Lord of the Flies and the US election: Updated

***UPDATE***
The campaigning is now complete, and America has its new President-Elect, Donald Trump. Trump’s shock win has unsurprisingly caused a rush of opinion pieces, with Lord of the Flies once again being used as an allegory.
John Doyle, writing in The Globe and Mail, traces Trump’s win to his appearances on reality TV show The Apprentice, arguing that Trump’s appeal lies in the ‘method [he] refined on The Apprentice. The boasting and blustering, the revulsion at any sign of weakness in others, the crudeness and male aggression displayed as honesty and perpetuated as a leadership quality.’ Doyle goes on to write that reality TV has its roots in a novel like Lord of the Flies, and ‘is anchored in age-old or primordial impulses and parables about that.’ In the Huffington Post, Oren Frank calls Trump  ‘a perfect cast for the grown-up version of Lord of the Flies‘. Finally, Lee Drutman, in Vox, claims in the President-Elect’s ‘mind, he is a transformative figure who triumphs in Lord of the Flies Washington, DC.’

So, is this the end of Lord of the Flies being used as a point of comparison for this election? Given Jill Stein’s recent fundraising campaign to challenge the results in a number of key states, I suspect not…

Read our original post on Lord of the Flies and the US Presidential Campagn 2016.