Lord of the Flies | Literary Precedents
Golding's characteristic use of literary precedents is to parody them by turning them on their heads. Lord of the Flies seems at first to be a boys' adventure story in the manner of R. M. Ballantyne's The Coral Island (1858), or a survival story like Robinson Crusoe (Defoe; 1719) and The Swiss Family Robinson (Wyss; 1812). But instead of successfully civilizing their island environment, the boys become savages. This use of precedents enables Golding to undercut romantic notions of man's innate goodness and reiterate his major theme — the depravity man is...
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