Friday, May 27, 2016

How do the boys come to be on the island in Lord of the Flies?

With the background setting of Lord of the Flies as World War II, the British plane, in which English schoolboys are probably being evacuated from the cities because of the Nazi bombings, crashes after being shot down near a tropical island.

Most likely, the boys are part of Operation Pied-Piper, in which urban children were relocated to places where the risk of bombing attacks was lower or virtually non-existent. These children, numbering in the millions, were transported from the cities to rural areas in England; in addition, many were sent to areas where the British lived, such as the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. This movement was the largest and most concentrated evacuation of population in British history.


When the boys of Lord of the Flies land on the island, having come from war-torn England, they feel as though they have landed on paradise. Indeed, they may feel more fortunate that those children who have been transported to areas where they must line up and be selected by adults willing to take them:



...billeting officials would line the newly arrived children up against a wall or on a stage in the village hall, and invite potential hosts to take their pick. The phrase, “I’ll take that one” became a statement indelibly etched in countless children’s memories.



At any rate, Ralph immediately delights in having found himself on an island that resembles Coral Island, the island from a novel by R.M. Ballantyne in which English schoolboys are shipwrecked and survive with their English ingenuity and resolve, defeating savages on this island.

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