William Golding’s 1954 novel Lord of the Flies is about a group of English schoolboys stranded on a remote Pacific island who try to govern themselves by establishing rules and roles in a place that has “No grownups!” Isolated from societal norms, the boys sink into savagery and moral decay. The story’s main theme is the tension between civilization and savagery and humanity’s inherent capacity for evil. The book is a satire of R.M. Ballantyne’s The Coral Island: A Tale of the Pacific Ocean (1858), which depicts boys overcoming adversity through inherent goodness and civilized behavior.
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