Lord of the Flies

1
Lord of the Flies

• By William Gerald Golding

Introduction to the Novel
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William Gerald Golding

• Born in 1911 Cornwall, England
• Father Alec Golding
• rationalist optimism
• Graduated from Brasenose College at Oxford in
  1935 English and Education
• 1935-1939 worked as a producer, actor and writer
• 1939 taught English and philosophy in Salisbury
  at Bishop Wordsworths school.
• Remained in teaching profession until 1961, but
  spent five years in the Navy during WWII
• 1983 Nobel Prize for Literature
• Died in Cornwall in 1993

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Five Years in the Navy

• 1940-1945
• WWII Golding was involved in the invasion of
  Normandy and D-Day.
• Golding was exposed to the incredible cruelty and
  barbarity of which humankind is capable.
• Man produces evil, as a bee produces honey.

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Goldings Life and Times as Reference Points in
His Novel

• Written in 1954 less than 10 years after WWII
• The Holocaust, Atomic Bomb and Communism haunted
  the minds of the western public and the author
• This environment of fear technologys rapid
  advances act as a backdrop to the island
  experiences.
• Based on his experience in war, Golding asserted
  that the unlimited brutality shown by the Nazis
  was not something that was limited to any
  particular group. He felt that no one (no
  nation) was far from committing atrocities of
  the same magnitude.
• 55 million people lost their lives in WWII
• US drops Atomic Bomb in Japan 100,000 people
  killed

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Goldings Life and Times as Reference Points in
His Novel

• Lord of the Flies is an allegorical microcosm of
  the world Golding knew and participated in.
• Allegory a story that represents abstract ideas
  or moral qualities. As such, an allegory has
  both a literal level and a symbolic level of
  meaning.
• This novel is representative of Goldings view of
  the world, humankind, and British culture.
• Lord of the Flies explores three key aspects of
  human nature (basis of the themes in the text)
• Desire for social and political order
• Natural inclination toward evil and violence
• Belief in supernatural or divine intervention in
  human destiny

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Goldings view on HUMAN NATURE

• His fathers rationalist optimism
• Humans can be perfected with enough effort
• Reason (not experience) is a means through which
  to gain knowledge and understand the world
• Technology ?
• Goldings view
• Human nature is equal parts of good and evil
• These parts are permanently intertwined
• Technology ?

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Golding puts innocent schoolboys on an
uninhabited tropical island to illustrate the
point that savagery is not confined to certain
people in particular environments - but exists
in everyone
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Lord of the Flies

• Explores the savagery that underlies even the
  most civilized human beings
• an attempt to trace the defects of society
  back to the defects of human nature. - Golding