Saturday, August 31, 2019

At the meeting what do Ralph and Jack report about the island? What famous books do they reference in describing it and why?

It's chapter 2 of Lord of the Flies and the boys are having their first big meeting. Conch-shell in hand, Ralph announces to the other boys that he, Jack, and Simon have climbed the mountain and in doing so have established that they've all been stranded on an island. But it's a good island with lots of pigs to hunt and eat. Picking up from Piggy's intervention, Ralph goes on to say that, as the boys' plane was shot down in flames, no one knows where they are, and so they may be stuck on the island for quite some time.
In the meantime, though, the boys can enjoy themselves and have some fun. It'll be like something out of a book. At this point, some of the other boys excitedly offer their own suggestions as to what kind of book Ralph might have in mind, famous adventure stories such as Treasure Island, Swallows and Amazons, and Coral Island. The latter of these books inspired William Golding to write Lord of the Flies. It was a rollicking Victorian adventure story about a group of boys stranded on a desert island, and which included characters called Ralph and Jack. But Golding wanted to subvert the original source material, turning a jolly tale about young boys having an awfully big adventure on a desert island into a dark allegory that would depict how such boys would really behave were they to find themselves far away from the watchful gaze of adults.

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