AdamsMango
War Child
I was reading Lord of the Flies for school and there is a chapter called Shadows and Tall trees! Wonder if Bono knows..
adamswildhoney said:I went on a date once, My date thought "Lord of the Flies" was a book that was ripping off "Lord of the Rings". Mind you all that it was a blind date. I was trying so hard not to laugh when he said that.
AdamsMango said:
whoa, he is a keeper!
pepokiss said:actually, the song does come from that book and chapter
Bono said that once (I think)
AdamsMango said:hmm any one got the lyrics/story book to check?i don't know why bono would do that..but i think it'd make sense
William Golding's Lord of the Flies was an important text around Lypton Village. Part of the driving force behind that community within a community involved the rejection of adulthood and the mind-numbing convention that seemed to accompany it. The purity and innocence of childhood seemed far more attractive than a life of never-ending compromise.
And so Bono, Gavin, Guggi and the other inhabitants of this imaginary place resolved to live like children, and to behave with a child-like honesty. "We got into this Lord of the Flies idea of not growing up," Bono told John Waters later. "We said, 'we won't grow up. We'll stay as we are... nine!' Ahem, I guess we succeeded there!"
[...]
The title 'Shadows and Tall Trees' was taken from the fourth chapter of Lord of the Flies. "When I came up with the title, I remember thinking 'Wow! I can do this! Again it was like a moment of realization," Bono recalls.
[...]
The shadows and tall trees of the title were a reference to the atmosphere around the pylons that towered over Cedarwood Road and environs. "I remember thinking about that comparison between Lord of the Flies and where we were in Cedarwood, between Ballymun and Finglas. It was a quiet little street in one sense but my memory of it, growing up, is of being stuck between cowboys and indians, rumbles between the top end of the street and the bottom end of the street, between bootboys and skinheads, and so on. That's the way it was. And I remember thinking the shadows and tall trees are different here - but it's the same story, isn't it? It's all about war. We're all stuck on this island of suburbia and we're turning on each other."