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In Lord of the Flies, how did the kids arrive on the island and did all survive?
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In Lord of the Flies, the schoolboys crash-land on the tropical island when their plane is shot down. Once the nuclear war began, they were evacuated from their homes in Britain. Their plane is hit by a rocket, and they crash on an uninhabited island in the Pacific. It is not clear if every boy survived the crash, but the reader is told that the pilot died during the attack.
Lord of the Flies begins shortly after the boys' plane crashes on the island. As readers, we reassemble what happened from fragments of memory and conversation, as well as other clues.
A war is going on, and it appears the boys have been hastily put aboard a plane to be taken away to safety. We know it must have been a quick escape, as some of the boys didn't even have time to change out of their choir robes, indicating a choir practice was interrupted. When Ralph says to Piggy that his father, a naval commander, will save them, Piggy says that may not be likely:
Didn’t you hear what the pilot said? About the atom bomb? They’re all dead.
Apparently, an atom bomb exploded in England, and the boys were gotten out just in time.
Piggy informs the other boys that their "plane was shot down in flames."...
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Part of it ended up on the island, depositing some of the boys there, and another part floated out to sea: boys emerge from both parts of the wreckage.
The boys all appear to have briefly passed out during the crash. They reassemble in a disoriented, stunned way as Ralph blows into the conch. We don't know with any certainty if they have all survived, but given the large numbers of them and that fact that nobody is specifically mentioned as missing, we can assume that most or all survived, but not the pilot or any adults. Golding is particularly sketchy about these details, giving the reader just enough to go on to make it believable the boys are there alone.
The boys are students at an all-male boarding school in England during the World War. They are being evacuated as bombing has begun and the adults fear for the boys' safety. The plane is hit, supposedly by an enemy rocket or missile, during their evacuation to a safer location. This is how they end up on the island, and why they are not rescued more quickly. The plane went down in an area where there are probably many places/islands the boys could have gone, and it is not until the island is set on fire to smoke out Ralph that rescue ships locate them and zero in for rescue.
How do the boys end up on the island in Lord of the Flies?
William Golding's novel Lord of the Flies is set in a wartime era (we assume World War II although it is not explicitly stated in the text). In chapter one when Piggy and Ralph first meet on the island, it is clear that the boys were on an airplane together and have crash landed on the island. When the boys initially meet, they recount the crash.
“This is an island. At least I think it’s an island. That’s a reef out in the sea. Perhaps there aren’t any grownups anywhere.”
The fat boy looked startled.
“There was that pilot. But he wasn’t in the passenger cabin, he was up in front.”The fair boy was peering at the reef through screwed-up eyes.
“All them other kids,” the fat boy went on. “Some of them must have got out. They must have, mustn’t they?”The fair boy began to pick his way as casually as possible toward the water. He tried to be offhand and not too obviously uninterested, but the fat boy hurried after him.
“Aren’t there any grownups at all?”“I don’t think so.” (7).
This dialogue indicates that there are no adults on the island and that there were few adults on the plane initially. As Ralph and Piggy discuss the events that led up to the crash landing on the island, you learn more about the setting and the events that are occurring in England at the time. Ralph assumes that the pilot "must have flown off after he dropped us" (8). However, we quickly learn that there was some sort of accident that caused the plan to crash. Piggy assumes "we was attacked!" because as they crashed he "looked through one of them windows. [He] saw the other part of the plane. There were flames coming out of it" (8)
The plane leaves a "scar" on the island, but the actual aircraft is washed out to sea (with children still in it).
It is evident based on the initial character descriptions of Ralph, Piggy, Jack and the choir boys that the children are all in school uniforms and grouped by the school they attend.
These assumptions are also supported by historical events that occurred during World War II in England.
Due to the German campaign known as the Blitzkrieg or "lightening bombing" of London, there was a mass evacuation of people from Britain. The majority of these evacuees were children. Hence the evacuation became known as "Operation Pied Piper." According the BBC website, nearly three million people (the majority were children) were evacuated from cities around England. As a result of the evacuation, many families were separated and the children were accompanied by their teachers rather than their parents.
The following is a description of what evacuation day looked like in London.
In London, the schoolchildren sang 'The Lambeth Walk'. Elsewhere there were choruses of 'Wish Me Luck as You Wave Me Goodbye'. For most it was 'like going on an adventure': a phrase that is still uppermost in the minds of evacuees 60 years on.
'We marched to Waterloo Station behind our head teacher carrying a banner with our school's name on it,' says James Roffey, founder of the Evacuees Reunion Association. 'We all thought it was a holiday, but the only thing we couldn't work out was why the women and girls were crying."
References
How do the boys end up on the island in Lord of the Flies?
The castaway boys in William Golding's Lord of the Flies end up on the island when their plane crashes, leaving
... the long scar smashed into the jungle.
The boys are being evacuated from England, which is in the midst of a nuclear war, to Australia, where they will presumably be safe from the conflict in Europe. Although the plane may have only had engine trouble, it is almost certain that it was shot down by an enemy plane before crash-landing. A group of boys survive, but the wreckage is washed out to sea, probably taking other boys--dead and possibly alive--with it. No adults survive. Piggy claims in the first chapter that "We was attacked!", and that he saw the "other part of the plane" in flames when he looked from the window.
In Lord of the Flies, how do the boys end up on the island?
Writing in 1954, Golding sets his novel during a fictional atomic conflict, one that could be considered World War III. During the threat of imminent danger to their English homeland, the boys, prior to the start of the novel, had been gathered together for evacuation. This is suggested by the fact that the children respond immediately to the sound of the conch and give Ralph, the one who blows it, "the same simple obedience that they had given to the men with megaphones." The boys were loaded onto an airplane, without very many adults, and the plane left England just in the nick of time. Piggy explains to Ralph what he overheard from the pilot on the ship, pointing to the fact that all the boys' families may well be dead by now: "Didn't you hear what the pilot said? About the atom bomb? They're all dead."
As the novel opens, Ralph is making his way down the "scar" made through the jungle by the crashing plane. Piggy catches up to him and asks, "Where's the man with the megaphone?" It's clear the boys did not know personally any of the adults on board the plane. Ralph is under the mistaken impression that the pilot dropped the children off and then flew away, planning to return shortly. Piggy puts that notion to rest: "We was attacked! ... When we was coming down I looked through one of them windows. I saw the other part of the plane. There were flames coming out of it." Piggy explains that the ruined plane was dragged out to sea by the storm during the night. The adults and any children that were still in it would have been dragged out to sea as well and drowned.
The logistics of how the boys got off the plane are unclear. It seems that a man with a megaphone was getting boys off the plane after it crash-landed on the beach. As he went into the wreck for more boys, the storm intensified, enough to fell trees, and dragged the remains of the plane out to sea, drowning any who had not gotten out.
How did the boys in Lord of the Flies arrive on the island?
The boys got to the island via plane. They were part of a program that was likely based on the effort in Great Britain to get kids out of London and away from the bombing and into the countryside.
The exact details of where they were flying from and where they might have been headed are not clear. What is clear is that their plane was shot down and the plane section the boys were in crashed into the island, creating a "scar" in the jungle where the plane tore into the vegetation.
One of the major issues surrounding their location is that no one knows exactly where they are because everyone at the airport perished in the conflict. Piggy points out that the pilot mentioned this sometime during their flight.
What brought the boys to the island in Lord of the Flies?
The circumstances that brought the boys to the island were war and the lack of adults.
During World War II, it was fairly common practice to ship children out of London to keep them safe. This is the backdrop of Lord of the Flies, which was written after World War II and partly in response to the dark side of human nature seen then.
A group of British boys were traveling by plane to Australia, but the plane crashed and they were stuck abandoned on an island. The plane was attacked, fell into two parts, and crashed. None of the adults actually survivd.
“Where’s the man with the trumpet?”
Ralph, sensing his sun-blindness, answered him.
“There’s no man with a trumpet. Only me.” (ch 1)
Specifically, the boys are stranded on a deserted tropical island without adults. It is the circumstance of having no adults that really creates the setting for the story. Everything would have been different if there had not been at least one adult, and the boys had not been left to their own devices.
Despite the timing, the book is not actually set during World War II. There is no specific war mentioned, and no specific enemy. Clearly, Golding is depicting the world at war and the war within the human heart as a constant.
In Lord of the Flies, why are the boys on the island?
One can infer from the text that the boys were a group of British schoolchildren. They had been evacuated from their country during a devastating atomic war. The evacuation seems to have been an emergency procedure since it was clear that they had been taken directly from their schools because they were all still dressed in their uniforms, or as with Jack and his choirboys, in their choirboy attire, as suggested by the following extracts from chapter one:
Though he had taken off his school sweater and trailed it now from one hand, his grey shirt stuck to him and his hair was plastered to his forehead.
Some were naked and carrying their clothes; others half-naked, or more or less dressed, in school uniforms, grey, blue, fawn, jacketed, or jerseyed.There were badges, mottoes even, stripes of color in stockings and pullovers.
Shorts, shirts, and different garments they carried in their hands; but each boy wore a square black cap with a silver badge on it. Their bodies, from throat to ankle, were hidden by black cloaks which bore a long silver cross on the left breast and each neck was finished off with a ham-bone frill.
The evacuation itself seems to have gone smoothly but the plane developed problems because it had been hit during an attack whilst flying to a safe haven, as suggested by Piggy:
“We was attacked!”
“When we was coming down I looked through one of them windows. I saw the other part of the plane. There were flames coming out of it.”
The pilot was forced to make a crash-landing on the island, believed to be located somewhere in the Pacific, as suggested by Jack's references when he speaks of Simon:
“He’s always throwing a faint,” said Merridew. “He did in Gib.; and Addis; and at matins over the precentor.”
'Gib.' is a clear reference to Gibraltar and 'Addis' refers to Addis Ababa, whilst 'matins over the precentor' was Jack's attempt at humor, obviously only understood by the choirboys who sniggered at his remark.
The plane skidded onto the island, leaving a huge scar. It was later dragged into the sea in a massive storm to then disappear forever.
There was a suggestion by Piggy that some boys could still have been on the plane when it was dragged out to sea.
“That storm dragged it out to sea. It wasn’t half dangerous with all them tree trunks falling. There must have been some kids still in it.”
The boys were stranded on the island without any adult supervision and they had to find a way to not only take care of themselves but also figure out how to get rescued.
In Lord of the Flies, how do the boys first arrive on the island?
All you have to do to find this out is look at the first chapter of the book. The boys are on an airplane heading away from England to try to get them out of danger -- there's a war going on.
But the plane is shot down and crashes on this island. (They were headed for Australia, which is how you end up crashed on a tropical island if you are a bunch of people from England.) The only adults on the plane were the pilots, apparently. And they died. So now it's just the boys.
In Lord of the Flies, who were the boys on the island, and how did they arrive?
In Golding's novel, a boys' choir (evacuees from a war zone, of which the circumstances are not clearly explained) was travelling from England to Australia and the plane crashed along the way. The boys find themselves on an uncharted island without any adult supervision since no one among the grownups survived the crash. They are left to fend for themselves, and their instinct for survival is their own undoing:
"... the novel is the story of the boys' descent into chaos, disorder, and evil."
This story contrasts sharply with another novel written in 1857, The Coral Island (R.M. Ballantyne). In this story a group of children marooned on an island manage much better than the boys in Golding's tale, clearly in the naturalist school of thought.