artist and brilliant choreographer, Matthew Bourne. A fantastic show. And I love the way they cut it, interspersed with interviews with some of the young boys. They’re eight, nine, 11, 12. The experience of doing it for the first time ever, dancing, and with parents, or just audience members speaking about it. So I think, and I think it’s all coming from Golding’s vision, said at the beginning, is the brutality innate in us? Is it something the social system sets up? Is it both? Does the innate require the social system to enable, or to help restrict it? Where is it expressed? I think Golding was obsessed with that question, and I think that is what reverberates a pathway through the novel. A
nd of that chance for me, that Matthew Bourne took this up decades after the Brooks movie and a long after the 1990 version film to make it as a choreographic artistic project, it’s, I think, just an artistic hint about something, to capture something of what’s going on in our world globally today. Just to the seduction, the allure of extreme brutality. Where does it start, how does it come from? And as I said at the beginning, at this moment of the Jewish holidays, it’s a moment of just recognition, not redemption. It’s a moment of contemplation, to perhaps just think a little bit about, for all of us, what’s going on in the world today and why. And then I leave you with this last image. This is from a small town, a small town called, I forget the name exactly, called Yaphank, Y-A-P-H-A-N-K. It’s about an hour and a half from Manhattan. And in the 30s, this is where a lot of German-Americans, American kids of the age of 12, that these little boys in the novel, and in the movies, would come to, boys and girls, would come to for camps. They’d march in Hitler Youth uniforms, streets were called Goebbels Street, Adolf Hitler Street, they wore brown shirts, they wore SS uniforms, jack boots. Favourite street apparently was Goebbels Street. And it went up until late 1938.
And many, many boys apparently used to go there. And they’d make flower beds of the swastika, you can see this image, and there were apparently many others. This is just from one small town outside New York City. Many others were done. A not so subtle reminder from memory, in our collective memories. Very recently, a very interesting new American playwright took this image and this experience and has just written a play about it, which has just very recently had a showing in London, and I’m sure will probably be performed quite a bit elsewhere. So a lot of people feeling these echoes that resonate artistically anyway. And I don’t want to go into the obvious meanings of this for us today, or the metaphor, the literal meaning today, but just show it as a not so subtle reminder to contemplate. Okay, thank you everybody. Really appreciate, and especially on this 11th of September day, which has so many meanings in and of itself, and I’ve tried to look at what can make this novel, or what does make it, a little bit resonant, in not only learning it in the way we were taught at school, which was just to learn it by writing, and memorise it and mimic it, but actually perhaps the benefit of, the poor adults which, which understand the main questions a little bit more. Okay. Thanks everybody.
[Wendy] David, have you got time to go through questions?
Yeah, sure.
Q&A and Comments:
Hi Rose. Okay great, exactly. 9/11.
Okay, and Jeremy’s talk. Wonderful.
Sandy, yeah. I know. Okay.
My other title, I think we’ve mentioned that.
Barbara, 11 million Africans who lived in what’s now called, well, the Congo, which is bigger than the whole of Western Europe, were slaughtered by the Belgians in about two decades. Richard. It’s separate to the ones who were maimed and injured. I have sent you an article about a true story, oh thank you. Appreciate it.
Suzanne. “King Leopold’s Ghosts”, yeah. Okay. And this Barbara Kingsolver’s book, “The Poison Bible” which is brilliant as well, and she talks about this very new historical book “King Leopold’s Ghosts”. Arlene, this reminds me of the controversial experiment. Yup. Volunteer with guard, exactly. They were cruel, and then they switched.
Exactly, Arlene. And that’s the eternal question, way back to the beginnings of literature, the ancient Greeks and storytelling in Africa, Asia, everywhere else. Try Ancient Chinese literature. The Milgram experiment was a bit different, Jackie, but we can talk about that another time.
Thank you for that, Marcia, of recognition. Yup, exactly. In tragedy, thanks Marcia. And hi to you in Canada.
Esther, do you think the Judaism, well, that’s a big question. For another time, I think. Rachel, “Lord of the Flies” English translate, exactly, of the Hebrew Baal, Beelzebub in the book. Exactly.
Thanks for that, Rachel.
Sonia, leaving homages to Castle Rock, Stephen King’s fictional towns, exactly. Rob Raine and Andy Carcera which all comes from Golding’s novel, which is where Jack and the boys who become the savages with their spears and all that, they live up in the castle rock at the top of the castle, atop of the rock on the island.
Carol, thank you for that. Yeah. Okay, hate is like a tsunami. I’ve just read, actually, of all the academics from Europe who got together and published a whole lot of connections on Shakespeare in our times of hate. There’s a whole lot of academics in Europe who’ve just written for a series of that specific topic. In our times of hate. Okay.
Ralph. This is a book of reflection of how quickly humans can transform. Absolutely. When I was unfortunately in the South African Army, I was in with a lot of guys who’d been with me at university, and we’d studied LOB at Litz, and at least half of my platoon were from Litz, and were semi-lefty, this that, liberals, et cetera. I saw how within 72 hours, they became exactly like these little 11-year-old boys in Golding’s novel. Not all, but most. There were very few versions of Piggy or Simon.
Then Sue, thank you. Okay, appreciate it.
Okay Rhona, thank you. J
udy. Okay, that I need some help with, please. Not sure about that.
Linda, name of the play in London? It’s just slipped my mind. I’ll get it, and I’ll email it, and perhaps get it from Judy. Or email me. I’ll have it.
Q: Barbara, have you read the book “Mankind”?
A: The writer tries very hard, man is kind and caring, denigrates. Yeah, I have. And that’s the debate. That’s the wonderful debate. Do we take the compassionate, caring, kind approach? And that’s more the core of human nature? Or bestiality and cruelty at our core, or both? And what brings it out at different times? That for me is what art and literature do. They throw out the question, not the answer.
Gary, the arrival of the Naval officer represents Hitler coming to power. That’s a huge one. I’m not sure. Because the barbarity and the savagery of the British officer, or later in 1990 film version, the American officer, is not the same as an SS or a Gestapo soldier, because very different ideological beliefs. And let’s never forget who started that war.
Okay, thank you from Marcel.
Okay, Ruth. Production, Richmond. The cast were late teenage boys. Yes, I heard about it. I didn’t see it. Matthew Bourne also uses some older boys. You can see the physique. A little bit older. They’re more like 15, 16. And Brooke, in the '63 film, and American film, they try to keep to the age. Literally, nine, 10, 11. Little kids. And the oldest is 12, Ralph and Jack.
Okay, thanks so much everybody, and hope the rest of your September 11th day is peaceful.