For our latest project in PLP, we were tasked with reading, analyzing, and responding to the very well known novel by William Golding; the Lord of the Flies.
In The Lord of the Flies, a group of boys from ages 6 to 12 crash land on a remote island with absolutely no memory of how they got there. They must survive on their own with no supervision of any kind, tribes start to form and violence becomes the only source of entertainment and excitement.
This novel is not only a crazy story, but a metaphor for todays world. We all have that built up anger in ourselves, and we must find ways to release it. There are also many theories out there that classify the main characters as political spectrums. In this theory, Ralph represents democracy, Piggy represents science, Simon represents religion, Jack represents communism and dictatorship, Roger represents war and violence, and the littluns represent society.
After we had begun reading the book, we were given response journals to do for every 3 chapters we read. Each journal would have a new question to answer, where you would draw from you own life and from the book, mostly to show your understanding on the topics.
We were also given mini quizzes for the teachers to get a good view on how we were doing with our reading. Another big part of our reading was note taking, this played a big part for many people in the class because it was pretty much necessary for anyone to do well on our final test that would be assigned one we were finished the entire book. In this test we would be given 2 quotes from the book with no previous or follow up context. We would then have to explain the events prior to the quote, the meaning behind the quote, and how it affected the characters later on in the book. I felt like I did very well on this test, I was very confident with my knowledge on the quotes we were given, and I expect to receive a pretty good grade!
After the test we began work on another project to help end our Lord of the Flies unit on Tribalism. For our next mini project we were put into groups, I ended up in a group with Luca, Adlih, and Georgia. For this assignment, we would have to create a keynote presentation that would focus on a ‘tribe’ in todays society. Some examples of tribes in todays society could be the Klu Klux Klan, The Green Party of Canada, ISIS, Lakers Fans, Raptors Fans, A snowboard team, or even your one of your classes in school. We would also have to compare the motives, traits, and meanings behind our tribe we chose to the tribes shown in the Lord of the Flies.
After much careful research and consideration our group chose to do our presentation on the Hells Angels, which is a world-wide motorcycle gang that has a violent that drug filled reputation, even here in Vancouver. My role in our presentation was to research into where the Hells angels are now in todays society and how they are viewed, I also did some research on their history and how recruitment into the gang works. Other team members covered topics such as, its beginnings, connections to the lord of the flies, why people join, and the terms of someone’s membership. Our presentation went very smoothly, I think I played a big part in our presentation, mostly because of the amount of content I had in my script.
During this unit I learned a lot about tribalism and how it is demonstrated in todays society. I think one of the main things I learned from reading the book is that the people will always choose the person who is the most confident, if you aren’t backing your beliefs or what you are saying 100% they will leave you for someone who is. I am very glad to have had this unit as our first big unit in PLP this year and I think reading the Lord of the Flies has helped me understand more about todays society.