In the midst of a fictional war, a group of immature schoolboys are put on a plane that goes down somewhere in the Pacific. Originally, they decide to establish order and elect a boy named Ralph to be their leader, but within a matter of weeks the boys have turned savage. Boys who end up hunting each other to death, turning their plane ride gone wrong into a real-life hunger game where the arena is enclosed and the danger lies within the human nature unleashed within young children. The Lord of the Flies, in this book, is characterized as a beast that they are all afraid of, a beast that they conjure through their own imagination that ends up being themselves. In the end, it was not nature that left three of them dead and the rest of them insane, but their natural instincts to claw for power, to kill the unpopular, and to ravage society.

The book ends when a British naval officer lands on the island and finds them in a ragged and destitute position, scolding the boys, telling them that a group of English boys should have been able to put on a better show. Most, if not all of us, have read this book, and we’ve all marveled at the brutish nature of young British boys stranded on an island without supervision.

But none of it was real.

Everything that happened in this widely popular novel stemmed from the mind of an alcoholic who claimed to identify with the ideals of Nazi Germany, being “of that sort by nature.” The book was written by a man who hated children, a man who seemed to despise all people in general. Despite this, the book has been sold in the millions and is commonly read within the high school classrooms as part of their English curriculum.

But none of it was real.

The idea of being stranded on a deserted island has captured the imaginations of many. From Lord of the Flies by William Golding to Castaway, the popular film starring Tom Hanks, books and movies have been made about man versus nature and man versus himself while in isolation on a deserted island. All of these fictional accounts stem from the understanding of their authors and writers regarding how they see people and comprehend the world around them, something that cannot be taken out of any fictional work. Lord of the Flies was written by a man who considered humanity to be irrational and destructive, and therefore that was the message he sent to millions of readers.

But none of these stories really reflect an accurate representation of how everything would go down in reality.

The real story begins in 1965, when six Tongan schoolboys stole a fishing boat from Mr. Taniela Uhila, a fisherman they all disliked, and set sail on the great blue, about to embark on an adventure much like Ralph and Jack’s but about to live out a more realistic approach, a story narrated by real children instead of a man who considered himself a monster. The Tongan Castaways is the true story of Lord of the Flies, the way it likely would have gone if human nature were really at the center of the novel.

Sione, Stephen, Kolo, David, Luke, and Mano were adrift at sea for a week with nothing until they finally drifted upon the landscape of ‘Ata Island,’ which would be their home for the next fifteen months. Originally, they drank water from coconuts, then dug out water from the trees on the island, and ate wild birds. As time went on and they began to wonder if they would ever see civilization again, they did more to organize themselves. They found and raised hens, built houses, planted a garden, and wrote songs to keep themselves entertained. They exercised every day, believing that, “If we were to become lazy, nature would beat us.”

One day, one of the boys ventured up a cliff face in search of the birds that they would eat. He slipped and fell, and his comrades found him with a broken leg. They set the leg and treated his wound until it healed, leaving a scar but also a boy fully capable of walking again. They helped their friend while he was injured, as opposed to boys deliberately hurting one another in the fictional account. “A group of people… don’t know where they are and don’t have enough food and water… Maybe they don’t agree on the same thing, but they have to try to get together and work together and make everything work so they can survive,” Sione Tatau, one of the boys, explained many years later.

In 1966, Peter Warner, an Australian captain, saw a strange sight as he sailed toward Tonga. A small island in the distance, and six boys swimming towards him. It was then that the six castaways were finally rescued, a true miracle, as funerals had already been held and the boys had been presumed dead.

Notice that six walked onto the island and six walked off. There were injuries, but all were obtained naturally. They left behind on Ata Island a garden, shelters, chore systems, and methods of daily exercise. Promises never to quarrel and constant prayers had been practiced, as opposed to when the boys from Lord of the Flies left their island. When Ralph left his island, a smoldering wasteland, he left behind three dead children, half-built shelters, and the rotting head of a wild pig. There is a stark difference between reality and the presumed reality.

Despite the gross inaccuracy to the representation of human nature, especially in children, more than 25 million copies of Lord of the Flies were sold in English alone. Peter Gray, Ph.D., a research professor at Boston College, explained that it does not reflect children’s psychology specifically accurately. “In the real world,” he said, “children rarely, if ever, act like the fictitious children of Lord of the Flies. When children become brutal, there are usually adults leading or provoking the brutality. When real children are abandoned and realize their lives are in danger, their survival instincts kick in and lead them to cooperate even more than they normally do. They know, deep in their DNA, that cooperation is their only chance of saving themselves.”

This is true in children, and I believe that it is true in humanity. This book is meant to represent humanity and the brutality and chaos that follow us wherever we step foot. In reality, there would be no societal structure if humans operated in this way. The book assumes that, at the first sign of trouble, we will turn against each other, when, in reality, we have seen through traumatic events throughout history that humans tend to come together in such circumstances.

During the attacks of September 11th, 2001, amidst nationwide confusion and panic, the citizens of Manhattan were also stranded on an island. As the towers crumbled to the ground, they ran until they could no longer run. In front of them was a large expanse of water, and behind them was a disaster. In a moment that very well could have been conceptualized in their minds as the end of the world, being thrust into their most natural, vulnerable state, the people of New York City came together and rapidly organized the largest maritime rescue in the history of the world. Present on the water were large ferries, small personal boats, and everything in between. 

So, William Golding was wrong. We don’t live in his fictional, twisted world where children kill each other in a desperate grab for power over one another. And while horrible things do happen and people make bad decisions, we can see that in humanity’s hardest, most terrifying moments, we do not turn against one another, and we will survive together. People are good when given the chance to be.