Lord of the Flies

Takami has named Golding's novel as a starting point, and the book is built as a reply to it. Golding puts schoolboys on an island and lets the violence arrive from inside them; Takami puts a class on an island and has the state issue the weapons and the rules, which moves the argument from human nature to what a government can make people do. Same island, same children, opposite verdict.

Stephen King has cited Golding's novel as a major influence. Like Lord of the Flies, Under the Dome explores how ordinary people and social order can rapidly descend into violence and authoritarianism when isolated from the outside world.

• Isolation and survival: Both novels place young people in an isolated environment where normal society has broken down. Lord of the Flies strands boys on an island, while Wilder Girls traps students inside the quarantined Raxter School after a deadly disease outbreak.
• Collapse of social order: Both explore how fear, scarcity, and uncertainty change human behaviour and force characters to create new rules for survival.
• Violence and morality: Golding's novel examines whether civilization is a fragile structure that can collapse under pressure; Wilder Girls similarly explores how trauma, desperation, and survival instincts affect relationships and moral choices.
• Female perspective and adaptation: Wilder Girls reinterprets the survival narrative through a group of teenage girls, shifting the focus from conflict between competing groups to friendship, loyalty, body horror, and coping with an ongoing threat.
• Dystopian survival tradition: Golding's novel helped establish a tradition of stories about young people confronting danger without adult protection, which later dystopian and survival fiction—including Wilder Girls—builds upon.

Golding frequently drew on Christian ideas and bible stories about human nature and original sin.

• The title "Lord of the Flies" is a translation of Beelzebub, a biblical name associated with Satan. (From Hebrew)
• Explores the doctrine of original sin: the idea that evil is inherent in humanity rather than imposed by society.
• Simon functions as a Christ-like figure: compassionate, solitary, spiritually perceptive, and ultimately killed by those he tries to save.
• Simon's encounter with the Lord of the Flies resembles a temptation or demonic revelation, revealing that evil comes from within human beings.
• The island echoes the Garden of Eden, transforming from an apparent paradise into a place corrupted by human sin.
• The "beast" symbolizes the inner sinful nature of humanity rather than an external monster.
• Themes of temptation, the Fall, sin, sacrifice, and moral corruption run throughout the novel.
• The novel contrasts innocence with humanity's fallen condition, a central biblical theme.

Golding intentionally took Ballantyne's premise and reversed its moral assumptions, creating a darker exploration of human nature.

• Rejects the idea that children are naturally innocent and civilized.
• Reverses the optimistic belief that British values inevitably produce order.
• Cooperation gives way to tribalism, fear, and violence.
• Evil is shown to arise from within human nature rather than external threats.
• Adventure story becomes a psychological and moral tragedy.

• Group of British boys stranded on a tropical island.
• Children establish their own society away from adults.
• Shared island survival premise.
• Ralph and Jack are borrowed directly as character names.

Golding drew on the familiar conventions of the classic island adventure story, only to subvert them.

• A remote tropical island serves as the primary setting.
• Young protagonists explore and survive in an isolated environment.
• The island functions as a self-contained world removed from civilization.
• Adventure and exploration are transformed into psychological and moral conflict.
• The romantic image of island adventure is deliberately deconstructed.