LOFT rebuttal

I really don't think that an author has to write during the time of a theorist's theorizing for it to be a valid way of approaching the text. (Though I noticed your disclaimer about "some extent.") What if Foucault used LOTF to help fashion his own ideas about systems? I'm just saying that I think the ideas of us/them and self-regulation can reasonably, and almost necessarily, be projected onto the text. But I guess you won't buy it. That makes me a little sad. And, I'm just saying that to Freud, almost everything is a phallus. If we want to bring Lacan into this, the conch could be the symbolic phallus, which does not contradict what you just said. Civilization=power, phallus=power. You know, the idea that language and government and civilization are the symbolic phallus, and we have a void (castration complex) because we cannot wield the power. Doesn't complete destruction=emasculation? (Enter the deconstruction argument that language has no value because there is a gap between the signifier and the signified--thus dismantling all meaning, value and transcendental truth). I think what makes the book most dark for a reader like myself is the fact that Golding removes the stability of language, benevolence, goodness, government, so that the reader lands in the same place as the boys on the island: in chaos and violence. Reading it was very much like drowning--which may be the staring "into the face of his own depravity" to which you refer. And it's even more suffocating that Golding offers no real hope. The only decent character in the book, Simon, is literally ripped and torn into shreds by the boys. Oh, the horror, the horror. Wait, that's another book . . .
You know, the character of Piggy was so annoying to me. He was so flat and dare I say cliche? I can't even see him as a symbol for that reason. I guess in that respect, Ralph is the only character who seems to have various dimensions. I like the complexity of him battling within himself. Anyway, will you speak to the parachute man as I had previously requested? This book club thing is fun, ain't it?