Hightower Revisited.

• Author: McColm, Greg
• Position: LETTERS

Hightower Revisited

I think Jim Hightower missed the point in his February/March column, "Vox Populist: Lord of the Flies, Revisited." True, William Golding's book was partly a reaction to happier novels about castaway children (like R.M. Ballantyne's The Coral Island), but it was also written in the aftermath of World War II and amidst Cold War authoritarianism, both left and right.

An authoritarian (named Jack) led a choir of boys in Chapter One, and during the book his grip extended over all the castaways, and tightened. Jack's party was indifferent to being rescued and obsessed over an imaginary beast--just as President Trump...