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Robert Michael Ballantyne
JLJ - This inspiration for William Golding's 1954 novel Lord of the Flies should be read prior to meeting Ralph, Jack and Piggy. Here, on The Coral Island, the 'children' are innocent and encounter evil externally, in the Golding book the evil is within. Ballantyne's book apparently is based on The Island Home, 1853, by American author James F. Bowman.
From Wikipedia, Ballantyne went to Canada aged 16, and spent five years working for the Hudson's Bay Company. He traded with the local Native Americans for furs, which required him to travel by canoe and sleigh to the areas occupied by the modern-day provinces of Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec, experiences that formed the basis of his novel Snowflakes and Sunbeams (1856). His longing for family and home during that period impressed him to start writing letters to his mother. Ballantyne recalled in his autobiographical Personal Reminiscences in Book Making (1893) that "To this long-letter writing I attribute whatever small amount of facility in composition I may have acquired."
In criticism, the missionary plot in the second half of the novel breathes life into an otherwise acceptably brief story best ended with rescue, but the outrageous political incorrectness with respect to the depiction of the South Sea islanders stands in sharp contrast to what would be allowed in print today.
After running out of gas with his story of quiet idyllic time-passing, childish banter, weapon-tool-and-boat-making, food gathering, and say-look-over-there-isn't-that-interesting exploring (having the teenagers kill time and wait for a simple rescue would not do as a page-turner), Ballantyne manufactures a conflict, of the kind he would resolve successfully, and begins a transition into a heroic adventure - creating a childishly crude cartoon, a truly gross, sophomoric, embarrassing and unnecessary bloody and vulgar tale of barbarism and rescue-the-princess-gone-awry. The sudden and unexpected happy-ending suggests more than anything else that Ballantyne just ran out of ideas for what to do next with characters he was tired of directing, in a stale and vapid plot twistable with no more twists, and a story he was apparently as-weary-as-his-protagonists-tired of telling. Even the human sacrifices, eel gods, cannibalism, perpetual scheming, incessant moralism, weapon using, sudden storms arising from nowhere, aren't those penguins soooo cute antics, nose-rubbing (shockingly even among the men), and body count of the dead and wounded from the many battles (?!) were getting to be ho-humm boring and routine. Yikes. When the main enemy suddenly and unexpectedly converts to Christianity and burns his idols, Ballantyne can make a "French leave" his ill-fated pirates skipped out on, and mercifully close his story.
Additionally, it seems inconsistent that the three main characters would spend an entire trip journeying to the South Sea Islands - and hanging out together over many months prior to the shipwreck - before having the now-shipwrecked Chapter 4 discussion about Jack seeming to be "book smart" and a dreaded "philosopher" - this would seem to have been discovered much earlier. Also, how is it that 18-year old sometimes-child and sometimes-man Jack possesses "magical" wisdom that the boat being launched by the shipwreck-to-be will likely capsize, and that their best chance is clutching an oar - how is it that the seasoned seamen sense this as well but take no similar action, and why do the teenagers not anticipate survival by acquiring (before they strike the reef) simple supplies that they have to re-invent by crude means, on the island? It was mentioned that there were other children on board the ill-fated Arrow. Socially, a pre-shipwrecked 18-year Jack might *possibly* hang out with 15-year old Ralph, but with 13-year-old Peterkin is a stretch.
England lay at the center of a world empire in the 1850s, and stories such as this one no doubt came from exaggerated re-tellings of the adventures of sea travelers. The three main characters re-unite 6 years after returning to London (forgetting to ask each other for addresses (?!) both during and after the present adventure) in Ballantyne's later work, The Gorilla Hunters, which nearly tops the present story in political incorrectness. A quick review of James F. Bowman's The Island Home suggests that Ballantyne is a thief of ideas, on a large scale.
The quotes below are merely curious statements which contrast sharply with the text and story of Lord of the Flies, and likely inspired Golding as well, in writing his depressingly dark and modern version of Paradise... -Lost.
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Now while engaged in the coasting trade, I fell in with many seamen who had travelled to almost every quarter of the globe; and I freely confess that my heart glowed ardently within me as they recounted their wild adventures in foreign lands, - the dreadful storms they had weathered, the appalling dangers they had escaped, the wonderful creatures they had seen both on the land and in the sea, and the interesting lands and strange people they had visited. But of all the places of which they told me, none captivated and charmed my imagination so much as the Coral Islands of the Southern Seas. They told me of thousands of beautiful fertile islands that had been formed by a small creature called the coral insect, where summer reigned nearly all the year round, - where the trees were laden with a constant harvest of luxuriant fruit, - where the climate was almost perpetually delightful, - yet where, strange to say, men were wild, bloodthirsty savages, excepting in those favoured isles to which the gospel of our Saviour had been conveyed. These exciting accounts had so great an effect upon my mind, that, when I reached the age of fifteen, I resolved to make a voyage to the South Seas.
[JLJ - From Bowman's text p.6-7: "Do you suppose, Arthur," inquired Charlie, "that there are many uninhabited islands that have never been discovered?" "There are believed to be a great many of them," answered Arthur, "and it is supposed that new ones are constantly being formed by the labours of the coral insect. A bare ledge of coral first appears just at the surface; it arrests floating substances, weeds, trees, etc.; soon the sea-birds begin to resort there... a thin soil gradually covers the foundation or coral; a cocoanut... takes root, springs up; its fruit ripens, and falls, and in a few years the whole new-formed island is covered with waving groves."]
My mother gave me her blessing and a small Bible; and her last request was, that I would never forget to read a chapter every day, and say my prayers; which I promised, with tears in my eyes, that I would certainly do.
Soon afterwards I went on board the Arrow, which was a fine large ship, and set sail for the islands of the Pacific Ocean.
At last we came among the Coral Islands of the Pacific, and I shall never forget the delight with which I gazed, - when we chanced to pass one, - at the pure, white, dazzling shores, and the verdant palm-trees, which looked bright and beautiful in the sunshine. And often did we three long to be landed on one, imagining that we should certainly find perfect happiness there! Our wish was granted sooner than we expected.
I knew that we were on an island, for Jack had said so, but whether it was inhabited or not I did not know. If it should be inhabited, I felt certain, from all I had heard of South Sea Islanders, that we should be roasted alive and eaten. If it should turn out to be uninhabited, I fancied that we should be starved to death.
"...If you begin to lay everything to the credit of books, I'll quite lose my opinion of you," cried Peterkin, with a look of contempt. "I've seen a lot o' fellows that were ALWAYS poring over books, and when they came to try to DO anything, they were no better than baboons!"
"Oh, bother! Jack, you're a philosopher, and that's worse than anything!" cried Peterkin, with a look of pretended horror.
WHAT a joyful thing it is to awaken, on a fresh glorious morning, and find the rising sun staring into your face with dazzling brilliancy! - although everything around us was so delightful, and we could without difficulty obtain all that we required for our bodily comfort, we did not quite like the idea of settling down here for the rest of our lives, far away from our friends and our native land.
There was, indeed, no note of discord whatever in the symphony we played together on that sweet Coral Island;
But Jack did it. He was of, that disposition which WILL not be conquered.
"Laugh?" said I; "what at, Peterkin? why should I laugh?"
a man's difficulties usually set him upon devising methods to overcome them, whereby he often discovers better things than those he may have lost,
REST is sweet as well for the body as for the mind.
From all these things I came at length to understand that things very opposite and dissimilar in themselves, when united, do make an agreeable whole;
FOR many months after this we continued to live on our island in uninterrupted harmony and happiness.
[JLJ - From Bowman's text p.5: "I think we might all of us together live here beautifully a little while, if we had plenty of provisions, and plenty of arms to defend ourselves against the savages; and then, of course, we should want a house to live in too."]
LIFE is a strange compound. Peterkin used to say of it, that it beat a druggist's shop all to sticks; for, whereas the first is a compound of good and bad, the other is a horrible compound of all that is utterly detestable. And indeed the more I consider it the more I am struck with the strange mixture of good and evil that exists not only in the material earth but in our own natures.
THERE is a power of endurance in human beings, both in their bodies and in their minds, which, I have often thought, seems to be wonderfully adapted and exactly proportioned to the circumstances in which individuals may happen to be placed, - a power which, in most cases, is sufficient to carry a man through and over every obstacle that may happen to be thrown in his path through life, no matter how high or how steep the mountain may be
[JLJ - Consider this quote from Bowman's story p.3: "No; I wished to show you how difficulties apparently insurmountable vanish before skill and perseverance."]
I pondered this a good deal, and at last concluded that men do not know how much they are capable of doing till they try, and that we should never give way to despair in any undertaking, however difficult it may seem:- always supposing,however, that our cause is a good one, and that we can ask the divine blessing on it
"perhaps we might put some food in her mouth, which is so elegantly open at the present moment, and see if she'd swallow it while asleep.
On his right stood an English gentleman, who, I at once and rightly concluded, was a missionary. He was tall, thin, and apparently past forty, with a bald forehead, and thin gray hair. [JLJ - Yep. Past forty its downhill all the way :) ]
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