When he first read William Golding's 1954 novel Lord of the Flies at 11 years old, Jack Thorne felt something shift in him.
"It is the book that changed me," Thorne told NPR, calling it a "specific portrayal of damage that really fascinates me."
Thorne developed and wrote the first TV adaptation of the novel about a group of boys who are stranded on an island and their descent into savagery. The show, which first aired in Britain on the BBC in February, now reaches U.S. audiences via Netflix starting May 4.
Thorne says Golding was dissecting boys' upbringing in World War II era Britain.
"They're boys that were brought up in Britain in the forties, the experience through their parents, the horrors of the war, the damage of the war, and then go to this island and start acting it out," he added. "So it's a psychological study of a time as well as a psychological study of a gender."
That's familiar material for Thorne, fresh off creating the mini-series Adolescence, which took a hard look at how the misogynistic manosphere can influence teenage boys.
In Lord of the Flies, the boys wrestle with morality, leadership and civility to avoid devolving into chaos.
"I do think that there are interesting things to explore within masculinity as a prism," Thorne said. "That prism fascinates me. And thankfully with Adolescence and Lord of the Flies, I've got to explore one aspect of it. There are many, many other aspects of it to explore too."
In the new four-part series, Thorne centers each episode on one of novel's four lead characters: Piggy, Ralph, Simon and Jack.
"The thing that really meant a lot to us was this sort of relay race structure that we set up in it, which is that you follow the story through four different pairs of eyes," Thorne said. "You follow it through Piggy's eyes then Jack's eyes then Simon's eyes then Ralph's eyes. By seeing it through their eyes, you just get more of a sense of who the boys are."
After their plane crashes onto the island, the boys elect Ralph to be their "chief," while Jack leads a splinter group of boys mostly drawn from the school choir to become hunters who are also tasked with maintaining the signal fire.
Thorne said he identifies with Simon, the outsider. Simon is part of Jack's choir, but both Ralph and Jack's sides treat him as an "other" figure that they don't quite understand.
"When I was a kid, that was what I felt like," Thorne said. "I felt like whatever I said, no one quite understood what I meant. And when I read it as an 11-year-old, it was the first time in literature I'd encountered someone that felt like me and that just did a huge amount to the inside of my brain."
With each reading, Thorne said, he's gained something new.
"When I was 11 and I read the book, I hated Jack," Thorne said. "I hated him with my whole soul. I knew who he was on the playground, I knew he didn't like me. I knew he made my life bad."
When he reread the novel in his twenties, he saw Golding's writing in a fresh light.
"And then I read it in my thirties and I went, 'I can see Jack and I care for him,'" Thorne said. "And I think Golding has actually written him with tenderness."
Thorne said, like the book, he hopes the series allows the audience to have different interpretations of the story.
"I hope in the show too, that we don't give easy answers," Thorne said. "Rather, we pose delicious questions that lead to those conversations on the couch with your parents or your friends."
Barry Gordemer edited the broadcast version of this story. The digital version was edited by Olivia Hampton.
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