A Student-Teacher Companion

A Student-Teacher Companion
Contents
page 2
On William Golding’s Lord of the Flies
by De Witt Douglas Kilgore
page 5
Lord of the Flies and its Literary Network
by Ellen MacKay
page 8
Utopias, Dystopias, and Other Social Networks:
A Short Tour of their Visualization
by Ellen MacKay
sidebar: FAST FACTS about Social Networks
page 15
Trans-Atlantic Connections: A British Utopia
on the American Frontier
by Mary Bowden
page 19
Name That –Ism: A Quick Glossary
of Some Systems of Government
page 20
How Would You Rule Your Island?
by Shakespeare and Ellen MacKay
page 21
From Page to Stage: What Happens
When You Make a Novel into a Play?
by Ellen MacKay
back cover
If you liked Lord of the Flies… Some Books Worth Exploring
Lord of the Flies
Welcome to Lord of the Flies
Ellen MacKay, director of Educational Outreach
Welcome to the show! Cardinal Stage is delighted to continue its collaboration with the IU College
of Arts and Sciences’ Themester with this adaptation of William Golding’s novel, Lord of the Flies.
As a meditation on connectedness and its opposite—disconnection or anti-sociality—Lord of the
Flies is hard to beat. As De Witt Kilgore writes in the first essay in this student-teacher companion,
Golding accepts human beings as animals, limited by nature in terms of what they
can achieve in social relations. His core insight, articulated by Simon and understood
by Ralph, is that there is a beast in all of us, waiting for its chance. The social play
staged by Golding’s lost boys turns their island paradise into a hell on earth. The beast
within them undermines any notion that all we need is a better set of rules to make
life lovely.
Kilgore points out that after Robinson Crusoe (1719), and the long history of patriotic adventure
stories that followed in its wake, in which young English boys could be relied on to establish
middle-class English homesteads no matter where they were marooned, Lord of the Flies
represents a strong antithesis. Informed by “the banality of evil” that Hannah Arendt discerned
in Nazi Germany, as well as Golding’s personal observations both as a soldier at the front and a
schoolteacher in a British boys’ school, the novel mounts a devastating counter to Rousseau’s
claim in The Social Contract that “men always desire their own good, but do not always discern
it; the people are never corrupted, though often deceived, and it is only then that they seem to
will what is evil.”
In light of this year’s focus on Networks, this Companion is written to help you consider why
the social structure that links the boys together fails to promote a more acceptable expression of
self-governance. Though our first inclination might be to conclude that the ties between the boys
were too weak to support a thriving society, the acts of exclusion and bullying that overtake the
island are actually representative of a strong but rigid social network, typical of pre-modern
epochs or realms dominated by absolute rule and enforced religious conformity. As IU sociologist
Bernice Pescosolido writes, societies of this type “provided a sense of security and solidarity,
which minimized psychological ‘tensions’ for the majority of individuals. Yet such a structure…
limited freedom, individuality, and diversity.” Nor is such a structure an echo of the distant
past. Golding’s community of ‘savage’ boys that first bestializes and then hunts its outsiders to
extinction is as redolent of our modern moment as it is of seventeenth century Salem. As painful
as it may be to admit it, the story remains an allegory for our time.
I hope you enjoy the essays that follow, and that you continue to think through the issues
raised by Cardinal’s production by seeking out other Themester programming. You will find the
calendar here: http://themester.indiana.edu/calendar.shtml
Thank you for coming, and please enjoy the production.
Ellen MacKay
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On William Golding’s Lord of the Flies
by De Witt Douglas Kilgore
“There was indeed no note of discord whatever in that symphony we played on
that sweet coral island.”
— R. M. Ballantyne, The Coral Island (1857)
Portrait of Sir William Gerald Golding
by Howard Coster, 1955
The cover of the first
edition of Lord of the
Flies (1954)
What if a group of boys were marooned on an island,
separated from their ordinary lives? What if there were no
adults to guide and discipline them? What then? Before
William Golding’s Lord of the Flies this premise was the
foundation of those boys’ adventure novels that followed the
lead of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719). These stories
assumed that any lost boy would be fine: as long as he was
English. The youthful adventurer would be sure to tame the
island, replicating the goods and luxuries of British middleclass life. If the challenges he faced included dangerous
others—like beastly predators, native inhabitants, or pirates—
each would be conquered in their turn. The island would be
a land of adventure, a school for teaching the “manly” virtues
of courage, strength, and leadership. They would play the
game in what Martin Green calls the “energizing myth” of
Anglo-American dominance over any other land or people.
Lord of the Flies is an effort to demolish that myth and to
set in its place a “realistic” account of the human nature it ignores. Thus the novel mounts a parody of the boys’ stories that
were a large part of Golding’s own childhood reading. The book
also casts a cold eye on the Victorian institution of virtuous and
innocent childhood, seeking to replace it with an account of
“what boys are really like.” Since Golding was a teacher at an
all-boys’ grammar school, he knew his subject. The story is,
therefore, also an anthropological thought experiment. The
reaction of the novel’s lost boys to their isolation from the rule
of schools, police and other adults is carefully observed.
William Gerald Golding was born to a middle-class English
family in 1911. His parents belonged to that stratum of
British intellectual life that championed scientific materialism
and sought political reform through socialism and women’s
suffrage. Golding graduated from Oxford University in 1935
Lord of the Flies
and served as a lieutenant in the Royal Navy during World War II. It was the latter experience that
prompted him to shed the progressive optimism he learned from his parents. The post-war flow of
images and stories from the extermination camps of Nazi Germany, in particular, revealed to him
a “human nature [that is] savage and unforgiving.” Lord of the Flies is his most memorable effort
at sharing this insight, the result of his own particular coming of age in the mid-twentieth century.
This background explains the novel’s anti-utopian character. Golding accepts human beings
as animals, limited by nature in terms of what they can achieve in social relations. His core
insight, articulated by Simon and understood by Ralph, is that there is a beast in all of us, waiting
for its chance. The social play staged by Golding’s lost boys turns their island paradise into a hell
on earth. The beast within them undermines any notion that all we need is a better set of rules
to make life lovely. That beast, however, is of a very specific kind.
In his audio recording of the novel Golding is moved to account for why his island has
excluded girls. Firstly, it made sense for him to write from his experience as a boy. Secondly, he
felt that any group of boys would represent civilization in miniature,
unlike any set of girls. He excuses this opinion on the grounds that
women are “far superior” to men and, therefore, cannot represent
civilization. The writer further argues that a mixed cast of girls and
boys would introduce “sex.” This would be “too trivial a thing to get
in with a story like this which is about the problem of evil and about
the problem of how people are to live together in society.” Golding’s
island is a thought experiment that deliberately strips away any
noise that would compromise his results.
The author’s presumption that his lost boys can stand for all
humanity, illustrates that Golding’s experiment says both less and
more. The story offers less a complete theory of the human condition
and more a cautionary tale for a nation on the brink of losing its
empire, made fearful by the threat of nuclear war. It is the swan song
of a ruling class that believed women and people of other races were
marginal to cultural production. Lacking the diversity essential to any
functioning society, Golding’s boys must fail, and so they do. Golding
is certainly aware that his design is reductive (there are no grown-ups
after all) but we can make more of what its presuppositions mean
than he could.1
I argue that this story is about fear of the other; the creature that
has been excluded and now goes bump in the night. Golding never
Illustration of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe
allows us to forget that there are no other people on the island, only
by E. Boyd Smith, 1924. For an excellent
the boys themselves. But they are enough. They forget many things
collection of images of this tale see Pictureing
the First Castaway, a website at the following
during their island sojourn but they do remember to divide the world
address: www.camden.rutgers.edu/Camden/
between them and us, between we hunters and those beasts (whether
Crusoe/Pages/crusoe.html
1
However, having graduated from a Catholic all-boys’ school with elite pretensions, I must admit that Golding is right in
detail even if wrong in broad outline. His years as an English teacher at Bishop Wordsworth’s Church of England
Grammar School for Boys did show him what boys are really like.
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animals or people) to be hunted. Having no natives to conquer or civilize (like Crusoe’s Friday),
no pirates against whom to measure their courage, they fall upon themselves. If we must take
Lord of the Flies as symptomatic of human nature then this is the place to start.
The insight that Golding shares is quite bleak; the boys’ island does reflect the adult world in
that it does produce enemies that must be humiliated, propitiated or killed. Over all hangs the
shadow of a war-making capacity that outruns rational thought. As nuclear war devastates the
outside world, Jack’s tribe sets fire to the island to flush Ralph out. The inferno is a mutually
assured destruction. The boys are saved from the consequences of their actions only when the
Naval officer’s appearance stops the hunt. Golding’s
insight here is that in seeking to destroy
its others humanity can only destroy itself. As Walt Kelly’s
Pogo would say: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
I have shared with you my own reading of Golding’s
great work. I would like, however, for him have the last
word: “ … the only interpretation of the story, if you want
one, is your own: not your teacher’s, not your professor’s,
not mine, not a critic’s, not some authority’s. The one
thing that matters is first, the experience of being in the
story, moving through it, then any interpretation you like.
If it is yours, then that’s the right one. Because what’s
in a book is not what an author thought he put into it,
Plaque on the Bishop Wordsworth CE
it is what the reader gets out of it.” In that spirit, let the
School commemorating the fact that
William Golding taught there.
play begin.
De Witt Douglas Kilgore is an Associate Professor of English and American and Cultural Studies at IU, and author of
Astrofuturism: Science, Race and Visions of Utopia in Space (2003). Professor Kilgore’s current research includes work
on popular narratives emerging from the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) and an investigation of the role
science plays in validating the political and theological positions in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials.
Lord of the Flies
Lord of the Flies and its Literary Network
By Ellen MacKay
“The rules!” shouted Ralph, “you’re breaking the rules!”
“Who cares?”
— William Golding, Lord of the Flies
Golding’s book is a particularly fine example of a literary subgenre that is enjoying a renaissance,
particularly in the area of young adult fiction: the dystopian novel. One of the most popular entries
in this category is Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games trilogy (2008-2010), which has the distinction
of being written by an IU alumna (BA 1985, theatre and telecommunications). Other important
examples include Lois Lowry’s The Giver (1994), and Paolo Bacigalupi’s Ship Breaker (2010),
both of which have earned a lot of popular and critical praise.
But Lord of the Flies, which undoubtedly influenced Collins and her cohort, dates from 1955,
a Cold War moment that came more than fifty years earlier, in which the threat of totalitarian
politics and nuclear annihilation (often called mutually assured destruction, or MAD for short)
were vivid and pressing cultural concerns. To Golding, as well as to many writers and thinkers of
his age, the world seemed to be caught in a dangerous dilemma. The genocides undertaken by
Nazism, on the far right, and Stalinism, on the far left, were vivid demonstrations of the evil that
authoritanian government could do. And yet opposition to this politics was itself incredibly risky.
The razing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki illustrated the catastrophe that could result if international
military force were once again employed to orchestrate regime change. (The founding of the CIA,
and the turn to a foreign policy based on surveillance instead of confrontation, was one result of
this widely-feared threat. Hence the rise of the spy novel, and the birth of such immortal literary
characters as George Smiley, Jack Ryan, James Bond, and Jason Bourne. But that’s the story of
another literary network).
In its combined interest in authoritarianism and post-apocalypticism, Lord of the Flies
rubbed shoulders with some of the most famous fiction of its period: Shirley Jackson’s short story,
“The Lottery” (1948), George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit
451 (1953), and Nevil Shute’s On the Beach (1957). But despite the apparent topicality of the
subgenre (its focus a particular set of contemporary conditions, or contexts) its story doesn’t start
here. Writings about possible worlds have existed for millennia. Though the first exercises in this
genre described utopias (ideal, imagined societies, derived from the Greek word for no-place); but
in the last two-and-a-half centuries, dystopias (imaginary places or conditions in which everything
is as bad as possible), have become the more common subject.
The following pictorial essay is an attempt to sketch out a genealogy of utopian and dystopian
literature, from Plato to Suzanne Collins. Its purpose is to encourage you to think about the way
works interconnect. This kind of visualization of literary influence makes an implied claim that
books are like people: they have a parentage, and they beget heirs. Such a notion can provide us
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a useful way of working out the transmission of shared traits across time. But it is also important to
think about how a given culture shapes its literary output. Like a family tree, a literary genealogy is
useful for thinking about inheritance, but not so great at bringing out the effects of environment.
Moreover, in this scheme, dystopias look like a genetic anomaly—an ugly branch of the utopian
family tree. Is that a fair assessment? You be the judge.
Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift (1726)
“Ingratitude is amongst them a capital
crime, as we read it to have been in
some other countries: for they reason
thus; that whoever makes ill-returns
to his benefactor, must needs be a
common enemy to the rest of the
mankind, from where he has received
no obligations, and therefore such man
is not fit to live.”
Lord of the Flies
by William Golding
(1954)
“We did everything adults
would do. What went
wrong?”
Herland by Charlotte
Perkins Gilman (1915)
“When we say men,
man, manly, manhood,
and all the other
masculine-derivatives,
we have in the background of our minds a
huge vague crowded picture of the world
and all its activities. . . . And when we say
women, we think female—the sex.”
Utopia by Thomas More (1516)
“[how can anyone] be silly enough to think
himself better than other people, because
his clothes are made of finer woolen thread
than theirs. After all, those fine clothes
were once worn by a sheep, and they never
turned it into anything better than a sheep.”
Utopia
The Time Machine
by H. G. Wells (1895)
“Face this world. Learn its ways,
watch it, be careful of too hasty
guesses at its meaning. In the
end you will find clues to it all.”
The Republic by Plato
(c. 370 BCE)
“Bodily exercise, when
compulsory, does no harm
to the body; but knowledge
which is acquired under
compulsion obtains no
hold on the mind.”
Lord of the Flies
Brave New World by
Aldous Huxley (1932)
“But I don’t want comfort.
I want God, I want poetry,
I want real danger, I want
freedom, I want goodness.
I want sin.”
The Hunger Games,
by Suzanne Collins (2008)
“Destroying things is much
easier than making them.”
Do Androids Dream of Electric
Sheep? by Philip K. Dick (1968)
Nineteen Eighty-Four by
George Orwell (1949)
“The choice for mankind
lies between freedom
and happiness and
for the great bulk of
mankind, happiness
is better.”
A Clockwork Orange by
Anthony Burgess (1962)
“Emigrate or Degenerate.”
“Is it better for a man
to have chosen evil than
to have good imposed
upon him?”
Dystopia
Ellen MacKay is Associate Professor of English at Indiana University. She specializes in Shakespeare, Renaissance Drama,
Theatre History and Theories of Performance and has written a book on all these subjects: Persecution, Plague and Fire:
Fugitive Histories of the Stage in Early Modern England.
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Utopias, Dystopias, and Other Social Networks
A Short Tour of their Visualization
By Ellen MacKay
“What are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages?”
— William Golding, Lord of the Flies
Long before the term “the social network” was coined, artists depicted social systems in order
to make evident their chief structural characteristics. The following illustrations reveal the
long history of visualizing the complexity of social relations. They also help us to recognize the
structural differences between different forms of social organization, from the family to the
state (whether real or imagined).
1. The Family Tree
Used to depict the “origin, lineage and kinship of noble families,” this blank family tree illustrates
the exponential increase in descendent over four generations. This type of illustration has been
used for centuries in cultures that operate dynastically—by transmitting wealth, land, and power
from first-born son to first-born son (until recently, daughters have only been acceptable as a last
resort). Absolute monarchies generally operate this way.
A sure sign of dynastic rule is the naming of historical epochs according to the surname of
the ruling family. For instance, the English crown has passed from the Lancasters to the Yorks
to the Tudors to the Stuarts all the way to the present-day
Windsors.
One interesting feature of the family tree is that it doesn’t
illustrate a social hierarchy very well; because it is designed
to include all members of a clan who share a bloodline,
who is on the bottom and who is on the top doesn’t signify
anything beyond the passage of time.
H. A. Pierer, the “Ascending Family
Tree” in The Universal Lexicon
(an encyclopedic dictionary).
Lord of the Flies
2. The Pyramid
This pyramidal illustration, on the other hand, provides
a very clear indication of the unequal distribution of
power. The zombies on the top represent the apex of
the food chain—they eat without ever being eaten.
The vegetation on the bottom represents the opposite
circumstance: it is widely eaten, but never eats. This type
of visualization is great at conveying hierarchy, since the
top represents supremacy and the bottom total subjection
to the eat-or-be-eaten environment.
The pyramid also insinuates a very low degree of
contact across the social strata. Those on top stay on top,
and those on the bottom stay on the bottom, unnoticed by
the zombie overlords. The result in this case is clearly
dystopian—that is, it represents the worst of possible worlds.
No surprise, since we are looking at a visualization of the
zombie apocalypse.
The Zombie Food Chain,
illustration by Olly Moss
3. The Circles of Hell
This representation of Dante’s Inferno (1302)—again, pretty much the worst place imaginable—
shares a peaked, or in this case, a funnel-shaped structure. Dante’s hierarchy of sins is
meticulously arranged from least to worst: we progress from Limbo, where virtuous pre-Christians
await their redemption at the Last Judgment, to the ninth
circle, where Judas Iscariot suffers eternally for being the
worst sinner of all time: the betrayer of Jesus Christ (he
shares his fate with Brutus and Cassius, the betrayers
of Julius Caesar).
It is perhaps surprising that Dante’s map of Hell
looks a lot like contemporary representations of Heaven,
but in reverse. But the symmetrical geometry of this
arrangement assigns the universe a divine harmony—or
intelligent design—that was fundamental to the medieval
and Renaissance world view. By the twentieth century,
the map changes. In Lord of the Flies, the Island turns
into a Hell that looks quite different from this one.
Fourteenth century woodcut of Dante's
inferno, courtesy of the Vatican Library.
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4. The Spheres of Heaven
In this illumination from a manuscript (or hand-written)
calendar of prayers, the Holy Family sits at the top of a
hierarchy of angels. This representation of paradise is
typical of its time in that it reproduces the subtle but
rigorously enforced pecking order of a royal court.
While we might not be able to identify any obvious
distinction between the Seraphim in the first sphere
and the Archangels in the third sphere, it is clear that
each type of angel must keep to its kind, and that each
kind is defined by its proximity to God.
While this illustration places God at the zenith, or
high point, of a vertical axis, it also worth noticing that
it puts God at the center of a circle; the various grades
of angels occupy concentric spheres (that’s why you
see that arc of angels above the Holy Family’s head).
This circular structure adds lateral ties to the vertical
axis of divinity, and suggests egalitarianism within
ranks (the story of King Arthur’s round table is a good
example of the circle’s more democratic arrangement
of people in social space).
Matfré Ermengau of Béziers, “The Nine Choirs of Angels surround
Jesus, God the Father, and Mary” from the Breviary of Love, last
quarter of the 14th century, Spain.
5. Links in a Chain
Robert Fludd’s illustration of the Great Chain of Being—the Elizabethan philosophy that every person
or thing occupied its own special link in the hierarchy of God’s creation—demonstrates the difficulty
of reconciling circular and vertical paradigms in one image. At the top of the image is a cloud,
representing God, linked to the female form of Sophia, or wisdom. She is in turn linked to the
sciences and arts, which are ringed by the Minerals, Vegetables and Animals, which are then orbited
by the planets, the sun and the moon. Within any of these rings, it is hard to indicate the position of
any particular constituent. For instance, Fludd thought man the highest order of animal and fish the
lowest, but the conditions of superiority and inferiority are a poor fit within a circle or sphere.
Precisely because of this limitation, concentric circles have been recognized as a particularly
effective way to represent the social structure of premodern cultures—cultures in which roles are
quite fixed and the groups to which individuals belong are all located on the same hierarchy. As
the sociologist Georg Simmel explains in his 1955 book, Conflict and the Web of Group
Affiliations:
Lord of the Flies
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FAST FACTS about Social Networks:
Definitions Excerpted from Bernice Pescosolido
(IU Distinguished Professor of Sociology) “The Sociology
of Social Networks” in The Handbook of 21st Century
Sociology
The individual’s relation to society is a
chicken-or-egg scenario:
“Society arises from the individual and the individual
arises out of association.” (Simmel, 1955 p. 163)
“Individuals are neither puppets of the social structure
nor purely rational, calculating individuals.” (210)
Network ties are not universally good:
Social interactions can be positive or negative, helpful
or harmful. They can integrate individuals into a
community and, just as powerfully, place stringent
isolating regulations on behavior. (210)
More ties aren’t necessarily better:
As Durkheim (1951) pointed out, too much oversight
(regulation) or support (integration) can be stifling and
repressive. (211)
Robert Fludd, The
Great Chain of Being,
in Utriusque Cosmi
ca. 1617-1621
a premodern man could be a member of a guild, which
in turn was part of a wider confederation of guilds. A
burgher may have been a citizen of a particular town and
this town may have belonged to a federation of towns,
such as the Hanse. An individual could not directly join
a larger social circle but could become involved in it by
virtue of membership in a smaller one.
Simmel contrasts this structure to the modern social environment, in
which people form multiple connections, some of which may overlap
and some of which may conflict with each other.
Modern man’s family involvements are separated from
his occupational and religious activities. This means that
each individual occupies a distinct position in the intersection
of many circles. The greater the number of possible
combinations of membership, the more each individual tends
toward a unique location in the social sphere. Although he
may share membership with other individuals in one or
several circles, he is less likely to be located at exactly the
same intersection as anyone else.
Strong is not necessarily better than weak:
“Strong” ties are not necessarily optimal because
“weak” ties often act as a bridge to different information
and resources (Granovetter 1982), and holes in network
structures (Burt 1980) provide opportunities that can
be exploited. (211)
The influence of one social network can be
counteracted by another:
“Family, peer, and official school-based networks, for
example, may reinforce messages or clash in priorities
for teenagers.” (210)
Social networks are constantly changing:
Networks across all levels are dynamic, not static,
structures and processes. (211)
There is not a fixed method for identifying and
tracking social networks:
“deciding which kinds of social networks are of interest,
how to elicit the ties, and how to track their dynamics
remain critical issues. (211)
Social networks impact your health:
Cardiologists know this. (212)
Social ties are not always consciously chosen.
Genetics, personality and biology determine what
ties we forge. (217)
SOME KEY TERMS:
Sociogram: the bubble and string visualization of a social
network, for example:
Node, atom, actor, unit: the entity that forms and sustains
a social relationship. This may be an individual, but it
could also be a family, an organization, a nation, or any
other social group.
Tie, link, relationship: the connections noted and
measured are called social ties.
Isolate: a unit that has no ties to a social structure.
Holes: sites in a network in which there are few or no
connections.
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6. Dots and Strings
An important branch of sociology researches and illustrates these complex modern attachments,
often by depicting them as sociograms (a sociogram is a diagram consisting of nodes and lines
that represent the relationships within a
group). This sociogram of Shakespeare’s
Hamlet illustrates the isolation that can result
from the uniqueness of a modern individual’s social role. Notice how Hamlet’s two
principal social circles fail to overlap, leaving
him alone and stuck between two worlds.
Sociogram of Hamlet, in Alan J. Daly,
“Data, Dyads, and Dynamics: Exploring
Data Use and Social Networks in
Educational Improvement” Teachers
College Record, 2012.
The terms in the bubbles are those
that sociologists use to describe the
characteristics of a particular network.
7. Concentric Circles
Because they promise a shared experience, very different from the detachment that Hamlet
suffers, Simmel’s symmetrical, concentric patterns tend be the starting point of utopian societies.
The planned city of Palmanova, built on the outskirts of Venice in the last decade of the
sixteenth century (construction began in 1593), was designed and constructed to look like an
earthly paradise: a central, organizing figure of authority (housed in the tower in the middle of the
star) surrounded by a community whose
members are connected by open and
easy-to-navigate roads.
Though the experiment was a
failure (no one wanted to leave Venice
for this early effort in planned living), it
demonstrates the close ties between
the archeological mapping of a society
and the social experience it aims to
orchestrate.
Anonymous, the Map of Palmaviva, in
Civitates Orbis Terrarum, 1572-1680
Lord of the Flies
8. Targets and Stars
The distinct, star-shaped plan of Palmaviva is therefore
evoked in this early example of a target-shaped
sociogram, in which the connections forged across the
concentric circles of a classroom’s social structure
look a bit like a star.
Sociogram of a First-Grade
Classroom, in M. L. Northway,
A Primer of Sociometry, 1952.
9. Islands as Utopian Social Planning
Maps are therefore a useful way for utopias to convey their social values—we
can think of them as sociograms translated onto imagined landscapes. In the
frontispiece to Thomas More’s Utopia, the island shares the eye-pleasing
symmetry and concentric structure of Palmanova’s design—in fact, Palmanova
was designed with More’s plan in mind.
We should consider, then, what the topography of Golding’s island might
tells us about the world of Lord of the Flies.
Sir Thomas More, colorized
“frontispiece of Utopia, 1516.
10. Islands as Dystopian Social Planning
Perhaps its mountain top will remind us of the zombie food chain, or of Dante’s inferno, which is
more or less a volcano flipped upside down (it’s useful to know that the title, Lord of the Flies, is
taken from the Old Testament, where it describes the devil). Perhaps the decidedly asymmetrical,
Illustration of the Island, posted on the teacher’s blog:
http://watsonwork.wordpress.com/2012/01/page/2/
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uncentralized and haphazard distribution of locations will exacerbate the detachment of some
survivors of the plane crash from others. Or perhaps the rigid, single circle that encloses all of
the boys closes down any opportunity for individualism. In such a tightly controlled, pre-modern
culture, those who don’t fit within the social structure are liable to suffer exile or even death.
Model of the set for Cardinal Stage Company’s production
of Lord of the Flies, designed by Mark Smith.
Teachers
Consider having your students draw a sociogram of the Island community in Lord of the Flies
(since the shape of its social structure changes, you might assign different groups the task
of representing it at different key moments). Invite your students to take their cues from the
maps and illustrations included in this essay.
See http://mrshrin.blogspot.com/2013/05/how-to-create-sociogram.html for some great
examples of student work of this type. (A Google search for “sociogram and literature” will
take you straight to the blog post on sociograms for “Mrs Hrin’s Class.” )
Lord of the Flies
Utopian and dystopian experiments are not limited to fiction or philosophy. There is a long and
fascinating history of utopian societies founded by idealists, zealots, revolutionaries and swindlers.
One of them can be found quite close to home. In this essay, Kristen Bowden, a PhD candidate
in IU’s English department and former high school teacher, discusses her research on New
Harmony, Indiana, and the social experiment in utopian governance that it represents. Students,
teachers, and all others who find this material compelling will be glad to know that the archives at
the Lilly Library are open to all members of the community to explore. Bowden’s findings are also
beautifully curated in an online exhibit at the Lilly, which you can find at the following web address:
www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/digital/exhibitions/exhibits/show/ashton/sec4
Trans-Atlantic Connections:
A British Utopia on the American Frontier
by Mary Bowden, PhD student in English, Indiana University
“We’ve got to have rules and obey them. After all, we’re not
savages. We’re English, and the English are best at everything.”
— William Golding, Lord of the Flies
In 1834, William Ashton and a small group of followers left their home in the great industrial city of
Manchester, England. The group travelled across the Atlantic Ocean to America, took passage on a
half-built railway west, and finally followed a series of rutted dirt roads to what was then America’s
northwestern frontier. Their destination was a site near Mount
Carmel, Indiana, where they planned to found a utopian
community.
Ashton’s group, which called itself the Manchester
Social Community Company (or MSCC) was not unique.
Nineteenth-century America attracted a wave of British
utopian movements, which were drawn both by the country’s
reputation for religious freedom and by its abundance of
cheap land. Utopian emigrants tended to settle on the fringes
of American civilization: British-born Mother Ann Lee brought
her Shaker community to the frontier of upstate New York;
the English schoolmaster Thomas Hughes established the
town of Rugby, a refuge for the property-less second sons of
aristocratic families, in a remote part of Tennessee; and
Welsh social reformer Robert Owen settled his utopian
Philosophical beliefs: This document details the
community in rural New Harmony, Indiana. The American
“Objects and Views” of the early company.
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Timeline
1832 – William and Whiteley Ashton form the Social
Co-Operative Community, soon to be renamed the
Manchester Social Community Company (MSCC).
1834 – Ashton and a small group of emigrants travel
from Manchester, England, to Mount Carmel, Indiana.
frontier’s special attraction for British utopians was likely due in large
part to the availability of affordable land there. The characteristics
of this land were likewise important to emigrants. Frontier lands
were distant from large cities and the worrisome temptations that
they might present to utopian community members. Also – and
perhaps most importantly for the purpose of the MSCC – the
frontier presented the opportunity to begin life anew in a seemingly
1835 – The American branch of the MSCC purchases
land. The British branch becomes anxious about the
untouched wilderness.
endeavor, as communication from the American
Ashton and his followers had left England because they were
branch is infrequent.
distressed by the environmental devastation caused by Britain’s
1836 – Defections occur in the American branch, and
burgeoning Industrial Revolution. In one of many extracts copied
support falters in Britain. Whiteley and William Ashton
decide to dissolve the MSCC.
by Ashton before his plan to leave England was fully-formed, he
described a vision of a former England, in which “her vallies [were]
green with verdure.” He describes a morning stroll, “I had beheld
the sun smiling upon the fruitfulness, and the rains of heaven descending and bringing forth in
abundance... the crops of the earth” (Ashton mss.) Against this description of England as a pastoral
paradise, however, lay the bleak reality of nineteenth-century Manchester: grey, smoggy, and industrial,
where people worked in factories and had little contact with fields, crops, or verdant valleys. Ashton’s
near-contemporary, the poet William Blake, described a similar scene in his poem “The New
Jerusalem,” in which “dark Satanic mills” cover “England’s mountains green” (Blake 233). Although he
believed that the process of industrialization had obscured the earth’s beauty in England, Blake suggests
at the end of the poem that this process can be reversed: the British can begin again and build
“Jerusalem” anew (Blake 234). Ashton’s actions echo Blake’s admonition, but with a change of scene.
Blake saw England transformed back into the pastoral paradise it used to be, while Ashton and his
followers focused on the Indiana frontier as the place to build their utopia, or version of “Jerusalem.”
Land deed: This land deed is executed in William Ashton ‘s name,
although the community planned to hold all lands in common.
Stock card: The MSCC sold stock cards to fund
the journey of some emigrants to America.
Lord of the Flies
Ashton and the MSCC’s choice to settle near Mount Carmel demonstrates the influence of
contemporary British thinking about the American frontier environment. Travelers noted the lack of
middle-class comforts, from reliable railroads to regular meals. This spoke to the remoteness of the
frontier from all that was familiar – and so lent weight to the idea that one went to the frontier in order
to leave behind old ways. The look of the land was also de-familiarizing: in her 1832 book, the British
traveler and writer Fanny Trollope describes being frightened by the “dungeon forest” of trees growing
very closely together, while in 1842 Charles Dickens was distressed by the long, barren aspect of the
Looking Glass Prairie in Missouri (Trollope 77,
Dickens 202.) But even when the wilderness
of the American frontier frightened or
disturbed them, British writers about the
frontier also glimpsed the potential which lay
in its wildness. Ashton and the MSCC, as well
as other groups of utopian emigrants, saw in
the dense forests and empty prairies a place
which was “primeval” and “untouched”:
waiting to be cultivated or tamed by them.
Settling in the wilderness, for Ashton and his
followers, was like settling in an Eden. They
believed the American frontier was a paradise
preserved for those bold and enterprising
enough to begin the world anew.
Viewing a place as a paradise from
abroad is different from transforming the
wilderness into a utopian community,
however. Only a small part of the MSCC had
emigrated to the frontier. The rest of the
Company remained in England, raising
funds to support the American branch of
the enterprise. At the beginning of the
endeavor, the American and British branches
shared a desire to transform the wildness of
the land into a pastoral vision of pre-industrial
Britain. The English branch was eager to
mail the American MSCC British plants:
rose-currant bushes and gooseberry trees,
as well as seeds for the varieties of vegetables
typically grown in Britain (Ashton mss.)
Their actions suggest an (unspoken)
motivation to make the Indiana frontier look
like an English garden; in this way, they would
create pre-industrial Britain anew, abroad.
Letter from England: This letter from Whiteley Ashton and other members
of the British branch of the MSCC conveys the news from Britain, and
also urges the American branch of the MSCC to write more frequently.
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But as the months passed, it became clear that
the distance between the two branches strained
their relationship. Infrequent and unreliable mail
service on the frontier made the distance between
them seem even greater. William Ashton’s brother
Whiteley, who remained in England and was
the chief correspondent for the British branch,
explained to his brother that the lack of steady
communication was making British members
“low-spirited and uneasy.” At times the silence
between the two countries stretched for so long that
the British branch feared something terrible had
happened to their American brethren (“in fact we
almost thought you must be dead,” Whiteley wrote
his brother in a letter from May 5, 1835) (Ashton
mss.) While the British branch was frustrated by
Cloth design: This design by William Ashton – likely for cloth manufactured by the
infrequent
correspondence, the American branch
firm of Sawyer & Brackett – shows his continued interest in natural motifs.
faced desertion by some of its members, who took
with them deeds to tracts of land which the Company had purchased in common. As support from
England faltered and the American branch faced defections, the Ashton brothers decided in 1836 to
dissolve the MSCC altogether. Like many other trans-Atlantic utopias, the Ashtons’ plan for transforming
the Indiana frontier into an English pastoral had withered.
Postscript
The story of the MSCC is a story of connections: between England and America, the present-day
American frontier and England’s past, wilderness and civilization, and finally between brothers and
branches. In a proof of the strength of family ties, the Ashton brothers chose to become even closer
after the collapse of their utopian venture. Whiteley joined William Ashton in the Midwest, and together
the two became traveling cloth salesmen for the Cincinnati firm of Sawyer & Brackett. Ashton’s interest
in the wilderness had a second life in some of his cloth designs for the company, which featured
intricately-drawn flowers. Ironically, the Ashton brothers had tried to flee the industrial era in Britain,
but their work selling cloth in America helped promote the beginnings of the industrialization of the
American frontier.
Bibliography
Ashton, William.† MS 1820-1849.† Lilly Library, Bloomington, Indiana.
Blake, William. “The New Jerusalem.”† Immortal Poems of the English Language.† Ed. Oscar Williams.
† New York: Pocket Books, 1952.† 233-234.
Dickens, Charles. Ed. Patricia Ingham. American Notes for General Circulation. London: Penguin, 2004 (1842).
Trollope, Fanny. Domestic Manners of the Americans. Ed. Pamela Neville-Sington. London: Penguin, 1997 (1832).
Williams, Raymond. The Country and the City.† Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973.
Mary Bowden is a PhD student in the English Department at Indiana University. She studies Victorian literature and
travel writing.
Lord of the Flies
Name That -Ism: A Quick Glossary of
Some Systems of Government
(definitions derived from the Oxford English Dictionary)
Utopia: An imaginary island, depicted by Sir Thomas
More as enjoying a perfect social, legal, and political
system, now used to indicate any ideal region,
country, or locality, either imaginary or unreachable.
Also: an impossibly ideal scheme, esp. for social
improvement.
Dystopia: An imaginary place or condition in which
everything is as bad as possible, especially the social
system and government.
Authoritarianism: any political system that exercises
its governance by a principle of unelected rule.
Variations on this theme: absolutism, despotism,
tyranny.
“Join or Die,” cartoon by Ben Franklin, Pennsylvania Gazette, May 9, 1754.
Recycled from its original use during the French and Indian War, this cartoon
was used to incite support for the American Revolution and opposition to
Colonial authoritanianism. In this powerful image, connectedness is the only
path to life.
Fascism: usually defined as right-wing authoritarianism, characterized by zealous nationalism,
opposition to majority rule, and the persecution of dissent. Instantiated by the government of Benito
Mussolini and often exemplified by Hitler’s Nazism, though this is an extreme case.
Totalitarianism: a system of government that tolerates only one political party, to which all other
institutions are subordinated, and which usually demands the complete subservience of the
individual to the State. Exemplified by Maoist communism in China, or Stalinism in the Soviet Union.
Colonialism: the acquisition of land and resources in one territory for the profit of people in another.
An unequal exchange of property and goods for authoritarian governance.
Nihilism: a total rejection of prevailing religious beliefs, moral principles, laws, etc., often from a
sense of despair and the belief that life is devoid of meaning. Also more generally: negativity,
destructiveness, hostility to accepted beliefs or established institutions.
Communism: A theory that advocates the abolition of private ownership, all property being vested in
the community, and the organization of labor for the common benefit of all members; a system of
social organization in which this theory is put into practice.
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20
How Would You Rule Your Island?
by Shakespeare and Ellen MacKay
Lord of the Flies paints a pretty dark picture of boys left to devise their own system of rule.
Shakespeare gives us another view of island self-governance in one of his last works.
The following are some lines that the wise courtier, Gonzalo, speaks when he is marooned on
(what he thinks is) an uninhabited island in The Tempest.
What sort of government does he describe?
How would you characterize its social structure?
How might it look if you drew its principles as a sociogram?
All things in common nature should produce
Without sweat or endeavour: treason, felony,
Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine,
Would I not have; but nature should bring forth,
Of its own kind, all foison, all abundance,
To feed my innocent people. (1.2.175-180)
Robert Bell's illustration of The Tempest's magic island, c. 1900, Collection of
Folger Shakespeare Library (for a complete database of images like this one,
see http://luna.folger.edu/luna/servlet.)
Lord of the Flies
From Page to Stage: What Happens
When You Turn a Novel into a Play?
by Ellen MacKay
“They walked along, two continents of experience
and feeling unable to communicate”
— William Golding, Lord of the Flies
This adaptation of Lord of the Flies was written by Cardinal Stage’s artistic director Randy White
just for this production. White’s ambition was to stay as close to the novel as possible, without
losing any of its mythic, mystic atmosphere. But in some places, Golding narrated ideas or events
in a way that isn’t possible to reproduce in theatrical performance. Below you will find two cases
in which the dramatic script diverges from the novel’s narrative. In the first example, the novel
can leave unsaid a spoken exchange that a play cannot conceal. What do you think is lost or
gained in each case? In the second, the novel expresses information that cannot be spoken by a
character on the stage. Again, what is the price of this loss? Did you find that the actor transmitted
any of this information in his performance? Do you think the play should have used a narrator or
voiceover to speak these lines?
From the book
Simon was close to him, laying hands on the conch. Simon felt a perilous necessity
to speak; but to speak in assembly was a terrible thing to him.
“Maybe,” he said hesitantly, “maybe there is a beast.”
The assembly cried out savagely and Ralph stood up in amazement. “You, Simon?
You believe in this?”
“I don’t know,” said Simon. His heartbeats were choking him. “But. . . ” The storm broke.
“Sit down!”
“Shut up!”
“Take the conch!”
“Sod you!”
“Shut up!”
Ralph shouted.
“Hear him! He’s got the conch!”
“What I mean is. . . maybe it’s only us.”
“Nuts!”
That was from Piggy, shocked out of decorum. Simon went on.
“We could be sort of. . . ”
Simon became inarticulate in his effort to express mankind’s essential illness.
Inspiration came to him.
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“What’s the dirtiest thing there is?”
As an answer Jack dropped into the uncomprehending silence that followed it the one crude
expressive syllable. Release was immense. Those littluns who had climbed back on the twister
fell off again and did not mind. The hunters were screaming with delight.Simon’s effort fell
about him in ruins; the laughter beat him cruelly and he shrank away defenceless to his seat.
From the play
Simon reaches for the conch.
Simon (hesitating) Maybe, maybe there is a beast.
Ralph You, Simon? You believe in this?
Simon I don’t know—but…
Roger Sit down!
Maurice Shut up!
Bill Take the conch!
Henry Sod you—
Maurice & Roger Shut up!
Ralph (shouting over top) Hear him! He’s got the conch.
Simon What I mean is… maybe it’s only us.
Piggy Nuts!
Simon We could be sort of… (struggles to articulate a barely glimpsed insight)
Something inside us. An illness. (beat) What’s the dirtiest thing there is?
The boys contemplate this. And then…
Jack Shit.
The boys scream with delight. Simon shrinks back.
From the book
The tide was coming in and there was only a narrow strip of firm beach between the water
and the white, stumbling stuff near the palm terrace. Ralph chose the firm strip as a path
because he needed to think, and only here could he allow his feet to move without having
to watch them. Suddenly, pacing by the water, he was overcome with astonishment. He
found himself understanding the wearisomeness of this life, where every path was an
improvisation and a considerable part of one’s waking life was spent watching one’s feet.
He stopped, facing the strip; and remembering that first enthusiastic exploration as though
it were part of a brighter childhood, he smiled jeeringly. He turned then and walked back
toward the platform with the sun in his face. The time had come for the assembly and as he
walked into the concealing splendors of the sunlight he went carefully over the points of his
speech. There must be no mistake about this assembly, no chasing imaginary.
He lost himself in a maze of thoughts that were rendered vague by his lack of words to
express them. Frowning, he tried again.
Lord of the Flies
This meeting must not be fun, but business.
At that he walked faster, aware all at once of urgency and the declining sun and a little wind
created by his speed that breathed about his face. This wind pressed his grey shirt against his
chest so that he noticed—in this new mood of comprehension—how the folds were stiff
like card- board, and unpleasant; noticed too how the frayed edges of his shorts were
making an uncomfortable, pink area on the front of his thighs. With a convulsion of the
mind, Ralph discovered dirt and decay, under- stood how much he disliked perpetually
flicking the tangled hair out of his eyes, and at last, when the sun was gone, rolling noisily
to rest among dry leaves. At that he began to trot.
The beach near the bathing pool was dotted with groups of boys wait- ing for the assembly.
They made way for him silently, conscious of his grim mood and the fault at the fire.
The place of assembly in which he stood was roughly a triangle; but irregular and sketchy,
like everything they made. First there was the log on which he himself sat; a dead tree that
must have been quite exceptionally big for the platform. Perhaps one of those legendary
storms of the Pacific had shifted it here. This palm trunk lay parallel to the beach, so that
when Ralph sat he faced the island but to the boys was a darkish figure against the shimmer
of the lagoon. The two sides of the triangle of which the log was base were less evenly
defined. On the right was a log polished by restless seats along the top, but not so large as
the chief’s and not so comfortable. On the left were four small logs, one of them— the
farthest—lamentably springy. Assembly after assembly had broken up in laughter when
someone had leaned too far back and the log had whipped and thrown half a dozen boys
backwards into the grass. Yet now, he saw, no one had had the wit—not himself nor Jack,
nor Piggy— to bring a stone and wedge the thing. So they would continue enduring the
ill-balanced twister, because, because.. . . Again he lost himself in deep waters.
Grass was worn away in front of each trunk but grew tall and untrod- den in the center of the
triangle. Then, at the apex, the grass was thick again because no one sat there. All round the
place of assembly the grey trunks rose, straight or leaning, and supported the low roof of
leaves. On two sides was the beach; behind, the lagoon; in front, the darkness of the island.
Ralph turned to the chief’s seat. They had never had an assembly as late before. That was
why the place looked so different. Normally the underside of the green roof was lit by a
tangle of golden reflections, and their faces were lit upside down—like, thought Ralph,
when you hold an electric torch in your hands. But now the sun was slanting in at one side,
so that the shadows were where they ought to be.
Again he fell into that strange mood of speculation that was so foreign to him. If faces were
different when lit from above or below—what was a face? What was anything? Ralph
moved impatiently. The trouble was, if you were a chief you had to think, you had to be
wise. And then the occasion slipped by so that you had to grab at a decision. This made
you think; because thought was a valuable thing, that got results.
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Only, decided Ralph as he faced the chief’s seat, I can’t think. Not like Piggy.
Once more that evening Ralph had to adjust his values. Piggy could think. He could go step
by step inside that fat head of his, only Piggy was no chief. But Piggy, for all his ludicrous body,
had brains. Ralph was a specialist in thought now, and could recognize thought in another.
The sun in his eyes reminded him how time was passing, so he took the conch down from
the tree and examined the surface. Exposure to the air had bleached the yellow and pink to
near-white, and transparency. Ralph felt a kind of affectionate reverence for the conch, even
though he had fished the thing out of the lagoon himself. He faced the place of assembly
and put the conch to his lips.
The others were waiting for this and came straight away. Those who were aware that a ship
had passed the island while the fire was out were subdued by the thought of Ralph’s anger;
while those, including the litluns who did not know, were impressed by the general air of
solemnity. The place of assembly filled quickly; Jack, Simon, Maurice, most of the hunters, on
Ralph’s right; the rest on the left, under the sun. Piggy came and stood outside the triangle.
This indicated that he wished to listen,but would not speak; and Piggy intended it as a gesture
of disapproval.
“The thing is: we need an assembly.”
No one said anything but the faces turned to Ralph were intent. He flourished the conch.
He had learnt as a practical business that funda- mental statements like this had to be said
at least twice, before everyone understood them. One had to sit, attracting all eyes to the
conch, and drop words like heavy round stones among the little groups that crouched
or squatted. He was searching his mind for simple words so that even the littluns would
understand what the assembly was about. Later perhaps, practised debaters—Jack, Maurice,
Piggy—would use their whole art to twist the meeting: but now at the beginning the
subject of the debate must be laid out clearly.
“We need an assembly. Not for fun. Not for laughing and falling off the log”—the group of
littluns on the twister giggled and looked at each other—“not for making jokes, or for”—he
lifted the conch in an effort to find the compelling word—“for cleverness. Not for these
things. But to put things straight.”
He paused for a moment.
“I’ve been alone. By myself I went, thinking what’s what. I know what we need. An
assembly to put things straight. And first of all, I’m speak- ing.”
He paused for a moment and automatically pushed back his hair. Piggy tiptoed to the
triangle, his ineffectual protest made, and joined the others.
Ralph went on.
“We have lots of assemblies. Everybody enjoys speaking and being together. We decide
things. But they don’t get done. We were going to have water brought from the stream and
Lord of the Flies
left in those coconut shells under fresh leaves. So it was, for a few days. Now there’s no
water. The shells are dry. People drink from the river.”
From the play
Ralph moves down and in the fading twilight he blows the conch, long and loud.
The boys move down with torches from the fire. They settle in and Ralph looks around
at the eerie faces. Piggy stands outside the group. The distant sound of breakers
and, at last, Ralph addresses the assembled boys.
Ralph The thing is, we need an assembly. Not for fun—not for laughing and falling
off the log—not for making jokes or for—for cleverness. Not for these things. But
to put things straight. I’ve been alone—thinking. We have lots of assemblies and
everybody enjoys speaking and being together. We decide things. But they don’t get
done! We were going to have water brought from the stream and left in those coconut
shells under fresh leaves. So it was for a few days. Now there’s no water. People
drink from the river.
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If you liked Lord of the Flies… Some Books Worth Exploring
Ship Breaker, by Paulo Bacigalupi
In a post-apocalyptic future, Nailer works as a ship breaker and
salvager along the Gulf Coast. When he finds Nita nearly dead on
a ship he is scavenging, Nailer decides to help save her from his
father, who would sell Nita to her family’s enemies.
Delerium, by Lauren Oliver
Lena looks forward to receiving the government-mandated cure that
prevents the delirium of love and leads to a safe, predictable, and
happy life, until ninety-five days before her eighteenth birthday and
her treatment, when she falls in love.
Matched, by Allie Conde
All her life, Cassia has never had a choice. The Society dictates
everything: when and how to play, where to work, where to live, what
to eat and wear, when to die, and most importantly to Cassia as she
turns 17, whom to marry. When she is matched with her best friend
Xander, things couldn’t be more perfect. But why did her neighbor
Ky’s face show up on her match disk as well?
1984, by George Orwell
Winston hates the system, hates Big Brother. He knows that his rebellion
puts him in terrible danger and that the Thought Police will find him.
Maze Runner #1, Scorch Trials #2, Death Cure #3,
by James Dashner
Thomas and his friends all woke up in a box, in a deadly maze with
no memories. Their mission is to find a way out, discover who did
this, and—most puzzling—why?
Wither, by Lauren DeStefano
At sixteen, Rhine Ellery has four years to live. After a botched effort to
create a perfect race, all females live to twenty, and males to twentyfive. While geneticists seek a miracle antidote, orphans roam the
streets and polygamy abounds. After Rhine is kidnapped and sold as
a bride, she is desperate to escape from her husband’s strange world,
including a sinister father-in-law and a slew of sister wives not to be
trusted. On the cusp of her seventeenth birthday, Rhine attempts to
flee—but finds a society spiraling into anarchy.
Brave New World¸ by Aldous Huxley
The astonishing novel Brave New World, originally published in 1932,
presents Aldous Huxley’s vision of the future — of a world utterly
transformed. Through the most efficient scientific and psychological
engineering, people are genetically designed to be passive and
therefore consistently useful to the ruling class. This powerful work
of speculative fiction sheds a blazing critical light on the present and
is considered to be Huxley’s most enduring masterpiece.
House of the Scorpion, by Nancy Farmer
Matteo Alacrán was not born; he was harvested. His DNA came from
El Patrón, lord of a country called Opium—a strip of poppy fields
lying between the United States and what was once called Mexico.
He is a boy, but most consider him a monster—except for El Patrón.
El Patrón loves Matt as he loves himself, because Matt is himself.
As Matt struggles to understand his existence, he is threatened by a
sinister cast of characters. Escape is the only chance Matt has to
survive. But escape is no guarantee of freedom, because Matt is
marked by his difference in ways he doesn’t even suspect.
Z for Zachariah, by Richard O’Brian
A nuclear holocaust has destroyed civilization. Ann Burden believes
she is the last person alive until she finds another survivor. She
discovers there are worse things than being alone.
Life as We Knew It, by Susan Beth Pfeffer
Through journal entries sixteen-year-old Miranda describes her
family’s struggle to survive after a meteor hits the moon, causing
worldwide tsunamis, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions.
Divergent, by Veronica Roth
In a future Chicago, sixteen-year-old Beatrice Prior must choose
among five predetermined factions to define her identity for the rest
of her life, a decision made more difficult when she discovers that
she is an anomaly who does not fit into any one group, and that the
society she lives in is not perfect after all.
The Forest of Hands and Teeth, by Carrie Ryan
The rules of Mary’s world are simple: watch the fence and obey
The Sisterhood. The unconsecrated rule the world outside of the
fence and The Sisterhood says there is no world beyond the fence.
Then where did the strange girl in the red vest come from?
Unwind, by Neal Schusterman
After the second Civil War was fought over reproductive rights, it was
determined that life is untouchable from conception to age thirteen,
at which point you can be unwound and have your organs donated so
“life” does not end. Connor, Risa and Lev are set to be unwound…
Ashes, Ashes, by Jo Treggiari
In a future Manhattan devastated by catastrophes and epidemics,
sixteen-year-old Lucy survives alone until she is forced to join Aidan
and his band, where they learn she is the target of Sweepers, who
kidnap and infect people with plague.
Uglies, by Scott Westerfeld
Tally can’t wait to be sixteen and finally turn pretty. Shay isn’t sure she
wants to become pretty so she decides to run away. Tally follows after
her friend and together they discover that being made into a Pretty is
far more than anyone ever thought.
Partials, by Dan Wells
In a post-apocalyptic eastern seaboard ravaged by disease and war
with a manmade race of people called Partials, the chance at a future
rests in the hands of Kira Walker, a sixteen-year-old medic in training.
All These Things I’ve Done, by Gabrielle Zevin
In a future where chocolate and caffeine are contraband, teenage cell
phone use is illegal, and water and paper are carefully rationed, sixteenyear-old Anya Balanchine finds herself thrust unwillingly into the
spotlight as heir apparent to an important New York City crime family.
This bibliography was compiled in large part by the youth services librarians at Sharon Public Library in Sharon, Massachusetts. For reading
recommendations by teens for teens, see the Monroe County Public Library webpage http://www.monroe.lib.in.us/teens/teens-reviews