"It makes no difference what men think of war [...]. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way."
-- Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian Clark, who led last year's expedition to the Afar region of northern Ethiopia, and UC Berkeley colleague Tim D. White, also said that a re-examination of a 300,000-year-old fossil skull found in the same region earlier shows evidence of having been scalped. --The Yuma Daily Sun, June 13, 1982 |
OVERVIEW
William Golding's 1954 debut novel, Lord of the Flies, is a classic of dystopian literature, in which a group of young boys crash on a deserted island and are soon faced with a fierce struggle to survive. Written long before today's wildly popular dystopian fare, Golding's story helped introduce the genre with a world where adolescents descend into savagery, power trumps reason, and the very meaning of "civilization" is called into question. Lord of the Flies will connect students to the timeless themes of survival, society versus the individual, and the savagery possible in human nature. With its high-stakes battle between chaos and control, Lord of the Flies will engage students in their own explorations about human nature and the myriad issues we face today. The culminating phase of the unit will involve a study of the Stanford Prison Experiment, in which students will use a Socratic Seminar to explore connections between Lord of the Flies and Philip Zimbardo's ideas about the relationship between violence, evil, and authority in human nature.
William Golding's 1954 debut novel, Lord of the Flies, is a classic of dystopian literature, in which a group of young boys crash on a deserted island and are soon faced with a fierce struggle to survive. Written long before today's wildly popular dystopian fare, Golding's story helped introduce the genre with a world where adolescents descend into savagery, power trumps reason, and the very meaning of "civilization" is called into question. Lord of the Flies will connect students to the timeless themes of survival, society versus the individual, and the savagery possible in human nature. With its high-stakes battle between chaos and control, Lord of the Flies will engage students in their own explorations about human nature and the myriad issues we face today. The culminating phase of the unit will involve a study of the Stanford Prison Experiment, in which students will use a Socratic Seminar to explore connections between Lord of the Flies and Philip Zimbardo's ideas about the relationship between violence, evil, and authority in human nature.
Learning Objectives
- Recognize the importance of historical context to the appreciation of setting and character.
- Identify major and minor characters.
- Analyze and explain characterization techniques for major and minor characters.
- Explain that novels may have more than one plot and explain the use of multiple plots (i.e., subplots).
- Recognize the importance of point of view in a novel and why it wouldn't be the same story if told from someone else's point of view.
LITERARY TEXTS
Novel
Biblical Literature
INFORMATIONAL TEXTS
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ONLINE LEARNING
- William Golding, author's official website
- "Duck and Cover" film from US Civil Defense Administration, in which Bert the Turtle instructs children what to do in case of an atomic attack (1951)
- Fallout: 1950s Atomic Weapon and Hydrogen Bomb Safety Education Documentary
- Stanford Prison Experiment
- Robbers Cave Experiment
- Milgram Experiment
- Zimbardo, Philip. "The Psychology of Evil." TED: Ideas Worth Spreading, 2008, www.ted.com/talks/philip_zimbardo_the_psychology_of_evil?language=en.
- Rifkin, Jeremy. "The Empathetic Civilization." YouTube, uploaded by RSA Animate, 6 May 2010, www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7AWnfFRc7g.
TERMINOLOGY
Allegory
Biblical allusion Christ figure Deus ex machina Dystopia |
Foil
Freudian Theory of Personality: Id, Ego, Superego Major character |
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
Minor Character Subplot Symbolism |
IMAGE GALLERY
VIDEO GALLERY
Duck and Cover starring Bert the Turtle is a 1951 Civil Defense Film Written by Raymond J. Mauer and directed by Anthony Rizzo of Archer Productions and made with the help of schoolchildren from New York City and Astoria, New York. It was shown in schools as the cornerstone of the government's "duck and cover" public awareness campaign. According to the United States Library of Congress (which declared the film "historically significant" and inducted it for preservation into the National Film Registry in 2004). It "was seen by millions of schoolchildren in the 1950s."
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Fallout: When and How to Protect Yourself Against It is a 1950s animated Public Safety Announcement produced by the United States Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization, designed to educate the public about the dangers of wartime nuclear explosions from hydrogen bombs and atomic weapons.
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Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs (6m 3s)
School of Thought The Psychology Of Evil by Philip Zimbardo
TED Talk (2008) |
Sigmund Freud's Structure of Personality Theory (12m 57s)
Shorts in Psychology The Empathetic Civilization by Jeremy Rifkin
Produced by RSAnimate |
AUDIOBOOK.
Lord of the Flies Audiobook
Narrated by Martin Jarvis
Chapter Timestamps
Narrated by Martin Jarvis
Chapter Timestamps