if they're a bunch of posho boarding school kids like in the book it'd probably be kinder because it would save them from the the routine noncing that goes on in those places
William Golding gave an interview where he cited two main reasons for not including women in this book. He said that he was more acquainted with the behavior of little boys, since he himself had only a brother. Additionally, he claimed that he did not want sexual activity, an innate component of savagery, to be included in this book because it would complicate the dynamics of the island.
Why couldn't women be included without sexual activity? And sexual activity is not limited to interactions between men and women. Besides, these are children we are talking about. Sexual activity is an excuse.
I completely agree with his decision - it would have distracted from the main focus of the book in a massive way if gender relationships were in there. The topic of sexual attraction and boy-girl differences (in physical, mental and social development) would have to be dealt with, and it'd suddenly become a book about sexes, not about society and the individual. That said, I would still love to see a version of the story with a mixed boy and girl group. :) It would be longer, and boy is this a bad time for it because people would attack it for how it portrays genders regardless of how it does it (and boy would they hate it today if it tried to be faithful to reality, and even more so if by some impossible chance it was faithful to the time period), but it would add a lot of interesting stuff to see.
My wife is a teacher of first and second graders and she claims that she can't leave the room for three minutes because the children would literaly kill eachother. Not because they are evil or bad, just because they are careless.
I think I've figured out why this analysis doesn't hold up for me - but at the same time, I've realized why the book doesn't hold up for John, either. In focusing too much on the Beast/Lord/Pig Head Kebab and its almost comically grotesque rendition of The Evil(tm) that lurks in the heart of Man, he sees Golding as trying to portray a 'true image' of human darkness, which is obviously wretched in every perceivable way. But the subtle genius of the book for me is how it shows the real evil as plain, basic, and even boring: contrary to what John says here, Piggy is so obsessed with rational purity, he denies taking part in the murder of Simon, denies it is a murder at all, and blames the victim for his own death, all in the same scene. And the allusions to wartime strategy seen in the hypocritical adoption of face/body paint - an act of savagery when done by the Other, but purely pragmatic when used for one's own (ie. the Allied Forces') agenda. The Beast is a bogeyman, not the actual symbolic representation of human evil. It's the "Other", a desperate construction which we project all manner of evil qualities upon, yet fail to recognize in ourselves, because it's just so mundane when we do it. How can you talk about this book in the context of WWII without discussing the various other lessons that have emerged from that same war? The Nuremberg defense. Arendt's concept of the Banality of Evil. The Stanford Prison Experiment. The Milgram Experiment. Holocaust denial. One of the most lasting cultural legacies of the Holocaust/WWII in general is the way in which it fundamentally and irreparably dented the concept of default human goodness, by demonstrating how unsettlingly EASY it is to commit evil, once the context around it has been normalized. The ending of this video seemed shockingly tone deaf: "but the war did end". Dude, seriously, c'mon. It didn't end by everyone coming to their senses, announcing a ceasefire based on mutual trust, and drafting out peace treaties based on the highest ethical standards at the time. It ended as it began: by normalized force. THAT is the point of Lord of the Flies - evil doesn't look like the Beast. It looks like normal life - until it a stranger comes by and asks you why you thought it was a good idea to set your own island on fire, or drop an atom bomb on a city, and then it doesn't. If you wanna get Freudian about it, the moment your superego starts vindicating the worst parts of your id, there's no stopping the ego from rationalizing some terrible, terrible things. But at the same time, I can understand why this book flops for some people. It's very hit-or-miss, IMO. You have to be pre-sold on the premise that evil is easy, and easy to escalate - once you do, all the rich subtleties fall into place. If you don't, the allegory seems like kitschy hyperbole. But to that I say: the Nuremberg defense, the Stanford Prison trials and the Milgram experiment all seem kitchy and hyperbolic in concept, too. And yet they bore some genuine, awful fruit.
The problem with LoTF is that all the psychological factors you list are show to only apply in the context of violence -> i.e. that violence can beget more violence and encourage others to violence but the reverse is not true - Ralph and Piggy's pleas/arguments do not make those "just following orders" question their orders nor can they rally any kind of counter movement to Jack's gang. I much prefer the "3%"'s version. Isolation and a food shortage lead to a rich entitled boy forming a gang which terrorize and steal the food from all the other kids. But as soon as the other kids realize what is going on some of them band together and build a defenses to prevent the gang from stealing their food. Eventually it all ends when a kid who has escaped the isolation & has been watching it all go down from safety returns and rallies the terrorized kids into fighting back who then in a fit of mob justice murder the bullies.
This is it. I think too much is being made here about absolutes, but I never interpreted it that way - only that it's possible, and likely, for us to degenerate into savagery when there are no consequences and when we lack maturity and behave as children. That this descent happens "too quickly" is not a very valid criticism. It's 12 chapters, how long do you want Golding to take to make his point? I think Greene maybe knows too much about Golding's history and reads too much into it? Going in without that information, the novel worked for me.
I think that Golding's message was pretty spot on with the theme. One of John's criticisms with this book is that Golding contradicts himself with the theme that all humans are inherently evil because of Ralph and Piggy. That they do not take part of the violent acts. But they do take part in the violence when they kill Simon. Ralph and Piggy have evil within them just like the rest of the boys but are better at fighting off their evil tendencies then Jack and the others. But ultimately cave in to their evil desires when they kill Simon.
I'd say that wasn't them caving into desires but rather mob rule and fear of being cast out and potentially murdered... still doesn't really make them not evil though.
Yeah, that makes sense. When they killed Simon, it was to make a point that they are fighting the evil within, but they did fail to possible fear and the natural wickedness. They were later aware of their actions and what they've become instead of Jack and his tribe, who only figured that out in the end.
The man at the end didn't just show up at random...all of the children were trying to kill Ralph so Ralph hid...once the children found him they set fire to a bushel Ralph was hiding in to smoke him out and in doing so set the whole island on fire which resulted in a huge smoke signal which drew the ship in to investigate. So in a weird way them being murderous savages is what got them saved.
An allusion to colonialism maybe? Because, the British, and other colonial powers, justified colonialism as a civilising mission, it is the 'native's' infantile 'savagery' that sent them there
Pudding Pop But if you also think about it, if Jack and his crew didn’t leave to kill the pig, the first fire wouldn’t have gone out and they would have been rescued earlier.
Everyone does have evil inside them. Even Ralph was slowly turning savage represented by the growth of his hair shielding his sight and he was slowly forgetting reasons to be saved. They just descend into savagery at slower rates
Absolutely correct, same as the other commenter said too. Ralph was attempting to cling on to civility, and thus is a symbol of it. Piggy is not supposed to be one of the boys, really, he is just a symbol for logic and rationality. All the criticisms in this video are shallow and reek of an attempt to dumb down literature through political correctness. John green is the last person who should do literature reviews, considering the intellectual depth of his book.
@Curtis Molina I believe Simon was more of a reprsentation of spirituality, when he realizes that the "Monster" wasn't some tangible entity like the other boys believed it was but rather something that was inside of all of them, he embraced the evil within and was balanced as a result and rushed to tell the others that the "monster" was not some physical entity, but sadly for Simon, his words fell on deaf ears and the first thing that dies when civilization is gone is spirituality, he too was gone at the hands of those who were blind to the true evil. So ultimately, Simon wasn't untouched by evil but rather he came to understand that evil exist but you cannot run from it, only embrace it and keep it in check, running from it only causes it to grow larger and more imposing until it takes over your mind, body and soul.
In my English class we listened to a tape of Golding and he is actually for the idea that women are even superior to men. In the specific interview we listened to he stated that he left girls out because they tend to mature quicker and the book was to be aimed at primal instinct that comes with immaturity. He thought girls in the novel would bring too much of a practical and just reason for things happening on the island.
that's pretty sexist in itself. it denies women their full humanity, denigrates men, and perpetuates the myth that growing up is somehow drastically and unbridgeably different for boys and girls.
I guess it makes sense if that is what he thought. But using that reasoning, if girls mature faster, then it is just as easy to find our more primal sides when you age us down. Or he believed that the primal nature of girls and boys is fundamentally different? Or (most likely) using a bunch of even younger girls to show the base evilness of humanity with murder and "savagery" would not sell well. It's just a weird book in my opinion.
The book is only pessimistic from the view of people who dislike it. I consider myself an optimist for reading a book with a sad message and still liking it (and liking life) :P
+Martin Vargic But the book claims that humans in our least regulated form are mostly evil. Wouldn't Marxist like that message and libertarians hate it?
My English teacher also mentioned how the 4 main characters (Ralph, Jack, Piggy, and Simon) represent different ways of governing and making decisions. Ralph governs through common sense, Jack rules with emotion, Piggy uses intellect, and Simon uses morality or spirituality. I always found that to be the most interesting part of the novel, because people always focus on how power is distributed or enforced in governments, but just as important is how the conclusions are reached.
Primitive cultures aren't too relevant to the book. The boys were from a 1940s British boarding school, which had quite a bullying culture. Primitive cultures often have strong communities to survive in harsh environments but the boys didn't have that sort of childhood. Just look at the Stanford Prison experiment to see what one person can do to another when placed in a position of power and limited societal rules.
Exactly. I've always thought that it was pretty clear that the boys' "savagery" wasn't because they were living on an island, not wearing many clothes, and eating pigs, but that they were, y'know, killing each other.
I think John didn't look at the English context of Golding's book. If Lord of the Flies was written about American children in the 50's, would it be the same?
because i don't feel like it was "savages bad/society good" or everyone is "inherently evil" and it's more like "people have the potential to do evil things, and that potential goes up depending on the environment they are in". it's almost like someone saying "1984 is about the virtues of small government and traditional family values." Reply
definitely. John asks why Ralph resists the gang. I think he misses the point that some people do lack this depravity. It's not that all people are like most of the boys, some are good inside. I know a lot of people who are like this and a lot who are like the other boys. Also, with the lack of girls, come on John, I though you wouldn't go the overtly feminist route, Golding could add girls but if I was Golding, I wouldn't because I'd have to write the boys trying to rape and torture the girls, which is just more complex than what I would want to right. And I like girls!
Joshua Trott right?! Simon is such a great character. I actually really love this book because none of its characters are completely flat - they all have at least one redeeming quality to them, or have shown a capacity for respecting and doing good. Even Jack, jerk that he is, had a certain confidence and charisma, and he originally was on board with Ralph when it came to maintaining peace and order. Even Roger was able to suppress his sadistic tendencies for a while, instead of giving into them immediately. Piggy turned out to be an ultimately "good" character, but he also had his shortcomings - he could be whiny, nagging, and even a little cowardly.
"The theme of the book is that all humans are monsters without civilisation." "Then why do Ralph and Piggy act good?" Gee, maybe that isn't the theme then John.
I would say that the characters in the book arent all meant to be individually human, but to collectively make up a human. They each represent a quality of humanity. For example, Samneric represent the weak but often innocent will of humans, and Roger is the part of humans that enjoy hurting others
"Everyone has depravity/evil in their hearts" is not how I read the novel. Like you said, if that were the message, then Ralph and Piggy would directly contradict it. Rather, I read a novel about how humans are drawn to simplicity when faced with a complex world. The book is about little boys to exacerbate this problem: it is especially hard for young people to think abstractly. The Conch democracy is confusing and abstract, and even Ralph struggles to remember the purpose of the signal fire as hope for rescue fades. Jack's society is immediate, valuing the visceral rush of chasing and killing, and it quickly dominates the island. This is comparable to Nazi Germany--life in post-WWI Germany was confusing and hopeless, so they were attracted to the simplicity of scapegoating the Jews. The boys' war paint is an unfortunate reference to "savagery," yes, but it leads to one of my favorite ideas in the book--that Jack and the boys paint their faces to free themselves from individual responsibility. This is no different from men wearing military uniforms or waving flags: when you surrender yourself to this sort of group, you can commit the worst atrocities and feel no guilt so long as the group supports you. There's more I could say, but I encourage you to reread the novel without presuming its argument. It's not trying to say "civilization is great and people suck"--rather, it attempts to explain why civilizations so often turn to genocide and war.
DISCLAIMER: Lord of the Flies is one of my favourite books. First off, a book of ideas can be good even if you disagree with the idea. Prose for example. Golding's prose isn't THAT great in LOTF, but it becomes quite good in his later books. Secondly, the most obvious thing you need to get about LotF is that it's a metaphor FOR society. Once we start feeling that resources are limited, we organize ourselve. If that organization fails, the excesses come out. People get crueler and superstitious (Jack and friends), more scared/repulsed by those who are different (Simon, who represents a messiah figure, and piggy, who represents the scientific figures), and psychopaths (which is what Roger represents, NOT all humans as this video claims) basically get free reign, like in the world wars. The breakdown of the rules STILL HAPPENS in society. It always has. Now here's the thing. Golding gives various reasons for why normal kids (or people) would resort to such evils, and those reasons aren't far-fetched at all: fear, need for resources, the sort of stuff a good society provides us with. Another misconception, I feel, is the claim that Rousseau would disagree. He would PARTLY, but the savage state (hunting and leaving outcasts) is something he said was natural. Natural isn't NON-EVIL to him. Natural transcends evil or good, those are concepts of society, concepts that Rousseau believed constrained us. Take from that what you will about Rousseau. Lastly, the "Beast" is not a metaphor for evil itself, it is a metaphor for our fear of the unknown, and ultimately of death. This fear itself can lead to evil, but doesn't have to. This is where Simon as the messiah figure comes in (typically a bit mentally unstable in the book), who sees through to the core. Evil is something inside us all, yes, but it is possible and desireable to resist it. hence why Ralph and Piggy are able to behave well.
As for the sexism stuff, LotF is a metaphor for society and at the time of Golding (and most of history), that Society has been patriarchal. It is simply descriptive. Golding also added that he himself was more familiar with how young boys act (having been a boy), and that things would become needlessly complicated by having to deal with the problem (NOT triviality) of sexual relations in the book.
John I want you to know that as someone who's heavily dyslexic I don't enjoy reading. Because of that I never really look at books in such a way that I can interpret them on several different levels. This series opened my eyes to the depths novels can reach and I cannot thank you enough for doing what you're doing
lord of the flies is meant to be a parody of coral island, and its really annoying that no one talks about it because it really does change the entire meaning. coral island was about a bunch of white british boys marooned on a desert island and they flourish and they convert the natives to christianity and its all around just a bad racist book. lord of the flies is a parody of the idea that europeans will flourish anywhere simply because they are europeans.
The book was intended to convey the darkness of a man's heart in a warlike setting, I believe. You can see this when the British warship comes to rescue the boys and he looks upon them disprovingely. It is intended to emphasize that it is the exact same situation. Substitute Germany's hyper-civilized and enlightened ideas with the boys' innocence, and you will find how Golding portrays how evil can come from unlikely places. Then on the other hand you get the 'moral' Allies (the captian of the warship coming to end the madness) that bombed civilians into dust and basically destroyed a whole enemy city a night. Given a warlike setting, it is understandable why he didn't add women. They didn't play a major part in the world wars, not where evil was concerned. Truth be told, Golding was screwed if he added women and screwed if he didn't. Truth be even more told, every book ever written could be construed as sexist in one way or another by modern feminism.
Completely agree with your point but I'd say it's unfair to state that women had a minor role during the war - they were pivotal on the Home Front despite lacking an active military role
I have time to kill so lemme add some stuff to this. +Jessica Nguyen I like your point, especially given that in the book, the females, or the female voices seem to all suffer terrible fates, with the sow killed in a horribly disturbing way and stuff. The only other mentioned female is Piggy's Aunt, whom Piggy continuously quotes (hence female voice), and see what happened to him. Also looking at WWII in Asia to compare to the Europe's, 'comfort woman' as in sex slaves should be a well known enough example. The rape/brutalizing of women of occupied places could be an example too, but it's a little more difficult to find unless you look at interviews/accounts of people who lived through WWII. With the things that Golding was trying to convey, it would be unwise to put female humans in the book, as it would inevitably become either graphic or disturbing or both. It was simply more convenient to leave females out of his story. Additionally, I believe that another reason could be that his experiences with schoolgirls are much less than with schoolboys.
I'm struggling to understand how a book with literally no female characters can be sexist. You can't say anything against the female gender if there are no female in your story. If anything the fact everything goes wrong on an island with no females, is an indication we need women to help keep things under control.
Exactly! There can be equality in value despite differences. Girls have different instincts and are overall fundamentally different from boys. It's ridiculous to say that the book is sexist just because it doesn't feature a girl. There were reasons behind why not.
@@BlueDoubleSharp I doubt a female pig was meant at all to represent human girls. Sure, I get your point, but it was a pig. Pigs' genders don't matter as much in that sense, in my opinion.
@Elsa D I don't really believe it was meant to either, I was just trying to represent the point that John made. Whether or not it is sexist, is up for debate. I'm personally withholding judgment until I can hear a good argument from both sides. For instance, the argument that was presented as to why it was, could be seen as anecdotal evidence, but we don't really have enough information to make much of a case for either side. A reason for why Golding only had boys is, as Golding said in an interview, he didn't want any sexual activity (other than the pig ritual thing), which would match the savagery of the book. Thanks for the input though, I appreciate hearing more points of view!
Ok, first of all, The Lord of the Flies is a great book, and it is not proper to judge a book written in the twentieth century according to modern conventions about sex, gender and civilization.
I would argue that it is not proper NOT to judge a book written in the twentieth century by modern conventions. After all, literature is a way to explore the differences in eras and mindsets of those who write, and so this book should be considered in both its worldview and also our current worldview.
although I love john green's analysis, this one seemed a bit too tainted with personal bias. I love lord of the flies. it's gritty realism coupled with such powerful symbolism truly sets it apart from most conventional classics. also Green fails to appreciate how this book got Golding a nobel prize
because i don't feel like it was "savages bad/society good" or everyone is "inherently evil" and it's more like "people have the potential to do evil things, and that potential goes up depending on the environment they are in". it's almost like someone saying "1984 is about the virtues of small government and traditional family values."
Actually, Ralph an Piggy do not always keep their moral values, as- I found in proprofs quizzes- "To an extent, even the seemingly civilized Ralph and Piggy are products of social conditioning, as we see when they participate in the hunt-dance" Like if you approve!
I read it this year, and I liked it (although now that you point these things out I agree). My favorite part is that at the beginning Jack legitimately thinks being able to sing C# makes him a qualified leader.
A man who apparently hates the English reviewing a book mostly taught in English class written by an Englishman? John let the hate flow through him for this one.
@Mr. SodaCow That's most of John Green's videos I find. He needs to stop having a bias I'm his crash course videos because other than him inserting his beliefs and own personal ideas into it the videos can be quite educational.
I just reported this video as being biased to the max. This guy is dangerous if he's teaching kids out there. He's not teaching them how to think but what to think. Wow, he's very creepy.
@@okmelancholico omg calm down, he's not brainwashing people. The first half of the video was the plot and the themes and the type of book it was, the last half of the book was opinions and he has opinions on all his book reviews
Humans are inherently biased an objective analysis of the book would be lord of the flies is a book in which there are male children and two or three kids die, Simon is murdered by his friends and piggy is killed by rocks, there is a fire that might have killed another one but he was not given a name, a choir boy becomes the leader of a tribe of the boys who don't attempt to escape and the book ends when they burn the entire island and chase a boy named Ralph until a person from the navy picks them up
+U1TR4F0RCE an objective in-depth literary analysis can be archieved. What you did is just a plot summary, the same thing wikipedia does. Yes, we are all biased, but I think that when you study a work of art you must look beyond your personal perspective, and even more when you are trying to teach it.
both ... sort of. the 'umbrella' reason as to why it's called a sexist novel is because of its lack of female characters (aside from the pig) and everything under the umbrella is what you said 'because boys are portrayed as evil'. it's sexist in the sense that the book makes you think that you can summarize all of humanity and strip it down to what it''s really made of by using teenage boys. the problem with that is that you can't summarize anything without thinking about everything that is present in humanity: socialization, the development of communities and of course, females. boys being portrayed as evil in the novel is Golding's attempt to say that 'because i have these boys doing evil things, assume all humans are like that because boys are'. essentially, using boys as a baseline for describing all of humanity is what makes it sexist because it assumes that men are the 'default' gender in our world, which is simply not the case.
Both but more the first thing; John also notes that the novel sidesteps the question of whether girls would be more civilized in this case or if they would be as equally depraved.
The scene where Simon confronts the Lord of the Flies is probably one of my favorites in all of literature. "I'm the reason. I'm the reason why nothing can ever work. You cannot run from me. You'll find me down on the beach, for I am inside of you." Paraphrasing here but you get the idea. It's so powerful.
Ok, wheres the informational facts that I depend on? This is very opinionated, and not very objective. "Wars end", do they really, or they just name themselves differently?
He should review what books he wants, liked or disliked. People need to realize it's an opinion and not get so easily hurt by the fact that he didn't really like the book
@@grumpymonk2573 I dont really agree with you. I mean, this series isn't called "opinions," it's called "crash course." It is meant to give an accurate description. Sure, feel free to add a little bit of personal commentary, but the main purpose should be to inform, not persuade.
I really, really disagree with you on this book. I'm a feminist, a psychologist, and a human, and this is one of my favourite books. I knew you dislike it, so I was really looking forward to hearing you talk about it and I'm astonished how different your interpretation is from the way I experienced the book. Psychologically, I find it realistic (I mean, the Stanford Prison experiment had a LOT of issues, many of them methodological, but it nevertheless shows us what humans can be like, particularly when hierarchies are introduced). From a feminist standpoint, I think it does a great job at criticising our way of constructing masculinity, its relationship to power, and its harmful effects. And it does a great job at illustrating how fragile peace and "civilization" are - I use quotation marks because to me, this does not mean Western civilization (as opposed to "savages" such as hunter gatherers), but just... civilization INCLUDING hunter gatherer societies. It shows how easy ANY type of civilization can break and lead to destruction and chaos, but not necessarily because of "nature" (after all, the island was peaceful before those kids arrived), but because of the dark side of our culture such as hunger for power or unhealthy gender roles. I'm not saying that this is how Golding intended his book to be read, but that is how I interpreted it and why I like it so much.
I have found that the gap between the likes and dislikes of this book comes down to people who've read the book and people who haven't actually read the book and have just based their opinion on TH-cam comments and John Green's opinion on it.
The BBC prison study somewhat undermined the results of the Stanford prison experiments. I'm merely saying this as a point of interest, not a criticism.
Seth Apex I just hate the plot of every one of her books. Their all about some ungodly magnificent person who feels that everyone around him is weighing him down and how he shames those people from keeping his magnifiscent work away from the world. God, its so pretentious and condescending, and what annoys me the most is that they encourage selfishness. Also Rand is a prick
He call pessimism what he doesn't know about war. I think that after a war you would have a better understanding of humanity than through a 1000 good novels.
But after war it's possible that you would only understand human nature through war. This then leads to questions of Whether the truth of human nature is better revealed in times of war or in times of peace.
99thTuesday In time of peace, in western countries, at least half of the population still thinks and acts as if it is in dire need of basic resources. Their fears, lack of empathy and sense of community is dramatically close to living in a jungle. Our "peace time" is a product of our mind. We don't perceive as ours the struggle of people far or different from us. But nonetheless others are, in this very moment, paying the price around the world of our cheap gas, food and resources. Don't forget that.
Human nature leads to wars though. Our primal instincts of survival are savage. Many prisoners of war resorted to eating their comrades merely to stay alive.
the thing is, human nature doesn't create war, civilization does. War and other types of fighting always come about due to perceived differences, the idea of upholding what is you versus the other. A human alone, with no reason will not think of murdering the next person they meet, or even creating conflict with them. Human's have a natural inclination toward's reasoning with people, it's one of the few things humans can do that no one else can. The first inclination of humans is to create civilization in some form, or said more precisely, some form of order or organization. It's then through these perceived differences with other people that they deem War necessary. The average human recoils from violence and must be pushed to commit acts of agression
I completely agree with John on this. I don't understand how Golding even tried on convincing his readers that the entirety of civilisation is evil if half of the people that make up human civilisation are not even present in the novel? Also, we are reading this novel in class, and our teacher really imposes the idea on us that this book is about the inherently evil nature of humans when they are not restricted by any superficial rules set by society. But if that is so, how did civilisation come into being? Who even invented civilised society and behaviour? There had to be people who had this 'inherent good' within themselves, and therefore started imposing laws so that we could live in peace and stability, which was not possible in an environment which contained death in literally every coming corner. The isolation and the threat that the boys suffered on the island, according to me, allowed their savage temperaments to take action. It was not because humans are inherently evil, it is because we needed to be savage in order to survive ten thousand years ago.
these are the books they are doing Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain Sonnets - William Shakespeare (Particularly sonnets 18, 116, & 130) Lord of the Flies - William Golding Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison 100 Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez Sula - Toni Morrison
I find that the analysis of this novel as an exploration of the toxicity of a particular type of masculinity is the most compelling interpretation, even if the author had no idea that he was doing so. He thought he was writing about the inherent evil that lives in all men, but he failed to recognize that this evil is A) not inherent but rather learned, B) not in all men (even within the context of the novel as John points out) and C) essentially exclusive to men. To be clear, evil may lay in the heart of all persons, but this particular type of evil is decidedly masculine. Golding's mistake (as is all too common) is to assume that his experience as a white man is the default experience of all humanity. This is probably why he thought that including any female characters would have been a complicating factor rather than, you know, as essential part of humanity. Their femininity would have gotten in the of the way of his analysis of humanity, which is another way of saying that he doesn't consider femininity a part of humanity, or that his analysis is not of humanity but of masculinity.
This is hilarious. How absolutely deluded. Enjoy living in your own privileged middle class bubble. Maybe when you start working and enter the real world you'll learn a thing or two. Even as just a cashier I can wholeheartedly say you're wrong as Women love taking advantage of and abusing the female cashiers that work with me. Sociology 101 isn't too useful in real world interactions.
I absolutely loved Lord of the Flies, and watching this video helped me realize that it was because I also felt like the novel had a different message than what Golding intended. The way I see it, the novel shows that there are inherently good people as well as inherently bad people, but without the confines of order, the bad will always overwhelm the good. It's pretty easily applicable to the world today.
Dude, sometimes, a pig is just a pig. Maybe the author refrained from having girls in the book exactly to avoid people such as yourself from trying to make sexist parallels.
It isn't sexist because there's a female character in the story, it's being interpreted as sexist by John because of the way that female character was treated in the story. And yes while the boys were tortured and suffered as well, their torture wasn't sexualized, and no statement on sex was made with it. With the female pig's death she was spear raped to death, I mean c'mon now. I'm not even saying that the scene was sexist, but it is *clearly* obvious that the author was making a specific point in that scene regarding women, and to deny it is just dishonest.
Diana, the Inorganic Vegan What are you even referring to? I think you mean Vlad, but then why are you mentioning an author? I don't think this is a matter of over-thinking, I think you're just in denial.
+Diana, the Inorganic Vegan You're bad at arguing, do it less. The vlad comparison is off due to the fact that you misunderstand the other person's original point: the killing of the pig wasn't "sexist", it was "sexualized". Comprehension is key.
Personally, I appreciated his analysis. Honestly, classic literature is very hard to interpret the same by every person. Everyone perceives books and their messages differently, and that’s why I love these discussions. Lord of the Flies is one of the most argued over books because it has so many different themes and messages that are perceived differently by different people. Thank you for bringing this video and your perspective to the table John. :)
There are no women in it because it's a British public (private) school in the UK in the 1950s. Do your research, John. And what exactly is wrong about the Hobbesian vision? Human beings do have a dark part of the human soul that makes them enjoy conflict on some level. You also have a very simplistic reading of it.
Because people keep asking these are the books they are doing Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain Sonnets - William Shakespeare (Particularly sonnets 18, 116, & 130) Lord of the Flies - William Golding Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison 100 Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez Sula - Toni Morrison
Mario Papetti hit "read more"... it's the list for this season. It is pretty clear. ... Not sure how can't read and are watching a video about literature
I always thought that there were no girls because they were from an all boys school and travelling together. Male/female segregation in schools was fairly common. I never thought that part of the story odd at all...
Metabeard that makes sense but again why would a boarding school send it’s students away without talking to the parents? Like surely sending away the children would be something the parents would be a choice the parents want to be involved in . But it could have been a portion of the student population and that wasn’t a detail that was relevant to the story .
I missed you Mr Green. i took it for granted that i always saw you on crash course, and now i see new people. If you're stepping down and passing the tourch just know that i truly appreciate your sessions
Behind the certain flaws of this book, I do appreciate the multitudes of grim symbolism. Whether it be the pig head on the stake, the conch, the beast, or adults fighting their war; there is always some aspect that does apply to the dark side of our human nature.
Idk if anyone else noticed it or not but the world war 2 video clip at 1:46 the guy gets shot in the knee mid sprint. The timing of that shot is incredible if it wasn’t a stray bullet.
I don’t think that either civilization or human nature is evil. To believe that civilization or human nature is solely evil or moralizing presents us with a false dichotomy. Rather, I believe that all of us are inherently flawed. Our flaws are reflected in the ways that societies are structured. Whether we remove ourselves from civilization or not, we will bear witness to similar evils. However, there is good in us as well. Attempting to ignore our multi-faceted nature means depriving ourselves of truly understanding who we are and what we are capable of.
How is calling "spear throwing face painted people" backward problematic? Even in Golding's time, if a society were throwing spears instead of shooting guns, they were already far, FAR away from modernity. It's not a race issue either; many African, American, and South Asian societies had great cities and empires just like Europe did and adopted the most modern technology of their times. Saying that technologically primitive societies are backward is not wrong; saying technologically primitive societies are worse than modern ones, I'd argue, is also not wrong.
Shankar Sivarajan Ah. I mean that might be a problem if a society's morals weren't one of the least important determining factors to its survival and ability to thrive.
Martin Vargic Were Pakistani and Indian immigrants in Britain in substantial numbers in the 40s? I honestly don't know. If they were, then it would have been interesting to see how Golding would handle that on the island.
Cultural relativism. Defining or even trying to understand another culture by comparing it to what you personally believe as "right or wrong" is an inherently flawed concept. Applying the mores and values of one culture will more than likely never give you the ability to properly understand another.
jmvsic Not really sure why you would think that its misguided to understand another culture through the only lens you have to examine it. Not only that but one can reason why a certain cultural aspect is good or bad regardless of which culture is observing which.
Don't you have anything better to do than troll youtube comments unconvincingly pretending to be an absurdly extremist SJW? You're embarrassing yourself.
I don't think John this is why he hates the book. For starters, John-Green-from-the-past also hates the book, and he's not exactly a feminist, he's the kinda guy who pretends to have a girlfriend to be cool (Crash Course US History #3) and spends his class time trying to woo girls (Crash Course World History #4). John explains that he doesn't like the overarching idea of evil in the book, and also he shows how he isn't a fan of the symbolism which he feels is extreme. He has praised works before like The Odyssey or Huckleberry Finn for which he addressed the sexist and racist criticism, but also he had well articulated points and recognized the social context of when the works were done. Like several people I feel he hasn't done the same kind of work in this video, and he could have. His arguments here come off as unusually simple and harsh considering how he hasn't judged other books so hard. Barely any women in Huckleberry Finn and that's alright because he loves Mark Twain. No women in Lord of the Flies and it's muh sexism because he hates the book. I think could have been done better here, but I respect him and the Crash Course team a lot because I have nothing bad to say about all the other videos.
Hmm, very good video imo John, despite you not liking the book. You gave it a thorough review and did your best to rationally explain why you dislike the book.
Golding also said that he only wrote about boys because 1. he has never been a girl 2. a mother and 3. a grandmother, he is not being sexist he is just going based on what he knows, he has been a boy, a father and a grandfather
then by his own logic (not knowing what is like to be the opposite sex, and therefore not knowing what it is like to be all of humanity) he should not be able to comment on all of humanity.
While the book is greatly exaggerated, it isn't like we haven't seen similar effects. See: Stanford Prison Experiment. We're not necessarily built for 'evil', but we sure do like it.
Lord of the flies it's society, even you actually are the voice of reason... The larger dumber and(usually) stronger and more violent side will still crush you like a bug. So you'd better be able to let your murderous side out when they do.
I was really hoping this video was going to come out before my LOTF English Lit exam. That exam was around 2 months ago but thank you anyway Johnathan.
Okay, this video is biased on so many levels. And trust me it's not sexist, Golding felt that women were superior to men and his mom was a Women's Suffrage activist.
I like how Crash Course included discussion on many of the allegories presented in the novel; however, it would be super helpful if you guys also included something on Freudian allegory!
Thank you Mr. Green! I just took a job teaching English in an international school in Myanmar, and I have to teach this novel! One that I have avoided for all of my twenty year career! This helped a lot to give me perspective on how to approach it. Also, lots of kids here have read your novels, so they may listen to you....
It is obvious this is an important book to you, if differing opinions lose your respect. (You have a right to determine that, I'm not saying you don't). I should read Lord of the Flies...it gets people worked up.
If his negative opinion of a book makes you lose much of your respect for him, then you clearly did not have much respect to begin with so it's nit a big loss to either of you. It's like if I dislike someone for not liking Harry Potter, then I must not have liked that person at all in the first place
This is one of my favorite books ever, a book about the fundamentals of societal influence and the stability of civilization ruled by oligarchy? Sign me in!
I think Lord of The Flies is a great example of how death of the author can save a story. In the book itself, it clearly shows people can maintain their goodness even despite savagery abounding around them, even to the extent of giving their lives for it. That while people are corruptible, they don't have to be inherently evil. Unfortunately, the author himself felt quite the opposite.
I wouldn't say it is entirely false; but it isn't entirely true either. I don't believe all people are good, but I certainly don't believe all people are inherently evil.
"He uses a lot of images he deems as savage such as spears and face paint." I understand how face paint may be savage but spears? That I disagree with. How else are that supposed to hunt for meat? Most of the boys on the island could barely tie their shoes let alone build sophisticated traps. They couldn't avoid hunting either because the fruit they had was giving them stomach issues.
I think whether or not Lord of the Flies is sexist depends on what you are reading it for. If you're reading it as just a story, a fictional story about fictional characters in a fictional world, then no, it's not sexist. You say how everything is justified in the narrative. The spears make sense and the face paint makes sense bcause they've probably read about the savage warriors outside. But if you're saying that this fictional story is how people are in real life, that's where you get problems because the face paint and spears, the choice to use that kind of "tribal savage" imagry that you'd see in racist mock ups during the hieght of colonialism, that isn't the boys choice. They didn't choose anything because they can't make choices, they are fictional. The person who chose that was Golding. If you think this is how humans act, then you could interpret this to mean that humans will go into this state of spears and face paint, which is how racist Europeans would depict people from outside of Europe while Golding was growing up. And that was not accurate. In terms of gender, William Golding made the choice for the novel to have no women, and to have the closest thing reperesenting a woman to be a pig killed in a highly sexualized ritual. Do I think that william Golding was trying to say that women are just there for sex and providing for us in the real word? Well, I don't think so. But it is relevent, if you're trying to say that this novel is a depiction of how humans are. And that view comes down to you really. Do I choose to see it as sexist? Not really. I see the novel as a book about power fantasy which is just my interpretation. You have the right to interpret the book how you want to.
This book is more accurately read as an exposition of the worldview that forms in untreated trauma victims' minds (i.e. the author) than anything about human nature. Trauma shatters our expectations of the goodness of human beings, and because it is so overwhelming, it affects the sense of reality of people who endure it. Until the trauma is sequenced/processed, that feeling of shock is globalized to the entire world and nature itself. This is how the brain tries to help you survive in the future, by mistakenly globalizing your specific traumatic experience to "reality", so you can be always on alert and prepared for it to happen again. Obviously that reality is skewed because it is based on the worst things that can happen rather than a balanced view of the totality of human experience.
I absolutely love this book. We studied it at school when I was 12, along with The Coral Island, and LotF has stuck with me ever since. I just love it. Coral Island, however...well, I never want to see it again, put it that way!
Interesting, actually. I'm 13 and I read it a couple months back. When I'm older I'll definitely give it another read to see how my view of the book changes.
Can we put 20 british 7-8 year old school kids on a tropical island and just settle this argument? I can kick in $20.
spacecadet28 the time the novel was set played a key role in the boys behaviour. They were brought up in a society full of war and violence
if they're a bunch of posho boarding school kids like in the book it'd probably be kinder because it would save them from the the routine noncing that goes on in those places
they would die soon before getting "evil"
oof ill kick in $200
6-12
William Golding gave an interview where he cited two main reasons for not including women in this book. He said that he was more acquainted with the behavior of little boys, since he himself had only a brother. Additionally, he claimed that he did not want sexual activity, an innate component of savagery, to be included in this book because it would complicate the dynamics of the island.
Why couldn't women be included without sexual activity? And sexual activity is not limited to interactions between men and women. Besides, these are children we are talking about. Sexual activity is an excuse.
Red Potter it makes sense to not include girls imo
Your right, they already were murdering pigs in a cult like manner and trying to kill other little boys.
I completely agree with his decision - it would have distracted from the main focus of the book in a massive way if gender relationships were in there. The topic of sexual attraction and boy-girl differences (in physical, mental and social development) would have to be dealt with, and it'd suddenly become a book about sexes, not about society and the individual. That said, I would still love to see a version of the story with a mixed boy and girl group. :) It would be longer, and boy is this a bad time for it because people would attack it for how it portrays genders regardless of how it does it (and boy would they hate it today if it tried to be faithful to reality, and even more so if by some impossible chance it was faithful to the time period), but it would add a lot of interesting stuff to see.
Red Potter how realistic would that be? Someone would get raped and even if it were consensual they were underaged.
My wife is a teacher of first and second graders and she claims that she can't leave the room for three minutes because the children would literaly kill eachother.
Not because they are evil or bad, just because they are careless.
Manuel Arellano that’s hilarious
I think I've figured out why this analysis doesn't hold up for me - but at the same time, I've realized why the book doesn't hold up for John, either. In focusing too much on the Beast/Lord/Pig Head Kebab and its almost comically grotesque rendition of The Evil(tm) that lurks in the heart of Man, he sees Golding as trying to portray a 'true image' of human darkness, which is obviously wretched in every perceivable way. But the subtle genius of the book for me is how it shows the real evil as plain, basic, and even boring: contrary to what John says here, Piggy is so obsessed with rational purity, he denies taking part in the murder of Simon, denies it is a murder at all, and blames the victim for his own death, all in the same scene. And the allusions to wartime strategy seen in the hypocritical adoption of face/body paint - an act of savagery when done by the Other, but purely pragmatic when used for one's own (ie. the Allied Forces') agenda. The Beast is a bogeyman, not the actual symbolic representation of human evil. It's the "Other", a desperate construction which we project all manner of evil qualities upon, yet fail to recognize in ourselves, because it's just so mundane when we do it.
How can you talk about this book in the context of WWII without discussing the various other lessons that have emerged from that same war? The Nuremberg defense. Arendt's concept of the Banality of Evil. The Stanford Prison Experiment. The Milgram Experiment. Holocaust denial. One of the most lasting cultural legacies of the Holocaust/WWII in general is the way in which it fundamentally and irreparably dented the concept of default human goodness, by demonstrating how unsettlingly EASY it is to commit evil, once the context around it has been normalized. The ending of this video seemed shockingly tone deaf: "but the war did end". Dude, seriously, c'mon. It didn't end by everyone coming to their senses, announcing a ceasefire based on mutual trust, and drafting out peace treaties based on the highest ethical standards at the time. It ended as it began: by normalized force. THAT is the point of Lord of the Flies - evil doesn't look like the Beast. It looks like normal life - until it a stranger comes by and asks you why you thought it was a good idea to set your own island on fire, or drop an atom bomb on a city, and then it doesn't. If you wanna get Freudian about it, the moment your superego starts vindicating the worst parts of your id, there's no stopping the ego from rationalizing some terrible, terrible things.
But at the same time, I can understand why this book flops for some people. It's very hit-or-miss, IMO. You have to be pre-sold on the premise that evil is easy, and easy to escalate - once you do, all the rich subtleties fall into place. If you don't, the allegory seems like kitschy hyperbole. But to that I say: the Nuremberg defense, the Stanford Prison trials and the Milgram experiment all seem kitchy and hyperbolic in concept, too. And yet they bore some genuine, awful fruit.
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The problem with LoTF is that all the psychological factors you list are show to only apply in the context of violence -> i.e. that violence can beget more violence and encourage others to violence but the reverse is not true - Ralph and Piggy's pleas/arguments do not make those "just following orders" question their orders nor can they rally any kind of counter movement to Jack's gang.
I much prefer the "3%"'s version.
Isolation and a food shortage lead to a rich entitled boy forming a gang which terrorize and steal the food from all the other kids. But as soon as the other kids realize what is going on some of them band together and build a defenses to prevent the gang from stealing their food.
Eventually it all ends when a kid who has escaped the isolation & has been watching it all go down from safety returns and rallies the terrorized kids into fighting back who then in a fit of mob justice murder the bullies.
Thats pretty deep
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This is really great analysis!
"A man's true nature is revealed when he knows he will never be caught"
This is it. I think too much is being made here about absolutes, but I never interpreted it that way - only that it's possible, and likely, for us to degenerate into savagery when there are no consequences and when we lack maturity and behave as children. That this descent happens "too quickly" is not a very valid criticism. It's 12 chapters, how long do you want Golding to take to make his point? I think Greene maybe knows too much about Golding's history and reads too much into it? Going in without that information, the novel worked for me.
I think that Golding's message was pretty spot on with the theme. One of John's criticisms with this book is that Golding contradicts himself with the theme that all humans are inherently evil because of Ralph and Piggy. That they do not take part of the violent acts. But they do take part in the violence when they kill Simon. Ralph and Piggy have evil within them just like the rest of the boys but are better at fighting off their evil tendencies then Jack and the others. But ultimately cave in to their evil desires when they kill Simon.
I'd say that wasn't them caving into desires but rather mob rule and fear of being cast out and potentially murdered... still doesn't really make them not evil though.
Piggy was worse than evil. He was useless.
yeah but what about Simon? He doesn't seem to have an innate evil like Golding says
He was the literary Christ figure.
Yeah, that makes sense. When they killed Simon, it was to make a point that they are fighting the evil within, but they did fail to possible fear and the natural wickedness. They were later aware of their actions and what they've become instead of Jack and his tribe, who only figured that out in the end.
The man at the end didn't just show up at random...all of the children were trying to kill Ralph so Ralph hid...once the children found him they set fire to a bushel Ralph was hiding in to smoke him out and in doing so set the whole island on fire which resulted in a huge smoke signal which drew the ship in to investigate. So in a weird way them being murderous savages is what got them saved.
An allusion to colonialism maybe? Because, the British, and other colonial powers, justified colonialism as a civilising mission, it is the 'native's' infantile 'savagery' that sent them there
"saved" aka getting plunged back into nuclear war that caused a bunch of kids to kill each other.
Pudding Pop But if you also think about it, if Jack and his crew didn’t leave to kill the pig, the first fire wouldn’t have gone out and they would have been rescued earlier.
Pudding Pop: you sound little as if it was ok to do bad things because you can never know if not maybe something good comes out of it.
I don't feel like Pudding Pop is justifying violence, just wants to clarify the ending for the people who thought that the rescue was deus ex machina
Everyone does have evil inside them. Even Ralph was slowly turning savage represented by the growth of his hair shielding his sight and he was slowly forgetting reasons to be saved. They just descend into savagery at slower rates
Absolutely correct, same as the other commenter said too. Ralph was attempting to cling on to civility, and thus is a symbol of it. Piggy is not supposed to be one of the boys, really, he is just a symbol for logic and rationality. All the criticisms in this video are shallow and reek of an attempt to dumb down literature through political correctness. John green is the last person who should do literature reviews, considering the intellectual depth of his book.
Simon was innocent
Thank you! Finally someone said the words that were trying to leave my mouth.
@Curtis Molina I believe Simon was more of a reprsentation of spirituality, when he realizes that the "Monster" wasn't some tangible entity like the other boys believed it was but rather something that was inside of all of them, he embraced the evil within and was balanced as a result and rushed to tell the others that the "monster" was not some physical entity, but sadly for Simon, his words fell on deaf ears and the first thing that dies when civilization is gone is spirituality, he too was gone at the hands of those who were blind to the true evil. So ultimately, Simon wasn't untouched by evil but rather he came to understand that evil exist but you cannot run from it, only embrace it and keep it in check, running from it only causes it to grow larger and more imposing until it takes over your mind, body and soul.
In my English class we listened to a tape of Golding and he is actually for the idea that women are even superior to men. In the specific interview we listened to he stated that he left girls out because they tend to mature quicker and the book was to be aimed at primal instinct that comes with immaturity. He thought girls in the novel would bring too much of a practical and just reason for things happening on the island.
Rena Jensen makes sense. Also why he made all the boys prepubescent
that's pretty sexist in itself. it denies women their full humanity, denigrates men, and perpetuates the myth that growing up is somehow drastically and unbridgeably different for boys and girls.
I guess it makes sense if that is what he thought. But using that reasoning, if girls mature faster, then it is just as easy to find our more primal sides when you age us down. Or he believed that the primal nature of girls and boys is fundamentally different? Or (most likely) using a bunch of even younger girls to show the base evilness of humanity with murder and "savagery" would not sell well. It's just a weird book in my opinion.
He could have made some of the littuns girls so that they would have been as mature as the biguns, (considering his way of thinking).
affirmative action is like getting mad at KFC for selling only chicken
If they are making a female version of lord of the flies does that mean piggy is now mrs.piggy?
Only if Piggy is married. Ms. Piggy is what I'm guessing you meant.
😂
Pigglety
Best reply in the entire comment section
They could do it as revamp for you know.... equality
I've found that optimists tend to hate Lord of the Flies, and cynics tend to like it.
+Martin Vargic Shouldn't it be the other way around?
Cynic and while not Marxist I do think the idea of trusting the free market to be about as smart as self immolation
So true haha. Where do realists fit in though? Guess they died along with Puggy
The book is only pessimistic from the view of people who dislike it.
I consider myself an optimist for reading a book with a sad message and still liking it (and liking life) :P
+Martin Vargic But the book claims that humans in our least regulated form are mostly evil. Wouldn't Marxist like that message and libertarians hate it?
My English teacher also mentioned how the 4 main characters (Ralph, Jack, Piggy, and Simon) represent different ways of governing and making decisions. Ralph governs through common sense, Jack rules with emotion, Piggy uses intellect, and Simon uses morality or spirituality. I always found that to be the most interesting part of the novel, because people always focus on how power is distributed or enforced in governments, but just as important is how the conclusions are reached.
am I like the only one who likes this book?
yeah
Brady otter nooo
Nope. I love it for some reason....
Brady otter nah fam, I liked it
No
Primitive cultures aren't too relevant to the book. The boys were from a 1940s British boarding school, which had quite a bullying culture. Primitive cultures often have strong communities to survive in harsh environments but the boys didn't have that sort of childhood. Just look at the Stanford Prison experiment to see what one person can do to another when placed in a position of power and limited societal rules.
Exactly. I've always thought that it was pretty clear that the boys' "savagery" wasn't because they were living on an island, not wearing many clothes, and eating pigs, but that they were, y'know, killing each other.
Stanford prison experiment wasn’t accurate, they encouraged the people to be abusive so that they could make humanity seem worse than it actually is.
I think John didn't look at the English context of Golding's book. If Lord of the Flies was written about American children in the 50's, would it be the same?
This felt like an opinion piece not a in depth look.
Agree :/
Yeah :/ disappointed with John on this
Yah lord of the flies is a great book and discussing it in school with my class was a great memory
Any analysis of art is subjective
I mean everyone is gonna interpret it differently?
honestly, usually I agree with John on most things, but I really feel like he is misinterpreting soooo much of this.
Explain...
agreed
because i don't feel like it was "savages bad/society good" or everyone is "inherently evil" and it's more like "people have the potential to do evil things, and that potential goes up depending on the environment they are in".
it's almost like someone saying "1984 is about the virtues of small government and traditional family values."
Reply
"I don't think its being sexist to exclude women from the book."
he's just trying to setup a way to have a bunch of young people on a deserted island.
definitely. John asks why Ralph resists the gang. I think he misses the point that some people do lack this depravity. It's not that all people are like most of the boys, some are good inside. I know a lot of people who are like this and a lot who are like the other boys.
Also, with the lack of girls, come on John, I though you wouldn't go the overtly feminist route, Golding could add girls but if I was Golding, I wouldn't because I'd have to write the boys trying to rape and torture the girls, which is just more complex than what I would want to right. And I like girls!
John Green, you've given Simon no love!
Joshua Trott right?! Simon is such a great character. I actually really love this book because none of its characters are completely flat - they all have at least one redeeming quality to them, or have shown a capacity for respecting and doing good. Even Jack, jerk that he is, had a certain confidence and charisma, and he originally was on board with Ralph when it came to maintaining peace and order. Even Roger was able to suppress his sadistic tendencies for a while, instead of giving into them immediately. Piggy turned out to be an ultimately "good" character, but he also had his shortcomings - he could be whiny, nagging, and even a little cowardly.
Jesus jr
"The theme of the book is that all humans are monsters without civilisation."
"Then why do Ralph and Piggy act good?"
Gee, maybe that isn't the theme then John.
oldtemberfury they act good but they still show violence, ralph even joined in on killing simon
They act good because they are symbols for civilization. They kill Piggy and hunt Ralph because they are rejecting civilization.
As someone else mentioned, they just descend into primitiveness slower
I would say that the characters in the book arent all meant to be individually human, but to collectively make up a human. They each represent a quality of humanity. For example, Samneric represent the weak but often innocent will of humans, and Roger is the part of humans that enjoy hurting others
Why is this video in the Education category? I feels more like an opinion piece.
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T. H. Caro agreed. Though, in this sense it seems to be a literary analysis.
The last few minutes were opinion, but the majority of it was the author's biography and the themes of the novel.
People are educated largely from the opinions of others...
@@5celery What is?
"Everyone has depravity/evil in their hearts" is not how I read the novel. Like you said, if that were the message, then Ralph and Piggy would directly contradict it. Rather, I read a novel about how humans are drawn to simplicity when faced with a complex world.
The book is about little boys to exacerbate this problem: it is especially hard for young people to think abstractly. The Conch democracy is confusing and abstract, and even Ralph struggles to remember the purpose of the signal fire as hope for rescue fades. Jack's society is immediate, valuing the visceral rush of chasing and killing, and it quickly dominates the island. This is comparable to Nazi Germany--life in post-WWI Germany was confusing and hopeless, so they were attracted to the simplicity of scapegoating the Jews.
The boys' war paint is an unfortunate reference to "savagery," yes, but it leads to one of my favorite ideas in the book--that Jack and the boys paint their faces to free themselves from individual responsibility. This is no different from men wearing military uniforms or waving flags: when you surrender yourself to this sort of group, you can commit the worst atrocities and feel no guilt so long as the group supports you.
There's more I could say, but I encourage you to reread the novel without presuming its argument. It's not trying to say "civilization is great and people suck"--rather, it attempts to explain why civilizations so often turn to genocide and war.
Lord of the flies is one of the best books I have read. Really enjoyed it
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This was the first book I really liked and it got me into reading
I made my first science video on my channel!
+ I am a nihilist & I love it too
DISCLAIMER: Lord of the Flies is one of my favourite books.
First off, a book of ideas can be good even if you disagree with the idea. Prose for example. Golding's prose isn't THAT great in LOTF, but it becomes quite good in his later books.
Secondly, the most obvious thing you need to get about LotF is that it's a metaphor FOR society. Once we start feeling that resources are limited, we organize ourselve. If that organization fails, the excesses come out. People get crueler and superstitious (Jack and friends), more scared/repulsed by those who are different (Simon, who represents a messiah figure, and piggy, who represents the scientific figures), and psychopaths (which is what Roger represents, NOT all humans as this video claims) basically get free reign, like in the world wars. The breakdown of the rules STILL HAPPENS in society. It always has.
Now here's the thing. Golding gives various reasons for why normal kids (or people) would resort to such evils, and those reasons aren't far-fetched at all: fear, need for resources, the sort of stuff a good society provides us with.
Another misconception, I feel, is the claim that Rousseau would disagree. He would PARTLY, but the savage state (hunting and leaving outcasts) is something he said was natural. Natural isn't NON-EVIL to him. Natural transcends evil or good, those are concepts of society, concepts that Rousseau believed constrained us. Take from that what you will about Rousseau.
Lastly, the "Beast" is not a metaphor for evil itself, it is a metaphor for our fear of the unknown, and ultimately of death. This fear itself can lead to evil, but doesn't have to. This is where Simon as the messiah figure comes in (typically a bit mentally unstable in the book), who sees through to the core. Evil is something inside us all, yes, but it is possible and desireable to resist it. hence why Ralph and Piggy are able to behave well.
As for the sexism stuff, LotF is a metaphor for society and at the time of Golding (and most of history), that Society has been patriarchal. It is simply descriptive. Golding also added that he himself was more familiar with how young boys act (having been a boy), and that things would become needlessly complicated by having to deal with the problem (NOT triviality) of sexual relations in the book.
divinesleeper Dude your analysis is amazing omg
John I want you to know that as someone who's heavily dyslexic I don't enjoy reading. Because of that I never really look at books in such a way that I can interpret them on several different levels. This series opened my eyes to the depths novels can reach and I cannot thank you enough for doing what you're doing
lord of the flies is meant to be a parody of coral island, and its really annoying that no one talks about it because it really does change the entire meaning. coral island was about a bunch of white british boys marooned on a desert island and they flourish and they convert the natives to christianity and its all around just a bad racist book. lord of the flies is a parody of the idea that europeans will flourish anywhere simply because they are europeans.
The book was intended to convey the darkness of a man's heart in a warlike setting, I believe. You can see this when the British warship comes to rescue the boys and he looks upon them disprovingely. It is intended to emphasize that it is the exact same situation. Substitute Germany's hyper-civilized and enlightened ideas with the boys' innocence, and you will find how Golding portrays how evil can come from unlikely places. Then on the other hand you get the 'moral' Allies (the captian of the warship coming to end the madness) that bombed civilians into dust and basically destroyed a whole enemy city a night.
Given a warlike setting, it is understandable why he didn't add women. They didn't play a major part in the world wars, not where evil was concerned. Truth be told, Golding was screwed if he added women and screwed if he didn't. Truth be even more told, every book ever written could be construed as sexist in one way or another by modern feminism.
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A+
Completely agree with your point but I'd say it's unfair to state that women had a minor role during the war - they were pivotal on the Home Front despite lacking an active military role
+Brayney 26 "not where evil was concerned."
I have time to kill so lemme add some stuff to this.
+Jessica Nguyen
I like your point, especially given that in the book, the females, or the female voices seem to all suffer terrible fates, with the sow killed in a horribly disturbing way and stuff. The only other mentioned female is Piggy's Aunt, whom Piggy continuously quotes (hence female voice), and see what happened to him.
Also looking at WWII in Asia to compare to the Europe's, 'comfort woman' as in sex slaves should be a well known enough example. The rape/brutalizing of women of occupied places could be an example too, but it's a little more difficult to find unless you look at interviews/accounts of people who lived through WWII.
With the things that Golding was trying to convey, it would be unwise to put female humans in the book, as it would inevitably become either graphic or disturbing or both. It was simply more convenient to leave females out of his story. Additionally, I believe that another reason could be that his experiences with schoolgirls are much less than with schoolboys.
He lost me when he said the book is sexist.
I'm struggling to understand how a book with literally no female characters can be sexist. You can't say anything against the female gender if there are no female in your story. If anything the fact everything goes wrong on an island with no females, is an indication we need women to help keep things under control.
@Buc Reviewer I believe his main point was how the only female character within the book was a pig who was slaughtered in a rather sexual way
Exactly! There can be equality in value despite differences. Girls have different instincts and are overall fundamentally different from boys. It's ridiculous to say that the book is sexist just because it doesn't feature a girl. There were reasons behind why not.
@@BlueDoubleSharp I doubt a female pig was meant at all to represent human girls. Sure, I get your point, but it was a pig. Pigs' genders don't matter as much in that sense, in my opinion.
@Elsa D I don't really believe it was meant to either, I was just trying to represent the point that John made. Whether or not it is sexist, is up for debate. I'm personally withholding judgment until I can hear a good argument from both sides. For instance, the argument that was presented as to why it was, could be seen as anecdotal evidence, but we don't really have enough information to make much of a case for either side. A reason for why Golding only had boys is, as Golding said in an interview, he didn't want any sexual activity (other than the pig ritual thing), which would match the savagery of the book. Thanks for the input though, I appreciate hearing more points of view!
"The central idea of the book is that everyone has evil in there hearts."
"...evil in there hearts."
"THERE hearts."
rip
I hope John Green didn't write that
+maresgoez "jhon"
fukerwolf 190 I guess we all make mistakes...
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Where is that said in the video?
Ok, first of all, The Lord of the Flies is a great book, and it is not proper to judge a book written in the twentieth century according to modern conventions about sex, gender and civilization.
I would argue that it is not proper NOT to judge a book written in the twentieth century by modern conventions. After all, literature is a way to explore the differences in eras and mindsets of those who write, and so this book should be considered in both its worldview and also our current worldview.
although I love john green's analysis, this one seemed a bit too tainted with personal bias. I love lord of the flies. it's gritty realism coupled with such powerful symbolism truly sets it apart from most conventional classics. also Green fails to appreciate how this book got Golding a nobel prize
ok...i just finished the entire thing and I couldn't disagree more. from start to finish I completely disagree.
Could you elaborate? Curious to see why you think so.
because i don't feel like it was "savages bad/society good" or everyone is "inherently evil" and it's more like "people have the potential to do evil things, and that potential goes up depending on the environment they are in".
it's almost like someone saying "1984 is about the virtues of small government and traditional family values."
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+karlhungusjr1 +
YES!! THIS!!!
Actually, Ralph an Piggy do not always keep their moral values, as- I found in proprofs quizzes- "To an extent, even the seemingly civilized Ralph and Piggy are products of social conditioning, as we see when they participate in the hunt-dance"
Like if you approve!
I read it this year, and I liked it (although now that you point these things out I agree). My favorite part is that at the beginning Jack legitimately thinks being able to sing C# makes him a qualified leader.
how biased can one video be?
A man who apparently hates the English reviewing a book mostly taught in English class written by an Englishman? John let the hate flow through him for this one.
@Mr. SodaCow That's most of John Green's videos I find. He needs to stop having a bias I'm his crash course videos because other than him inserting his beliefs and own personal ideas into it the videos can be quite educational.
I just reported this video as being biased to the max. This guy is dangerous if he's teaching kids out there. He's not teaching them how to think but what to think. Wow, he's very creepy.
@@okmelancholico omg calm down, he's not brainwashing people. The first half of the video was the plot and the themes and the type of book it was, the last half of the book was opinions and he has opinions on all his book reviews
@@ziab2840 Jeez, that was like more than half a year ago. Whatever dude, you think you.
Wow, so biased. Amazing.
If you want an objective analysis, just go read the summary on Wikipedia
They should've had a different host for this particular book. John is too opinionated to analyze this book objectively.
Humans are inherently biased an objective analysis of the book would be lord of the flies is a book in which there are male children and two or three kids die, Simon is murdered by his friends and piggy is killed by rocks, there is a fire that might have killed another one but he was not given a name, a choir boy becomes the leader of a tribe of the boys who don't attempt to escape and the book ends when they burn the entire island and chase a boy named Ralph until a person from the navy picks them up
+U1TR4F0RCE an objective in-depth literary analysis can be archieved. What you did is just a plot summary, the same thing wikipedia does. Yes, we are all biased, but I think that when you study a work of art you must look beyond your personal perspective, and even more when you are trying to teach it.
+Richard Bahena there is no such thing as objective analysis of literature.
So is it deemed a sexist novel because of the lack of girls or because boys are portrayed as evil?
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both
both ... sort of. the 'umbrella' reason as to why it's called a sexist novel is because of its lack of female characters (aside from the pig) and everything under the umbrella is what you said 'because boys are portrayed as evil'. it's sexist in the sense that the book makes you think that you can summarize all of humanity and strip it down to what it''s really made of by using teenage boys. the problem with that is that you can't summarize anything without thinking about everything that is present in humanity: socialization, the development of communities and of course, females. boys being portrayed as evil in the novel is Golding's attempt to say that 'because i have these boys doing evil things, assume all humans are like that because boys are'. essentially, using boys as a baseline for describing all of humanity is what makes it sexist because it assumes that men are the 'default' gender in our world, which is simply not the case.
Both but more the first thing; John also notes that the novel sidesteps the question of whether girls would be more civilized in this case or if they would be as equally depraved.
Eh, probably both. Though can you call call a book sexist if the author makes it clear he hates all human beings equally?
The scene where Simon confronts the Lord of the Flies is probably one of my favorites in all of literature. "I'm the reason. I'm the reason why nothing can ever work. You cannot run from me. You'll find me down on the beach, for I am inside of you." Paraphrasing here but you get the idea. It's so powerful.
Ok, wheres the informational facts that I depend on? This is very opinionated, and not very objective. "Wars end", do they really, or they just name themselves differently?
Maybe its not such a good idea to review books you dislike. You should rename the video "My take on the Lord of the Flies."
He should review what books he wants, liked or disliked. People need to realize it's an opinion and not get so easily hurt by the fact that he didn't really like the book
@@grumpymonk2573 I dont really agree with you. I mean, this series isn't called "opinions," it's called "crash course." It is meant to give an accurate description. Sure, feel free to add a little bit of personal commentary, but the main purpose should be to inform, not persuade.
I really, really disagree with you on this book. I'm a feminist, a psychologist, and a human, and this is one of my favourite books. I knew you dislike it, so I was really looking forward to hearing you talk about it and I'm astonished how different your interpretation is from the way I experienced the book. Psychologically, I find it realistic (I mean, the Stanford Prison experiment had a LOT of issues, many of them methodological, but it nevertheless shows us what humans can be like, particularly when hierarchies are introduced). From a feminist standpoint, I think it does a great job at criticising our way of constructing masculinity, its relationship to power, and its harmful effects. And it does a great job at illustrating how fragile peace and "civilization" are - I use quotation marks because to me, this does not mean Western civilization (as opposed to "savages" such as hunter gatherers), but just... civilization INCLUDING hunter gatherer societies. It shows how easy ANY type of civilization can break and lead to destruction and chaos, but not necessarily because of "nature" (after all, the island was peaceful before those kids arrived), but because of the dark side of our culture such as hunger for power or unhealthy gender roles. I'm not saying that this is how Golding intended his book to be read, but that is how I interpreted it and why I like it so much.
finally someone with the same views :D
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I have found that the gap between the likes and dislikes of this book comes down to people who've read the book and people who haven't actually read the book and have just based their opinion on TH-cam comments and John Green's opinion on it.
The BBC prison study somewhat undermined the results of the Stanford prison experiments. I'm merely saying this as a point of interest, not a criticism.
so your sexist
To be fair, Lord of the flies is a million times better than any of Ayn Rand´s books
wow it must be super good then
Also much better than anything Green himself has written.
Seth Apex
I just hate the plot of every one of her books. Their all about some ungodly magnificent person who feels that everyone around him is weighing him down and how he shames those people from keeping his magnifiscent work away from the world. God, its so pretentious and condescending, and what annoys me the most is that they encourage selfishness. Also Rand is a prick
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I made my first science video on my channel!
He call pessimism what he doesn't know about war. I think that after a war you would have a better understanding of humanity than through a 1000 good novels.
But after war it's possible that you would only understand human nature through war. This then leads to questions of Whether the truth of human nature is better revealed in times of war or in times of peace.
99thTuesday In time of peace, in western countries, at least half of the population still thinks and acts as if it is in dire need of basic resources. Their fears, lack of empathy and sense of community is dramatically close to living in a jungle. Our "peace time" is a product of our mind. We don't perceive as ours the struggle of people far or different from us. But nonetheless others are, in this very moment, paying the price around the world of our cheap gas, food and resources. Don't forget that.
Human nature leads to wars though. Our primal instincts of survival are savage. Many prisoners of war resorted to eating their comrades merely to stay alive.
+John Doe You are wise
the thing is, human nature doesn't create war, civilization does. War and other types of fighting always come about due to perceived differences, the idea of upholding what is you versus the other. A human alone, with no reason will not think of murdering the next person they meet, or even creating conflict with them. Human's have a natural inclination toward's reasoning with people, it's one of the few things humans can do that no one else can.
The first inclination of humans is to create civilization in some form, or said more precisely, some form of order or organization. It's then through these perceived differences with other people that they deem War necessary.
The average human recoils from violence and must be pushed to commit acts of agression
War is like prison, it only ends for those who were not in it
I completely agree with John on this.
I don't understand how Golding even tried on convincing his readers that the entirety of civilisation is evil if half of the people that make up human civilisation are not even present in the novel? Also, we are reading this novel in class, and our teacher really imposes the idea on us that this book is about the inherently evil nature of humans when they are not restricted by any superficial rules set by society. But if that is so, how did civilisation come into being? Who even invented civilised society and behaviour? There had to be people who had this 'inherent good' within themselves, and therefore started imposing laws so that we could live in peace and stability, which was not possible in an environment which contained death in literally every coming corner. The isolation and the threat that the boys suffered on the island, according to me, allowed their savage
temperaments to take action. It was not because humans are inherently evil, it is because we needed to be savage in order to survive ten thousand years ago.
I actually enjoyed Lord of the Flies
Can you please cover John Steinbeck's of mice and men
these are the books they are doing
Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
Sonnets - William Shakespeare (Particularly sonnets 18, 116, & 130)
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
100 Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Sula - Toni Morrison
Oh okay thanks
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...in gasoline then light a match? (Is the end of that question, right?)
I find that the analysis of this novel as an exploration of the toxicity of a particular type of masculinity is the most compelling interpretation, even if the author had no idea that he was doing so. He thought he was writing about the inherent evil that lives in all men, but he failed to recognize that this evil is A) not inherent but rather learned, B) not in all men (even within the context of the novel as John points out) and C) essentially exclusive to men.
To be clear, evil may lay in the heart of all persons, but this particular type of evil is decidedly masculine. Golding's mistake (as is all too common) is to assume that his experience as a white man is the default experience of all humanity. This is probably why he thought that including any female characters would have been a complicating factor rather than, you know, as essential part of humanity. Their femininity would have gotten in the of the way of his analysis of humanity, which is another way of saying that he doesn't consider femininity a part of humanity, or that his analysis is not of humanity but of masculinity.
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I found this a very interesting analysis. Thank you for sharing it.
This is hilarious. How absolutely deluded. Enjoy living in your own privileged middle class bubble.
Maybe when you start working and enter the real world you'll learn a thing or two. Even as just a cashier I can wholeheartedly say you're wrong as Women love taking advantage of and abusing the female cashiers that work with me. Sociology 101 isn't too useful in real world interactions.
👍
I absolutely loved Lord of the Flies, and watching this video helped me realize that it was because I also felt like the novel had a different message than what Golding intended. The way I see it, the novel shows that there are inherently good people as well as inherently bad people, but without the confines of order, the bad will always overwhelm the good. It's pretty easily applicable to the world today.
I'm not here because of school like probably everyone else, I just love the book, favourite book I ever read, and I read it without being told to
It's shadow work. The fact that it makes you so uncomfortable shows how effective it is
Dude, sometimes, a pig is just a pig. Maybe the author refrained from having girls in the book exactly to avoid people such as yourself from trying to make sexist parallels.
dude, they shove a stick up the sow's anus. it's not just a pig.
It isn't sexist because there's a female character in the story, it's being interpreted as sexist by John because of the way that female character was treated in the story. And yes while the boys were tortured and suffered as well, their torture wasn't sexualized, and no statement on sex was made with it. With the female pig's death she was spear raped to death, I mean c'mon now. I'm not even saying that the scene was sexist, but it is *clearly* obvious that the author was making a specific point in that scene regarding women, and to deny it is just dishonest.
Diana, the Inorganic Vegan What are you even referring to? I think you mean Vlad, but then why are you mentioning an author? I don't think this is a matter of over-thinking, I think you're just in denial.
Diana, the Inorganic Vegan ... Never said it was anti-woman, again quit putting words in my mouth. Quit being so paranoid.
+Diana, the Inorganic Vegan You're bad at arguing, do it less. The vlad comparison is off due to the fact that you misunderstand the other person's original point: the killing of the pig wasn't "sexist", it was "sexualized". Comprehension is key.
Personally, I appreciated his analysis. Honestly, classic literature is very hard to interpret the same by every person. Everyone perceives books and their messages differently, and that’s why I love these discussions. Lord of the Flies is one of the most argued over books because it has so many different themes and messages that are perceived differently by different people. Thank you for bringing this video and your perspective to the table John. :)
I liked lord of the flies in High School. It was really good i thought.
LOTF is such a good book. Such an accurate perception of human nature... Truly a classic
There are no women in it because it's a British public (private) school in the UK in the 1950s. Do your research, John. And what exactly is wrong about the Hobbesian vision? Human beings do have a dark part of the human soul that makes them enjoy conflict on some level. You also have a very simplistic reading of it.
Because people keep asking these are the books they are doing
Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
Sonnets - William Shakespeare (Particularly sonnets 18, 116, & 130)
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
100 Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Sula - Toni Morrison
the books they already did*
Mario Papetti hit "read more"... it's the list for this season. It is pretty clear.
... Not sure how can't read and are watching a video about literature
+Raymond Smith sorry, youtube is acting wierd, read more didn't even appear until now
I always thought that there were no girls because they were from an all boys school and travelling together. Male/female segregation in schools was fairly common. I never thought that part of the story odd at all...
Metabeard that makes sense but again why would a boarding school send it’s students away without talking to the parents? Like surely sending away the children would be something the parents would be a choice the parents want to be involved in . But it could have been a portion of the student population and that wasn’t a detail that was relevant to the story .
I missed you Mr Green. i took it for granted that i always saw you on crash course, and now i see new people. If you're stepping down and passing the tourch just know that i truly appreciate your sessions
This book was a brilliant piece of literature and I believe that all should read it.
Behind the certain flaws of this book, I do appreciate the multitudes of grim symbolism. Whether it be the pig head on the stake, the conch, the beast, or adults fighting their war; there is always some aspect that does apply to the dark side of our human nature.
5:52 "Problematic"
*cringes*
It's about to get problematic in here
Are you triggered by the word? Need a help group or an aggression-free zone? ;D
What was the nuclear war stuff that was cut from the book?
Idk if anyone else noticed it or not but the world war 2 video clip at 1:46 the guy gets shot in the knee mid sprint. The timing of that shot is incredible if it wasn’t a stray bullet.
Glad he takes a perspective on these books, and even more for a thorough defense. Respect.
I don’t think that either civilization or human nature is evil. To believe that civilization or human nature is solely evil or moralizing presents us with a false dichotomy. Rather, I believe that all of us are inherently flawed. Our flaws are reflected in the ways that societies are structured. Whether we remove ourselves from civilization or not, we will bear witness to similar evils. However, there is good in us as well. Attempting to ignore our multi-faceted nature means depriving ourselves of truly understanding who we are and what we are capable of.
I am not flawed.
+Martin Vargic What about the Asians?
Glad I read the novel first before watching this "review".
what we really are is F) Dancer
i just wanted to make an innocent The Killers joke and here we are :(
"Reverse-racism doesn't exist." Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. BI
BTW - I think the translation for 'Beelzebub' is 'Lord of the Flies'
It was! Which also translates to "Satan" or "devil". I'm surprised he didn't cover that topic. It adds much for meaning and understanding to the book
Personally, after studying it for GCSE and analysing all the complexities and hidden meanings of this story, I have grown to love it!
How is calling "spear throwing face painted people" backward problematic? Even in Golding's time, if a society were throwing spears instead of shooting guns, they were already far, FAR away from modernity. It's not a race issue either; many African, American, and South Asian societies had great cities and empires just like Europe did and adopted the most modern technology of their times. Saying that technologically primitive societies are backward is not wrong; saying technologically primitive societies are worse than modern ones, I'd argue, is also not wrong.
It's the implied _moral_ superiority that's the problem.
Shankar Sivarajan Ah. I mean that might be a problem if a society's morals weren't one of the least important determining factors to its survival and ability to thrive.
Martin Vargic Were Pakistani and Indian immigrants in Britain in substantial numbers in the 40s? I honestly don't know. If they were, then it would have been interesting to see how Golding would handle that on the island.
Cultural relativism. Defining or even trying to understand another culture by comparing it to what you personally believe as "right or wrong" is an inherently flawed concept. Applying the mores and values of one culture will more than likely never give you the ability to properly understand another.
jmvsic Not really sure why you would think that its misguided to understand another culture through the only lens you have to examine it. Not only that but one can reason why a certain cultural aspect is good or bad regardless of which culture is observing which.
So, basically he doesn't like this book because it's offensive to hunter-gather like tribes and women? The SJW shines strong in this one.
He doesn't like it because he feels it is a skewed and inaccurate depiction of human nature. It's not about being "offensive."
Don't you have anything better to do than troll youtube comments unconvincingly pretending to be an absurdly extremist SJW? You're embarrassing yourself.
john is an SJW now
+Gothicscull234Gmail I'm pretty sure "Martin Vargic" is trolling.
I don't think John this is why he hates the book. For starters, John-Green-from-the-past also hates the book, and he's not exactly a feminist, he's the kinda guy who pretends to have a girlfriend to be cool (Crash Course US History #3) and spends his class time trying to woo girls (Crash Course World History #4).
John explains that he doesn't like the overarching idea of evil in the
book, and also he shows how he isn't a fan of the symbolism which he
feels is extreme.
He has praised works before like The Odyssey or Huckleberry Finn for which he addressed the sexist and racist criticism, but also he had well articulated points and recognized the social context of when the works were done.
Like several people I feel he hasn't done the same kind of work in this video, and he could have. His arguments here come off as unusually simple and harsh considering how he hasn't judged other books so hard. Barely any women in Huckleberry Finn and that's alright because he loves Mark Twain. No women in Lord of the Flies and it's muh sexism because he hates the book.
I think could have been done better here, but I respect him and the Crash Course team a lot because I have nothing bad to say about all the other videos.
Why didn't mention that its title is taken from the literal meaning of Beelzebub?
Right! Aka Satan. That knowledge adds so much more reasoning and symbolism. It makes the book make more sense 😂 I'm suprised he didn't cover that
As a person who works with children on a daily basis, I have every confidence in the realism of Lord of the Flies
Hmm, very good video imo John, despite you not liking the book. You gave it a thorough review and did your best to rationally explain why you dislike the book.
Golding also said that he only wrote about boys because 1. he has never been a girl 2. a mother and 3. a grandmother, he is not being sexist he is just going based on what he knows, he has been a boy, a father and a grandfather
then by his own logic (not knowing what is like to be the opposite sex, and therefore not knowing what it is like to be all of humanity) he should not be able to comment on all of humanity.
While the book is greatly exaggerated, it isn't like we haven't seen similar effects. See: Stanford Prison Experiment.
We're not necessarily built for 'evil', but we sure do like it.
Wasn't a Simpson's episode loosely based on this book?
yup
Christian Müller Ahh so my memory does serve me right.
Yeah and as I recall, they pointed out that it made no god-damn sense as well.
Yeah it's the episode Kamp Krusty which is the 4th season premiere
I love the way John Green teaches! It is amazing!!!
My high school English teacher spun it as a psychological allegory, with Ralph acting as Freud's Ego, Piggy the Superego, and Jack as the Id.
How could people dislike this book, it is fantastic! Truly one of the best books i've ever read.
Lord of the flies was absolutely my favorite book ever
Lord of the flies it's society, even you actually are the voice of reason... The larger dumber and(usually) stronger and more violent side will still crush you like a bug. So you'd better be able to let your murderous side out when they do.
Claudia Tejero-Rios add me to the list. Only book I read cover to cover.
This just makes me wonder if John Green has ever taken care of large groups of children for a prolonged period of time.
I was really hoping this video was going to come out before my LOTF English Lit exam. That exam was around 2 months ago but thank you anyway Johnathan.
This is weird, usually it's the teacher that liked the book and me who hated it, but here it's totally reversed.
Okay, this video is biased on so many levels. And trust me it's not sexist, Golding felt that women were superior to men and his mom was a Women's Suffrage activist.
Thank you for explaining “Deus Ex Machina” so I can finally understand all those Cinema Sins jokes 👍🏽
I like how Crash Course included discussion on many of the allegories presented in the novel; however, it would be super helpful if you guys also included something on Freudian allegory!
Thank you Mr. Green! I just took a job teaching English in an international school in Myanmar, and I have to teach this novel! One that I have avoided for all of my twenty year career! This helped a lot to give me perspective on how to approach it. Also, lots of kids here have read your novels, so they may listen to you....
John Green officially loses much of my respect with this video. Next he's gonna say he does not like the "Red Badge of Courage".
uhh he doesn't
It is obvious this is an important book to you, if differing opinions lose your respect. (You have a right to determine that, I'm not saying you don't). I should read Lord of the Flies...it gets people worked up.
If his negative opinion of a book makes you lose much of your respect for him, then you clearly did not have much respect to begin with so it's nit a big loss to either of you. It's like if I dislike someone for not liking Harry Potter, then I must not have liked that person at all in the first place
anyone watching this the night before the English lit exam tomorrow? GCSEs?
The Afghanistan war is still raging ...17 years, 5 months, 2 weeks, 2 days!! We are insane!
This is one of my favorite books ever, a book about the fundamentals of societal influence and the stability of civilization ruled by oligarchy? Sign me in!
I think Lord of The Flies is a great example of how death of the author can save a story.
In the book itself, it clearly shows people can maintain their goodness even despite savagery abounding around them, even to the extent of giving their lives for it. That while people are corruptible, they don't have to be inherently evil. Unfortunately, the author himself felt quite the opposite.
I wouldn't say it is entirely false; but it isn't entirely true either. I don't believe all people are good, but I certainly don't believe all people are inherently evil.
I think the Lord of the Flies makes more sense as a symbol for fear, rather than evil.
"He uses a lot of images he deems as savage such as spears and face paint."
I understand how face paint may be savage but spears? That I disagree with. How else are that supposed to hunt for meat? Most of the boys on the island could barely tie their shoes let alone build sophisticated traps. They couldn't avoid hunting either because the fruit they had was giving them stomach issues.
"A lot of critics call The Lord of the Flies a sexist novel and I don't disagree." You're joking right? Please tell me this is a jape.
I think whether or not Lord of the Flies is sexist depends on what you are reading it for.
If you're reading it as just a story, a fictional story about fictional characters in a fictional world, then no, it's not sexist. You say how everything is justified in the narrative. The spears make sense and the face paint makes sense bcause they've probably read about the savage warriors outside.
But if you're saying that this fictional story is how people are in real life, that's where you get problems because the face paint and spears, the choice to use that kind of "tribal savage" imagry that you'd see in racist mock ups during the hieght of colonialism, that isn't the boys choice. They didn't choose anything because they can't make choices, they are fictional. The person who chose that was Golding.
If you think this is how humans act, then you could interpret this to mean that humans will go into this state of spears and face paint, which is how racist Europeans would depict people from outside of Europe while Golding was growing up. And that was not accurate.
In terms of gender, William Golding made the choice for the novel to have no women, and to have the closest thing reperesenting a woman to be a pig killed in a highly sexualized ritual.
Do I think that william Golding was trying to say that women are just there for sex and providing for us in the real word? Well, I don't think so. But it is relevent, if you're trying to say that this novel is a depiction of how humans are. And that view comes down to you really. Do I choose to see it as sexist? Not really. I see the novel as a book about power fantasy which is just my interpretation. You have the right to interpret the book how you want to.
This book is more accurately read as an exposition of the worldview that forms in untreated trauma victims' minds (i.e. the author) than anything about human nature. Trauma shatters our expectations of the goodness of human beings, and because it is so overwhelming, it affects the sense of reality of people who endure it. Until the trauma is sequenced/processed, that feeling of shock is globalized to the entire world and nature itself. This is how the brain tries to help you survive in the future, by mistakenly globalizing your specific traumatic experience to "reality", so you can be always on alert and prepared for it to happen again. Obviously that reality is skewed because it is based on the worst things that can happen rather than a balanced view of the totality of human experience.
Could you please do a course in history of literature (explaining literary periods)?
I absolutely love this book. We studied it at school when I was 12, along with The Coral Island, and LotF has stuck with me ever since. I just love it. Coral Island, however...well, I never want to see it again, put it that way!
now that's weird, reading that book to 12 years old children. I Recently read it in my 20s and was disgusted by some passages.
Interesting, actually. I'm 13 and I read it a couple months back. When I'm older I'll definitely give it another read to see how my view of the book changes.