I agree that the boys are from all boys schools (different uniforms and the fact that they did not know each other before the crash suggest more than one school). Having heard that Golding was working at a similar school during the time he was writing the book, I think he perhaps felt more at home concentrating on a group he is familiar with.Originally Posted by Sitaram
Since the oldest of the boys is 12 (most of them were hardly mature enough for puberty), I am not sure if there would have been any sexual tension as such, had there been girls on the island. Maybe Golding chose such young children so that his message would not get complicated with sex, gender roles and other hazards of maturity;they would not have 'learned' much from their experiences yet; so we cannot blame the society for their doings. It is possible that they are not 'boys' but young humanbeings;gender might be irrelevant to what Golding is trying to say:that under the veneer of civilisation, humanbeings are innately savage, cruel, selfish and even evil at times.