Would Lord of the Flies be the same story if it was boys and girls stranded on the island instead of just boys?

Submitted by Ill_Definition8074 t3_127w8cn in books

I'm asking this question because I remembered a conversation I had with my brother years ago where he said Lord of the Flies was about toxic masculinity. I had read the book in high school and I didn't agree with his interpretation but thinking back on it now I wonder if the story would go the same way if the plane that crashed on the island had both boys and girls instead of just boys (there actually is a Filipino film version of the story which has a mixed gender group of castaways). In my opinion it would happen the same because I think the story's themes about the breakdown of civilization, the destruction of social order, paranoia leading to violence transcend gender. Women along with men have been involved in violent acts in all of history. For example some of the most violent acts of the French Revolution were lead by women. So I think things would've gone pretty much the same if the story featured both boys and girls.

A quick google search reveals I'm not the first to consider this point. So what do you think about this? Would things go different or would they stay the same if both boys and girls were stranded on the island in Lord of the Flies?

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Dusty_Chapel t1_jegfojk wrote

Anyone who’s been to an all-boys school knows that boys become a special kind of feral when there are no girls around, especially in that preadolescent stage. I’d wager that it would’ve been an entirely different dynamic if there were girls on that plane.

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schreyerauthor t1_jeg3q9l wrote

A documentary team in the UK put a bunch of boys in a house for a weekend and filmed them. No adults. Just middle school boys and all strangers before the experiment. They repeated it with girls. Both are up on YouTube in full.

Middle schoolers have underdeveloped brains so its fairly predictable that both groups get up to some stupid shit but its the little differences that are interesting.

As for mixing boys and girls, I'm a cynic so if they were over the age of 14 I'd guess it wouldn't go very well for the girls, especially if it was a plane crash on an island and not a single weekend in a house with a clear escape time and cameras rolling. Under 14, its hard to say.

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edesanna t1_jeg447j wrote

Yeah, 10-year-olds, especially when girls are starting to hit puberty before the boys, I could see it being virtually the same story

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farseer4 t1_jegquxb wrote

The problem is that this is not real life, but fiction. Therefore it would go however the writer wanted it to go.

In real life, they probably wouldn't be killing each other either way. Most people are gregarious, and they have an incentive to cooperate in order to procure food and shelter. (As long as there's enough food to be obtained, of course. Otherwise things will get ugly).

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RoseIsBadWolf t1_jegg5t7 wrote

Lord of the Flies stuff has happened and it has never been like LoftF. People generally cooperate to survive.

When society is lost, humans just build new societies. We like them.

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markireland t1_jegollm wrote

  1. Death row is almost all male. 2. Girls do mature earlier but there are mean girls. 3. I imagine couples forming with alliances.
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MorriganJade t1_jeg3kh8 wrote

I believe Golding said that he didn't put girls in because he didn't want to add sexuality, which is in itself wrong I think because sexuality can be gay as well. Personally I believe that given the assumption that kids would do that, then they would do it in a mixed group as well

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pearloz t1_jeg437b wrote

Oh you should watch Yellowjackets, it’s about an all girls soccer team whose plane crashes in the wilds of Canada

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[deleted] t1_jegbwno wrote

They’re definitely going for the “girls will be violent too” angle. Which I greatly appreciate.

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amazed_wanderer- t1_jeg99js wrote

The Wilds as well is another option tackling exactly the premise: what happens if the stranded are all girls vs what happens if they are all boys. Sadly cancelled, but the idea was quite good

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pearloz t1_jegdo8e wrote

Oh yes, I loved the first season, haven’t finished the second

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RustyMacbeth t1_jegmggs wrote

Yes, but there would be more rape.

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PH03N1X_404 t1_jeg9kst wrote

Of course things would still go to hell with both boys and girls on the island. It's not like having girls on the island would suddenly turn it into a peaceful, harmonious utopia. Human nature is savage and violent, and when you add in a life or death struggle for survival, all bets are off. Men and women are equally capable of violence and destruction, just different modus operandi.

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