What influenced Wilder Girls, and what it influenced

Book · 1954

InfluenceMEDIUM

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.