Halloween, Trust, and Mistrust

"The main characters of Lord of the Flies, William Golding's gripping postwar novel, were children evacuated for refuge from wartime British cities that had fallen under indiscriminate Nazi bombardment. En route, their plane, shot down by a Luftwaffe fighter, crashed on a remote and uninhabited island, killing the pilot, and leaving the young castaways alone to organize their survival and fend for themselves."

"The book has sold 150 million copies since its publication in 1954 and has passed from hand to hand to captivate millions more. High school English classes worldwide made it required reading. Theater productions and radio dramas adapted the unsettling story. A feature film appeared in 1963. Various literary award organizations named Lord of the Flies to their top 100 lists."

"The group soon crossed the thin border into savagery during a hunt for a feral pig. Id forces ran loose. In the book's most lurid scene, the boys gather around the wounded animal to chant, "Kill the pig! Cut her throat!" The killing takes on the aspect of a psychosexual rite as a spear penetrates the squealing, terrified creature. The pig's head, impaled on a stake, then becomes an object of perverse worship, a lord, as it attracts a swarm of flies."

A group of evacuated British schoolboys crash-lands on an uninhabited island and must organize survival without adults. Attempts at order collapse as fear of a murderous beast combines with power struggles and escalating violence. A single violent slap shatters the moral conscience represented by a bespectacled intellectual, leaving him friendless and half-blind. A hunting frenzy culminates in the ritualistic killing of a pig, and the impaled head becomes an object of perverse worship, symbolizing the group's descent into savagery. The story has sold 150 million copies since 1954 and reached millions through school curricula, theater, radio, and film.

Read at Psychology Today