Lord of the Flies, Revisited

In William Golding's Lord of the Flies, Golding puts forth the idea that a group of young people, left to their own devices on a remote island, will revert to savagery (spoiler alert: it gets pretty freakin' savage). I spotted a copy of the book in our Street Books library during my shift on Wednesday, and since I was stationed in front of the Right2Dream Too camp at 4th & Burnside, it was easy to ruminate on how the group of people maintaining the camp have done so far. They're not on a desert island, sure, and they're not children, but in many ways they have embarked on a similar kind of experiment. They have created roofs overhead, rules by which to govern themselves, and they have brought together a diverse community of people who happen to have one important commonality: lack of shelter. Now, instead of sleeping solo under a bridge, or being poked awake and told to move on by police downtown, there is a resting place where they can sleep without fear of being disturbed, or losing important possessions. I get the sense that the camp has the kind of struggles one would expect when a diverse group of people assembles and lives together amid different personalities, management styles, and ideas. But I also think that William Golding would be pleasantly surprised to see the society built at Right2Dream going so well.