Book on Fire

THIS is a story with a fractured truth; it expounds that the spirit of man, the sum of all his endeavors, all his desires and efforts, will yield ultimately evil, because his nature itself is evil. I contend to this, because there is a good side to man, and though weeds may grow among the wheat, the harvest will still yield wheat, only whether the wheat is much or little.

This story spells a fractured truth, because though its events can happen, it will only happen in the setting and circumstance provided; to tell a story about a coin that lands on its edge is not to say that this is the whole summary of the tendencies of falling coins, yet this is exactly what the story is doing; the vital footnote, that takes into consideration the possibilities of other circumstances or factors that are not now present but could have been, is not included. People hail the book for insight, where actually short-sighted insight is merely partially salvaged blindness.

The degeneration of established society, the equations showing how law and rationality cannot exist, all the conclusions that culminate in the final Hunt for Ralph, the Annointed, the King, Good Leadership, the death of Wisdom, Piggy, will happen in the absence of established society, but not wholly because of the evil nature of man, but because of the very definition of society.

Society has factions and personages with established roles, classes according to birth, race, wealth, skill and mental ability. societies will have communities, and a civilisation, an aged empire, is itself a large community of communities; any given society will have an identity. On the island, society cannot be said to exist, because none of these things, these classes and identities, exist. The only structure, a shabby shack of a structure, at that, is the boys' choir. Naturally, this gives it an edge, because it has an Identity. The two opposing forces are not rendered equal, even from the beginning, because Ralph has to Forge a group, but Jack has a group already Forged. Should a rally call be given, it is of course immeasurably more probable that Jack will have more support, because his group has more Identity, which he later enforces by calling them Warriors, so therefore the support goes to him not because of the merit of his ideas, but because of his Identity, and the prime proof of this is that the choir boys even agreed with Ralph when Jack made them choose sides, but in the end thay sneaked off to Jack, because his Identity was there. Ralph lost his support, partially because his group has no Identity.

Another attribute of an advanced society: the advanced society may use the power of the Conch, democracy. There is no advanced society, so the conch slowly loses power as the memory of the advanced society the children came from as time passes. This does not mean that man is basically a tyrant, or an arnarchist, but that without an advanced society, there is no wholeness, as-one-ness, unity, or even the idea that the individual's indifference or selfishness can destroy society; there is only the Self that wants pork. Without the feeling of responsibility for the wellfare of the society that comes from all these things, democracy, the Conch, cannot exist. The power next in line is the right of power, bcause if one will not care for his fellow man, he has only himself to worry about.

It is implied in this story, this FICTION, that man is basically a savage, because of his embrace of war paint, his cries for blood and his rejection of democracy, all the important tableus in the story, but i would like to point out that society must start with savagery. Society is this structure of connec-its and lincoln logs and extravagant lego towers, because it has many complicated ideas, many identities, resting in relation to each other. Savagery, the idea of the tribe, has only one identity, the Tribe. In the way a single celled organism must exist to enable to evolution of more complex organisms, the Tribe must exist in order for, much later, the Empire, the advanced society, to exist. In the case of this story, when the advanced society is removed, so far away it might as well have been destroyed, society must begin anew. Man degenerates into ape, because if a new society is to start, it has to begin with savagery.

And one other thing. This story has no chicks.

As decieving as the above sentence may seem, it serves its purpose, because to have within that group of survivers a female voice, a female mind, differently wired in general and typically unburdened by tetosterone in particular, the flow and the outcome of the story would be different.

For starters, Jack might not have such a tight claim on his leadership of the choir, because if girls were present (altos and sopranos, the female equivalent of bases and tenors), then there would be more than one person able to reach the high C note, because girls in general have higher, flutier voices. In fact, Piggy might even exploit this when things come to a head between him (plus Raplh) against Jack: "You want to lead the boys, but you can't, cos Jackie sings like a ger-erl!" If there is anything the megalomaniac cannot overcome, it is an insult on his greatest pride. It would ruffle him, and he would not have looked so great, and his loss of uniqueness, coupled with not possessing any particular skill, might have ultimately drawn the choir away from him. The Hunt would not have begun, because Jack would have no fellow Hunters.

Jack would lose power if well-mocked. Piggy loses what power he has in this story precisely because he is mocked, once by Ralph, for the cohesion of the group, once by Jack, to reinforce his own power, the support of his people. If a tender hearted older girl, about the same age as Ralph or Jack, were present, this could have been stopped; Wisdom would still be alive, becuase a protective voice, a mother or an elder sister's voice said "stop being so mean, Jack." Wisdom is a weapon of the civilised man, and Ralph may have yet won the day if piggy had not been killed. (And of course he would have won if they had more time, more people, if everything was equal, but it certainly did not help him that a savage dropped a stone and cracked the egghead, ironically with one of man's first machines, the lever.) On top of this, Piggy has been set up from the beginning, ready to be made fun of, because of his chubbiness, his baldness and clumsiness. If he had been more socially acceptable, if Wisdom had not been hindered by deformity (for Wisdom is not supposed to look stupid), Wisdom, Piggy, would not have been such an easy target with such an important role.

Jack does not really care about the little 'uns because all of them are boys, and he displays no courtesy or sense of place, or reason when on the council. If he had acted with the same callousness towards a girl, the same indifference to a younger girl, or to an older one at the calling of the conch, at a council, they might have, in imitation of an older woman/girl, flicked their hair, tilted their heads, and pooh-pooh'd with a gently superior tone, "huh, so much for being a gentleman". This would have tipped every argument towards civility, and the impulse to interrupt and grab for the conch would not have been so strong so as to undo Piggy's voice, because everyone would want to be a lady and a gentleman. Not to be prejudiced, but this idea of "ladies and gentlemen" come from the way girls play. They play house, dolls and tea, while boys play cowboys and injuns, soldiers, knights and warriors. This factor would allow equal weight of word between Hunter and Builder, Jack and Ralph. This factor might have allowed Ralph to win.

So, of course, in a group composed of males, Jack would gain more support, because he appeals to maleness, hunting, fighting, meat and war. If he had tried his rallying tactics, his Temptation of Adam with a Kebab, on a group with equal parts male and female, the numbers would not be so one-sided, because Eve would not be tempted. Along with Piggy and the bulk of the little 'uns (they had not joined Jack when he left to start his own tribe, and only came when he had pork), this may have yet swayed the tide.

Indeed, the Power of Pork might have been weakened, and the number of those who defect to Jack would be lessened, because girls, in their play roles as mothers and in their roles in the barbarian household as the primary gatherers of nature's bounty, might have provided more fruit, better fruit, and riper nuts to feed the children. The Appeal of Pork would not have been so great. It might even have been equaled, if the girls, in spending more time picking fruits and nuts, found a cluster of particularly fragrant/ succulent strawberries, blueberries, mangoes, apricots, peaches that the Hunters did not find or even bothered to search for.

One weapon utilised by womenfolk in domestic battles is the sword of the shriek and the tear trap. Ralph's force had fought Jack's and lost, because he could not equal Jack in the weight of spears and knives, but if there were girls, and one of them was gashhed or hit so badly that she cried, the Hunters/Warriors would not be so lusty in their hunger for blood. They would be uncertain, and they would see what they were doing, Hunting their fellow man, as they chased Ralph. Jack would, if only for once, be Wrong, morally, because by his orders the Hunters had done the ultimate sin of the barbarian: hitting a girl.

In passing, the trap of tears and the sword of the shriek would not work if a boy used them, because he would be considered a wuss, but a lady who sheds tears, however young, would be a lady in distress.   

I drive the opinion that none of these things are included because the heart of the novel, the intent has never been a wholistic disection of humanity and human behavior, but an exercise in prejudice against man's being and ultimate nature, where the conclusion has already been drawn before ever a word was written. This story is not a good picture of mankind, because it was never meant to be; the evil, selfish side has been given too much of an advantage, given a metaphorical skateboard, if you will, while the altruistic, humanistic side has been hamstrung before it could walk. For the sake of the conclusion, the dramatic, thunders and lightning and gothic opera music of its culmination, for the sake of the story, not the truth, the end of it all must be so: Evil, the power of Baal, must triumph.

A story written to satisfy the author's ego, to prove he is right, is rarely ever a good story. It may come in the guise of leather bindings, hard backs, gold embossed letters. It may have a great narrative voice, a great symphonic score to back all its poetry. It may even have a page keeper, gracefully sewn into the spine, velvet red, sombre black, or royal purple. Yet so, such a story is, and will always be, forever and ever, amen, trash.

More fittingly, filth, a thing that ultimately gathers flies.