1. Lord of the Flies
By William Golding

2. Author: Sir William Golding
Born in Cornwall, England
Born Sept. 19, 1911
Son of a women’s rights movement activist, Mildred Golding, and Alec Golding, a distinguished schoolmaster
Educated at Oxford

3. Golding, cont. Enlisted in British Royal Navy during World War II
Served on cruisers, destroyers, and minesweepers for five years
Horrors of war generated a dark view of human nature reflected in his novels
His view of nature mirrors political thinker Thomas Hobbes

4. Golding, cont. Nobel Prize in Literature in 1983
1988 Queen of England knighted him

5. About the novel Written in 1954
Based on The Coral Island, by R.M. Ballantyne, written in 1857
Main characters are also Ralph and Jack
Also stranded on island and hunt pigs
Captured by savages but rescued by teacher
At end they converted the savages to Christianity

6. Read The Coral Island to his son and at the end said to his wife, “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?”

7. Key Words
Civilization: Peoples considered to have reached a high social development
Anarchy: The breakdown or absence of socialized behavior; political disorder, confusion, and violence; absence of government
Totalitarianism: A government in which a dictator has complete control over peoples’ lives (Hitler, Stalin, Mao)

8. Macrocosm: means literally “great world”, the universe; (in the novel= the adult world)
Microcosm: means literally “little world”; a world in miniature (in the novel= the island)

9. Island as microcosm
The island society in Lord of the Flies is a microcosm of the real world at the time (WWII). The boys revert from democratic, humanistic principles to savages through the rule of illegal thugs (Hitler, Stalin, etc., who also used force and fear tactics, such as nuclear weapons)

10. Irony
The conflict between what seems and what is. Derived from the clash between appearance and reality
Dramatic irony: when the audience knows the true reality, but the character doesn’t
Example: when we know the beast is really a parachutist, but the characters do not

11. Irony, cont.
Situational irony: events turn out opposite of what is expected
Example: Ralph says, “This is a good island”, but on this island terrible things happen.
Verbal Irony: when the writer says the opposite of what he means

12. Literary Terms
Symbol: a person, place, event or object that has a meaning in itself but suggests other meanings as well
Allegory of ideas: a symbolic story that may be applied to a parallel set of situations; a presentation of an abstract or spiritual meaning under concrete or material forms.

13. Types of allegorical interpretations
Religious
Moral
Governmental
Social
Psychological
Philosophical

14. Religious allegory
Religious allegory: the story parallels the fall of man from the Garden of Eden
Described in The Bible and John Milton’s Paradise Lost

15. Moral allegory
The main characters represent the different forces that affect one’s moral make-up:
Lust (passion or emotion)
Reason
Intelligence
Spirituality (soul)

16. Governmental allegory
The story is an analysis of the nature of governments:
Democracy
Anarchy
Dictatorship
Totalitarianism

17. Social allegory
The story illustrates through its main characters how lust for power dominates humanity’s spiritual and rational sides

18. Psychological allegory
The main characters represent the different parts of Freud’s psychoanalytical theory
Sigmund Freud ( ) was the first psychoanalytical theorist to suggest that the human personality could be divided into three parts.

19. Psychological allegory, cont.
ID (primal, or animal instinct):
seeks only pleasure and vents its destructive impulses on the world without restraint or regret
empowers unbridled desires and primitive, savage urges
Governs children in their early years

20. Psychological allegory, cont.
Superego (conscience):
Disapproving adults alter the behavior through outside punishment
Rules or adults get internalized in the child and become his or her own controls for behavior
Rules of civilization

21. Psychological allegory, cont.
Ego (human power or reason): A balance has to be struck between the unreasoning urges of the id and the rigid, unreasoning controls of the superego.

22. Philosophical allegory
The story is a presentation of the philosophies or opposing political thinkers Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Are we evil by nature, or are we born innocent but then later get corrupted by the false conventions of society?
Is man by nature a brute savage or a noble savage?

23. Thomas Hobbes Philosopher, 1588-1679
Perhaps most famous for his political philosophy
Men in a state of nature, that is, a state without civil government, are in a war of all against all in which life is hardly worth living.
The way out of this desperate state is to make a social contract and establish the state to keep peace and order.
Because of his view of how nasty life is without the state, Hobbes subscribes to a very authoritarian version of the social contract.

24. Jean-Jacques Rousseau Philosopher, 1712 - 1778
In his early writing, Rousseau contended that man is essentially good, a "noble savage“, when in the "state of nature" (the state of all the other animals, and the condition man was in before the creation of civilization and society)
Good people are made unhappy and corrupted by their experiences in society.
He viewed society as "artificial" and "corrupt" and that the furthering of society results in the continuing unhappiness of man.

25. Golding rejects Rousseau’s “noble savage” belief, which pervaded art and literature for generations
Golding shows the youngest people, least affected by society, puts them in paradise and shows their savagery, not their nobility
Where has goodness gone? What is the source of children corruption? Society or evil natures?

26. In an interview, Golding describes theme as “an attempt to trace the defects of society back to the defects of human nature”
Presence of evil is a destructive influence in man and major cause of social disintegration
Man can only have a healthy society after he recognizes the evil within him and tries to control it

27. Saw modern society as threatened by the same presence of evil that destroys the boys’ society on the island
Civilization, according to Golding, is a thin veneer which under the right circumstance is easily broken down
Do you agree or disagree?