I think the boys in the book the lord of the flies have been successful in governing themselves considering they are quite young. In the story a plane crashes on an island with a group of schoolboys who are forced to fend for themselves without any adult supervision. So after they all meet on the platform they decide to elect or vote for one of the older boys to become a leader, and they voted for a boy who acts as a born leader Ralph. I think that this decision shows a success in the boys governing themselves because in order to run something you need somebody in charge so it runs smoothly. I think if the boys had not decided to govern themselves and pick a leader then everybody would be fighting over what to do instead of one boy making the final decision.
Considering the boys are only the age of twelve at the most they are governing themselves well, but they have made some bad decisions. Such as when they decided to take action and make a dangerous fire they did not take a head count of all the boys who were there (especially the little ones). In the story all the boys were running around the huge fire which spread in the jungle. This was poor governing because first it is unsafe, and second they would never know if someone had been lost, gotten injured, or even died. I think that if the boys counted everybody there ahead of time the situation would have gone more smoothly.
Therefor i believe the boys have done a decent job in governing themselves because even though they are not as well put together as they cold be, they are still making some positive decision considering there age.
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Olivia Lyon
11/27/2012 07:21:09 am
I agree with Alexsis because her points are very accurate. The decisions they are making are proving that they are mature which is what Alexsis said. Also, they have made some poor decisions, but that is expected from 12 year old boys, seeing they have to figure out everything on their own. Because of this I feel that they are doing a pretty remarkable job all in all.
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Nicole Reinschmidt
11/27/2012 07:55:27 am
I agree with Alexsis and Olivia. Although the boys made mistakes and failed in some ways, that is to be expected for young kids their age, especially since none of them have been lost on an island before. This was new to all of them. That these kids could successfully created a more orderly way to govern themselves is great. But there's always a few flaws in the way they do things. Like Alexsis said, it would have been more fool-proof if they had counted how many children there were. Also, they could've succeeded in more if they worked on what's more important at the moment: shelters and weapons that can actually kill a couple pigs. But instead, they jumped right ahead to building a fire in the hope of being rescued when there weren't any ships to be seen for miles around. They had to face the consequences of that failure, when they could've been better off working together, building tools and shelters.
Karina Zhao
11/28/2012 06:10:41 am
I agree with these responses. Considering the fact that these are 12 year old boys who are in charge, it is expected that they would have made some poor decisions. However, they have made some positive choices and found an orderly way to successfully govern the group.
Leah Sheltry
11/28/2012 08:16:04 am
Considering that 12-year-old boys were literally thrown into a jungle, they are all acting quite mature and responsible. I think it's interesting how quickly and well they reacted to their new situation.
Victoria Paradise
12/1/2012 12:50:29 am
I agree with this. These are very good points, but overall for their age and knowledge, they are doing well on this island.
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Alex Barina
11/28/2012 09:56:23 am
I feel that in the first chapter the boys made more poor decisions thaen good for instance making a large signal fire rather than collecting food and building the shelters, however in the second and third chapter i think that the boys start to govern themselves more reasposibly for instance they build shelters and gather food they also start to set up rules and start to relize they need to act more reasponsibly
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Lexie Vetrano
11/28/2012 11:00:42 am
I agree with Alex, the boys definitely didn't know what they were doing in the first chapter. As the book continues though, the boys seem to realize that they need to start finding a way to survive rather than try and get rescued. They finally realized after a few days that they need to be able to survive in order to be alive when they get rescued, because they know now that they probably won't be rescued for quite some time.
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