Shownotes Transcript
十几岁的男孩子们已经有了一定的生存能力，体力，以及现代教育后的基本认知，但是又并非一个具有成熟理智和自我约束的成年人，而且，不是一个人好像鲁滨孙漂流记单打独斗面临生存艰难，而是一群人，有人的地方就有江湖，这里面就要既有组织又有斗争，男孩子们是如何建立起秩序最终又怎么样呢？全少年小说。荒岛生存里的人性堕落。
S：Lord of the Flies is a novel written in 1954 by Nobel Prize–winning British author William Golding. The book focuses on a group of British boys stranded on an uninhabited island and their disastrous attempt to govern themselves. Q：Strand就是搁浅的意思。Uninhabited就是无人居住的。Govern就是治理理。一帮男孩子因为飞机失事搁浅在一个荒岛，试图在此以一定的社会秩序求生的故事，结局却是灾难性的。Stella， what is the background of the story and who are those boys? S: The book takes place during a war. In the wartime evacuation, a British airplane crashes on an island in a region of the Pacific Ocean. All those that survive are boys. Most are in their teenage years. There are some younger ones, but they are not the main characters in this book. Except for a choir team, most of the kids had not known each other before the crash. Q:这篇小说的背景交代的比较模糊，反正就是要把一批大小男孩子送到远离文明的地方求生。这个设置用心良苦，非常关键。十几岁的男孩子们已经有了一定的生存能力，体力，以及现代教育后的基本认知，但是又并非一个具有成熟理智和自我约束的成年人，而且，不是一个人好像鲁滨孙漂流记单打独斗面临生存艰难，而是一群人，有人的地方就有江湖，这里面就要既有组织又有斗争，男孩子们是如何建立起秩序最终又怎么样呢？ S：The result is very sad. They first tried to establish order and leadership. They elected a Chief. They assigned jobs, such as hunting, building shelters, and building fire for smoke which is critical to alert ships passing for rescuing . But as the situation evolved, unexpected things happened, a power struggle took hold, and they gradually lost their sense of what’s real by believing in a non existent monster. They deteriorated from order by letting a wild instinct overpower a more rational and civilized way of thought. Boys might just be bullies in civilized world, but change into killers when all regulations are gone. Q: 英文小说经常毫不避讳探讨人性的黑暗。即使是给中学生看的书，不粉饰太平。作者给出的画面不是小岛上的世外桃源和乐土，而是越来越远离文明的残酷和野蛮。这篇小说寓意很深，wikipedia是这样说的，“the central theme is the conflicting human impulses toward civilisation) and social organisation—living by rules, peacefully and in harmony—and toward the will to power). Themes include the tension between groupthink) and individuality, between rational and emotional reactions, and between morality and immorality.” S：there are four different major roles presented in the story that show the different characteristics of people in extreme situation. Q: 是的，人物是小说的重点。我们下次谈。谢谢大家收听奇想英文书世界，让我们一起在文学和思想的层面学习英文。下次见