Nov 15, 2009

Lord of the Flies | Lord of the Flies: Interpretations

In this essay, Diane Andrews Henningfeld explores how Golding's novel can be interpreted in a variety of different ways—including as political, psychological, and religious allegory.

Lord of the Flies, William Golding's first novel, was published in London in 1954 and in New York in 1955. Golding was forty-three years old when he wrote the novel, having served in the Royal Navy during the Second World War. According to Bernard Oldsey, "The war appears to have been an important influence on him."

Lord of the Flies is deliberately modeled after R. M. Ballantyne's 1857 novel The Coral Island. In this story, a group of English boys are shipwrecked on a tropical island. They work hard together to save themselves. The only evil in the...