A Return to Lord of the Flies

Moral Injury & The Fragile Foundations of Child Development

This piece is for the project called The Hope Library started by

Tara Penry

. I know this is an odd selection for a story of hope, but having life accurately portrayed on an emotional level heals us in some way.

William Golding’s Lord of the Flies arrived in my young life like a stark, unsettling mirror. I watched the black and white film, alone, on our living room TV, and later read the story in high school.

As a boy struggling in grade school, the gentle world of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, with its thoughtful lessons and reassuring adults, felt a distant, mythical place. Sadly, it wasn't real to me. My reality, often chaotic and unsupervised, resonated far more with the raw, untamed island of Golding’s narrative.

Lord of the Flies was the first film I saw that truly reflected the emotional world I inhabited when adults were absent, a liminal space where the rules seemed to shift and the fragile sense of order could shatter in an instant.

While the story is usually interpreted as a bleak testame…