William Golding’s Lord of the Flies

William Golding (September June 1993)  Born in Cornwall, England, in  His father was a schoolmaster and his mother was a suffragette.  In Marlboro and Oxford University of England, studied physics and science mostly to please father. However, after two years Golding abruptly dropped science for English literature & poetry.  Published a volume of poems in 1935.

The War Years  From the first years of his life, he faced the atrocities of war. Participated in the Second World War by joining the British Navy in  He saw action against battleships (at the sinking of the Bismarck), submarines and aircraft. Finished as Lieutenant in command of a rocket ship. He was present off the French coast for the D-Day invasion.  The war changed a lot of Golding's view of life. He couldn't believe in man's innocence any longer. He found that even the children are not innocent.

Lord of the Flies  After the war ( ), he worked as a teacher in Salisbury and returned to writing. He published Lord of the Flies in  This book didn't become a success at once. Today, it's considered one of the best books of English literature. It also became a film with great success.

Prized Book  Wrote 15 other books and retired from teaching in  William Golding was awarded with the BOOKER McCONNEL Prize, the greatest British Literature Prize.  Finally in 1983, he was awarded with the Nobel Prize for his whole offer to world wide Literature.

William Golding died in Wiltshire, England, in 1993.

An artist’s rendition of the island:

Background of the book: Golding told the story of how Lord of the Flies came into existence: He was reading a typical boy’s book to his son, David, when he put the book aside and looked at his wife and said, “Oh, I’m so tired of this business. Wouldn’t it be fun to write a book about boys on an island and see what really happens?” qtd. in Jack Biles Talk: Conversations with Golding, pg. 60

A Parody of The Coral Island The book Lord of the Flies is a parody of a Victorian book called The Coral Island where boys land on an island, hunt pigs, are captured by savages who eventually all convert to Christianity.

Theme of the Book: As described by Golding, “The theme is an attempt to trace the defects of society back to the defects of human nature. The moral is that the shape of a society must depend on the ethical nature of the individual and not on any political system however apparently logical or respectable. The whole book is symbolic in nature, except…[the end], but in reality enmeshed in the same evil as the symbolic life of the children on the island.” qtd. in Epstein “Lord of the Flies is not, to say the least, a simple adventure story of boys on a desert island.”

Symbolism In Lord of the Flies The island in Lord of the Flies is never actually pointed out in the real world. The tropical location has a beach, as seen above, where Ralph and Piggy emerge from the scar to find the conch. The island is described as being in the shape of a boat, which is approximated in the picture. The boat imagery and the island itself are both symbols. The island is a microcosm for the real world, along with all the problems and realities faced in the world.

Symbolism In Lord of the Flies Symbolism plays an important part in the development of story. This narrative technique is used to give a significance to certain people or objects, which represent some other figure. The table on your handout lists many of the examples of symbolism used throughout Golding's book.