Realistic Group Conflict Theory is a psychological model of intergroup conflict that took shape as the result of a 1954 study in Oklahoma called the Robbers Cave Experiment, in which researchers guided two groups of adolescent boys through a series of steps designed to first create and then mitigate hostility between them. The whole premise of these stories about the fragility of human society has its roots in an actual, if flawed, scientific study. In this book, a group of high school students stranded on another world during a field trip gone wrong manage to construct such a successful, if imperfect, working society that when they’re finally rescued, a few of them are kind of reluctant to go home and some even demand that their new nation be formally recognized by the governments of Earth. Two years after Lord of the Flies, Robert Heinlein wrote a rebuttal to it with one of his famous juveniles, Tunnel in the Sky. Would people - not just young unsupervised boys but people in general - really descend into brutality and savagery so quickly? Would the loss of civilization’s daily norms just completely cut the brake cables on our empathy while pushing the accelerator on our survival instincts?
A big question has always been whether or not that book’s dark and cynical assumptions about human nature are in fact accurate. This notion of in-group, out-group violence has fascinated storytellers ever since William Golding inflicted Lord of the Flies upon the required reading lists of every high school English class in existence. It’s Lord of the Flies in a Florida theme park (which, if you’ve been to any given Florida theme park on a busy weekend, might sound like a typical day). If the logline for this story sounds familiar, well, of course it does. Share book reviews and ratings with Thomas, and even join a book club on Goodreads. Book cover artwork is copyrighted by its respective artist and/or publisher. All reviews and site design © by Thomas M.
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