Many of us might remember reading Lord of the Flies in middle or high school. If this is true for you, you might recall the main story line of a group of boys that descend into chaos on a deserted island. While this basic plot element is essential to the text, in Constitution Nation, we look at the text with an eye towards government and organization.

For our Lord of the Flies unit, students read and discussed the symbolism, characters, and themes in the novel. In addition to this traditional reading of the text, we also read a number of philosopher’s ideas about human nature. Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Charles Montesquieu were among the varied philosophers we analyzed in terms of their ideas bout human nature. We discussed a myriad of questions: Are we inherently good, and do our actions arise from this? Or are we evil, in which case we need society and government to control our base urges? Or, perhaps we are both, and what comes out at any given moment is determined by an infinite number of variables.

Needless to say, these questions are big ones, and with the biggest questions, art can often be the best way to answer them. At times, art allows an artist to explore a question without giving the most explicit of answers. Artists can dance around their subject matter and play with their audience, inspiring a range of emotions, thoughts, and even action.

Students created art art in a medium of their choice. Their art needed to focus on answering one of the questions below, which they would then explain with text evidence from our reading in an original artist statement.

Possible Project Questions were:

Are people inherently savage or civilized?
How does fear play a role in people’s decision-making process?
Why do we create monsters? What role do they play in our lives?
How do we determine leaders and followers in groups?
What does it mean to be “good” and how permanent of a state is it?
Does society control us or do we control society?
A student designed question!

Please enjoy reading and viewing the Lord of the Flies projects! Please comment below with your thoughts on human nature! Do you think we are inherently “savage or civilized”? Naturally good or evil?