Double Dutch

The students read Lord of the Flies, a novel about a group of teenagers trapped on a deserted island who rely on their instincts to survive. Lord of the Flies is a symbol of survival in the story, as many of the characters in Double Dutch also must use their instincts to survive. When Delia looks at writing, it devolves into the unknown and inscrutable, like the environment faced by the children in Lord of the Flies. She must find inventive ways to trick everyone into thinking she can read, using skills like deduction, memorization, and occasionally trickery to adapt to what feels like a hostile environment. Randy similarly has to survive in a hostile environment, alone and attending to basic needs like getting enough money to feed himself and his cat. Unlike the characters in Lord of the Flies, however, Randy never resorts to violence, emphasizing his sense of empathy and community involvement.

Like Delia and Randy, the twins use their instincts to protect themselves and survive by inspiring fear in their classmates. They connect to the violence in the story by building their class presentation around the “killing.” However, they also use the opportunity to ask their classmates where the real evil is. The Tollivers point out how the real violence is in the broader community that treats them as “others” who deserve to be feared and ostracized, and show how in Lord of the Flies, the collective group is responsible for all the violent acts.