Point of View
Every novel employs at least one perspective, or point of view, to narrate the story. This can include an omniscient viewpoint, where no single character's perspective dominates, or it can involve the perspective of a single character, multiple characters in succession, and various combinations or variations of these. Golding uses the omniscient point of view, allowing him to remain outside and above the narrative, without delving into the inner thoughts of any individual character. From this elevated position, he observes and comments on the events as a detached bystander. In interviews, Golding has mentioned that the strongest emotion he feels about the story is grief. However, as the narrator, he chooses to remain detached, much like the British captain at the story's conclusion, who "turns away" from the crying boys. The narrator lets the actions, conveyed through artistic techniques like symbolism and structure, speak for themselves. Even a dramatic and emotional event such as Piggy's death is described in a clinical manner: "Piggy fell forty feet and landed on his back across that square red rock in the sea. His head opened and stuff came out and turned red."

Symbolism
A symbol is defined as a person, place, or object that represents something beyond its literal meaning. For example, in the story, the conch shell symbolizes a society governed by laws, where individuals take turns speaking. The pig's head is a more complex symbol. To Simon and many readers, it can signify multiple things. Rationally, Simon knows the pig's head is simply a "pig's head on a stick." Emotionally, however, he understands that it represents an evil so potent it causes him to faint. When Simon refers to it as "The Lord of the Flies," the symbol gains further significance, as this title translates to "Beelzebub," another name for the Devil. Similarly, the fire ignited using Piggy's glasses symbolizes science and technology. When controlled, it represents their beneficial aspects, providing light and warmth. When uncontrolled, it signifies the destructive potential of science and technology, causing death and devastation on the island. Simon himself can be seen as a Christ-like figure, a selfless helper who dies because his message—that the terrifying beast on the hill is merely a dead parachutist—is misunderstood. Throughout the narrative, the sounds of the surf, crackling fire, rolling boulders, and trees exploding from the fire's heat are often likened to cannon blasts and drum rolls. In this way, Golding continually reminds us that the story is a microcosm symbolizing the atomic war that preceded it.

Setting
In the setting of Lord of the Flies, Golding crafts his own "Coral Island"—an allusion to R. M. Ballantyne's book by the same name. Both stories feature boys stranded on a tropical island. However, while The Coral Island (1857) is a classic boys' adventure tale where everyone enjoys themselves and no one faces misfortune, Golding takes a different approach. He uses the setting in his narrative to highlight his own themes. During the day, the littluns find the island delightful, splashing in the lagoon pool and feasting on fruit. Yet, at night, the same beach becomes a place of terror, with some boys imagining "snake-things" in the trees.

Golding also contrasts the island's rocky side facing the sea with its gentler side facing the lagoon. On the ocean side, "the filmy enchantments of mirage could not endure the cold ocean water. . . . On the other side of the island, swathed at midday with mirage, defended by the shield of the quiet lagoon, one might dream of rescue; but here, faced by the brute obtuseness of the ocean . . . one was helpless." This contrast underscores Golding's perspective on human nature as a battle between noble intentions and virtues like love and faith against the unforgiving elements of nature and human flaws such as anger.

A plane evacuating a group of schoolboys following an atomic war apparently is shot down, but not before a passenger capsule containing children is ejected. Initially happy to enjoy an adult-free, fruit-filled, sunny environment on a tropical island where they land, all the boys are determined to have fun. They soon see the need for governance and choose the “fair-haired” Ralph as their leader.

Ralph, like the others, at first sees the absence of adults as an opportunity to have fun, but he soon feels burdened with the weight of a leader’s responsibilities. He symbolically holds a conch shell, which assembles the boys and stands as a symbol of authority. Piggy, a weak-sighted, overweight, asthmatic, cowardly boy, is the group’s source of rational thought and knowledge. He supports the ritual of leadership by finding and identifying the conch as a symbol of leadership.

Ralph’s authority is challenged by Jack, the former leader of the choirboys. Jack, with his red hair and wild blue eyes, eventually extends his power as leader of the hunters to force all the boys into his group. Roger distinguishes himself from the beginning as a person who enjoys hurting others. He deliberately discharges the rock that kills Piggy.

Fear disturbs this boyhood paradise. First articulated by one of the smallest boys, who sees ropes turning into beasts in the night, fear spreads to the older boys, who interpret the corpse of a downed aircraft pilot as a phantom beast. They offer a sacrifice of a pig’s head to appease it. Simon, a quiet, meditative boy, recognizes that the “beast” the boys fear actually is located within the boys themselves. When he crawls out of the jungle to tell the chanting boys of his insight, they attack and kill him.

Rivalry between Ralph and Jack precipitates a breakdown of the decision to build shelters, maintain hygienic conditions, hunt for meat, and maintain a signal fire to effect their rescue. Before long, the faction of hunters has degenerated into paint-wearing, ritual-chanting warriors who first pursue pigs but finally hunt Ralph. In their pursuit, they throw all self-preserving caution to the wind, setting the island on fire and destroying the fruit-bearing trees.

Complete self-destruction is prevented by the arrival of a rescue ship. An officer from the ship is astonished by and disappointed with the apparent misconduct of the dirty young savages who face him.

Pacific island

Pacific island. Unnamed tropical island on which the novel is mainly set. The island serves as a metaphor for society in general, providing the setting for the boys’ trials and adventures. Through the use of the only symbol of authority they have, a conch shell, they try to re-create British civilized society. The conch, like a whistle, yields an assembly of older boys and “littluns.” Throughout the novel, the group who identify themselves as choir boys, and are under the leadership of Jack, progressively stray from the civilized behavior of the assembly area and into irresponsible anarchy.

The Scar

The Scar. Meeting place where the boys, led by Ralph, hold assemblies in imitation of Great Britain’s Parliament. Created by the plane crash, free of tropical vegetation, and level and sandy, it is the site of three crude huts. It is also the site of the docking of the rescue cutter that comes ashore from the cruiser.

Mountain

Mountain. Site selected by Piggy and Ralph as the most obvious place to build a signal fire for smoke, the means of attracting rescuers. Irresponsibility by the littluns allows the fire to get out of control, taking the life of a littlun. Jack’s hunters cause the keepers of the fire to abandon it for the joy of hunting. The fire goes out; the possible rescue ship passes without seeing the smoke. The mountain is also the place of “the beast” that Simon sees.

Castle Rock

Castle Rock. Headquarters of Jack’s gang, this place is unlike the rest of the island. This piece of rock, barren of vegetation, is slightly set apart from the main part of the island. Easily defended, this rocky place is the site of the violent death first of Simon, then of Piggy, and the planned site of Ralph’s violent death. However, Ralph escapes to the thick tropical vegetation of the main island.

Altar of the “lord of the flies.”

Altar of the “lord of the flies.” Sacrificial site, located in the tropical forest, at which a slaughtered sow’s head stuck on a sharp stick drips with blood and is covered with flies. This is also the site of Simon’s hallucination or conversation with the beast, wherein he recognizes that this beast is the evil within all humanity, not an external force or form. Instead of creating fear in Simon, as it does in the hunters, this beast seems able to communicate with Simon.

Tropical jungle

Tropical jungle. Simon’s place, where he goes to observe nature and contemplate the evil and violence within each of the boys. This is also the place where Ralph finds sanctuary when the hunters set the island on fire, hoping to smoke him out and use his severed head in sacrificial ritual.

Latrine

Latrine. Communal toilet area, away from fresh water and huts, that allows a vestige of British civilization until it is abandoned by the boys in favor of irresponsible freedom.

Cruiser

Cruiser. British warship that represents safety, comfort, rescue, and civilized society, even though it may be headed into unsafe water in wartime conditions. To the boys, however, it is salvation.

Golding and World War II
"When I was young, before the war, I did have some airy-fairy views about man. . . . But I went through the war and that changed me. The war taught me different and a lot of others like me," Golding told Douglas A. Davis in the New Republic. Golding was referencing his time as a captain of a British rocket-launching craft in the North Atlantic. He witnessed the sinking of the Bismarck, a flagship of the German navy, and took part in the D-Day invasion of German-occupied France. Additionally, he was impacted by the destruction caused by the German air force in England, which heavily damaged the country's infrastructure and marked the start of a significant economic decline. Wartime rationing persisted well into the postwar era, with items like meat, bread, sugar, gasoline, and tobacco being scarce and considered luxuries. To revive the nation, the government experimented with nationalizing key industries such as coal, electric power, and gas companies, as well as the transportation sector. Socialized medicine and government-sponsored insurance were also introduced. These changes, and the harsh conditions that led to them, reflect the postwar atmosphere in which Golding wrote Lord of the Flies.

The Geography of a Tropical Island
Despite the romanticized portrayal in Western fiction and nonfiction, life on a typical tropical island is far from easy. The weather is generally very hot and humid, and there is no breeze once you enter the jungle. While fish are plentiful in the surrounding waters and the scent of tropical flowers fills the air, you must still be wary of sharks, and a diet of fruit and flowers alone is not sustainable. James Fahey, a naval seaman who served in the Pacific islands during the war, concluded: "We do not care too much for this place, the climate takes the life right out of you."

The Political Landscape of the 1950s
Following World War II, the dawn of the Cold War between the Soviet Union (U.S.S.R.) and the Western powers marked a new era in global politics. The conflicts of the 1950s were mainly limited to smaller-scale wars, such as those in Korea (involving the United States) and Vietnam (involving the French). Despite the absence of large-scale warfare, the Cold War tensions between the USSR and the United States escalated dramatically. This period saw the United States conduct its first successful hydrogen bomb test on November 1, 1952, at Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific. A second, even more powerful device was detonated on March 1, 1954, at Bikini Atoll. In the United States, public fallout shelters were identified in major cities to ostensibly protect citizens from the radioactive fallout of nuclear explosions. Schoolchildren regularly practiced air raid drills by taking cover under their desks. Additionally, in 1954, Canada and the United States agreed to construct the "DEW" line (Distant Early Warning Line) of radar stations across the Arctic to detect incoming aircraft or missiles over the Arctic region. To summarize, the early 1950s were characterized by an atmosphere of suspicion, distrust, and threats among the major powers. An atomic war, as depicted in Lord of the Flies, seemed a plausible threat during this tense period.

The events of Lord of the Flies occur during World War II on an isolated island in the Pacific Ocean. Golding intentionally selects this setting, drawing inspiration from Coral Island (1858), to contrast his story with the idealistic narrative of Robert Michael Ballantyne's novel. In Lord of the Flies, the stranded schoolboys have survived a plane crash caused by wartime conflict, making them innocent casualties of adult aggression. Initially, the island appears to provide ample food, water, shelter, and even the hope of eventual rescue. The boys construct a signal fire on the island's highest point, aiming to catch the attention of any passing ships or planes. However, as the story unfolds, the island begins to exude a sinister aura. A malevolent force seems to inhabit it, posing a grave threat to the boys' survival.

Golding's main goal is to demonstrate that an idealistic view of humanity is both unrealistic and incomplete. To fully understand human nature, one must recognize our inherent capacity for cruelty. To illustrate this, Golding sets his story on a fictional island where all basic needs are easily met, eliminating the struggle for survival. He then depicts a group of schoolboys gradually abandoning their civilized behavior. Stripped of their cultural veneer, the boys transform not into innocent primitives but into violent savages. This scenario offers a microcosmic reflection of the "civilized" adult world: the boys are marooned on the island as a result of a global catastrophe and are "rescued" from their brutal manhunt by adults engaged in an equally brutal, yet "civilized," military pursuit.

Golding underscores the parallel between the savage boys and their equally savage adult rescuers through a dramatic shift in perspective at the novel's conclusion. Throughout the story, readers view events through the boys' eyes. However, in the final four pages, the perspective shifts to that of the naval officer who rescues them. Readers who have witnessed the boys' descent into savagery see them as sadistic hunters chasing Ralph. In contrast, the naval officer perceives them merely as dirty children caught up in "fun and games." He, like many adults, is unaware of the depth of depravity the boys—and he himself—are capable of. This shift in viewpoint is a hallmark of many of Golding's works.

Another technique Golding employs to emphasize the dual nature of humans is humor, broadly defined to include actions and words that convey amusement and happiness, as well as those that are simply funny. Initially humorous or lighthearted elements become corrupted as the island paradise turns into a hellish environment and the good boys become savage. For instance, the playful act of rolling rocks evolves into a method of killing, and a grin shifts from an expression of joy at the absence of adults to the menacing leer of a sow's head mounted on a stick.

Critics frequently describe Golding's novels as religious myths or parables, crafted to convey a moral lesson. Lord of the Flies symbolically represents Golding's view on what transpires when individuals fail to confront the destructive aspects of their own nature. Golding provides just enough detail about the characters to illustrate their varied reactions to the menace of the "Lord of the Flies." Among this group are typical representatives of an English school of the era; their lack of distinctive personal traits underscores Golding's point that the evil affecting the boys could arise in any ordinary person. Despite its moral undertones, the novel is also a compelling adventure story. Golding adeptly guides the reader through the unfolding events, from the initial fear of the "littlun" who dreams of "The Beast," to the formation of Jack's savage tribe, culminating in the hunt for Ralph. The boys' transformation from innocence to savagery is startling, yet it progresses so naturally that it becomes believable.

Particularly effective is the sinister and menacing way the evil spirit of the "Lord of the Flies" is brought to life. By the time Simon encounters "The Beast," the reader is fully convinced of its reality and finds it more terrifying than anything the boys had imagined. The pivotal scene where the killing of a sow unleashes the tribe's savage instincts is also highly convincing. Golding's use of simple, direct language and authentic schoolboy dialogue enhances the story's realism.

Some readers may find the novel's conclusion abrupt, marked by the arrival of the naval officer who rescues the boys. His composed reaction to the evidence of two murders and a group of schoolchildren turned violent savages might seem too subdued. Perhaps Golding aims to create a sense of irony by depicting a soldier admonishing the boys for failing to behave like proper Englishmen.

1. Is the boys' behavior influenced by the lack of adult supervision?

2. Would the group's actions have differed if girls were present?

3. Why do the boys select Ralph as their leader? Is he an appropriate choice? Why do they eventually follow Jack?

4. What causes the boys to become less enthusiastic about maintaining the fire over time?

5. Why do the boys bully Piggy? Has their treatment of him changed since they first arrived on the island?

6. Examine the events that led to the power struggle between Ralph and Jack.

7. Jack turns into a tyrant who urges his followers to unleash their darkest impulses. Why do the well-mannered English schoolboys forsake their civilized upbringing for uncontrolled anger?

• 1950s: In the aftermath of World War II, Great Britain was economically devastated. German air raids had obliterated homes, factories, railways, docks, and various other infrastructures. Rationing of essential items like bread, meat, sugar, and gasoline extended well beyond the war's end. Once a lending nation, Great Britain found itself in debt for the first time in its history.

  Today: Great Britain has achieved economic stability, although it has not regained the full economic dominance it once had before World War II. The discovery of oil in the North Sea and its membership in the European Union (despite occasional disputes) have bolstered its economic strength.

• 1950s: Politically, Great Britain was governed by the Labor Party in the immediate post-World War II era. During this time, key industries such as coal, electricity, gas, and transportation were nationalized, social security was expanded, and universal health care was introduced. As the Cold War began, Great Britain aligned with the United States against Russian expansionism, though there was significant antinuclear activism, particularly in response to the deployment of American nuclear missiles on British soil.

  Today: Politically, Great Britain remains robust, though the separatist movement in Northern Ireland continues to cause unrest. With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War, Great Britain has been able to concentrate more on domestic issues and regional cooperation.

• 1950s: Psychologists focused on biological factors, such as Arnold Gesell, believed that a child's intellectual development was only slightly influenced by their environment, while other scientists contended that the environment played a crucial role.

  Today: Modern scientific research using brain scans has revealed physical differences between the brains of healthy children and those who have been abused, indicating that experiences can indeed alter the brain's circuitry.

Golding's distinctive approach to using literary precedents involves parodying them by flipping their expectations. At first glance, Lord of the Flies appears to be a classic boys' adventure story, reminiscent of R. M. Ballantyne's The Coral Island (1858), or a survival tale akin to Robinson Crusoe (Defoe; 1719) and The Swiss Family Robinson (Wyss; 1812). However, rather than successfully taming their island environment, the boys descend into savagery. This clever use of precedents allows Golding to challenge romantic ideas of man's inherent goodness and emphasize his central theme — the potential for depravity within humanity that people often refuse to recognize.

Readers might find interest in several Golding novels that share similar themes and circumstances. Golding's second published novel, The Inheritors, depicts a group of innocent prehistoric men and women who are killed by the ancestors of modern humans. In the novel, Neanderthals are wiped out by Homo sapiens, a species characterized by its malevolent intelligence, casual destruction of another species, and its cruelty and arrogance. The Inheritors introduces a theme Golding frequently revisits in his later works: the contrasting benevolent aspects of faith and poetry versus the malevolent effects of technological societies.

Other novels by Golding also delve into the origins of evil in human lives and its relentless power to corrupt both individuals and society. In Pincher Martin, the struggle between life and death becomes a battle for the survival of the soul. The Spire narrates the story of a clergyman who relentlessly pursues a personal vision of success, regardless of the cost to himself or others. Golding examines societal corruption of an individual in his novel The Pyramid. The Reverend Colley, from Golding's critically acclaimed Close Quarters (1984), exemplifies the seemingly innocent man who is ultimately destroyed by negative traits that had been lurking within him all along.

In 1963, Continental produced a film adaptation of Lord of the Flies. Directed by Peter Brook, the film features James Aubrey, Tom Chapin, and Hugh Edwards. Additionally, a filmstrip version of the novel (1978) is available, which includes an audio cassette, a discussion guide, and a copy of the text.

• Lord of the Flies holds the unique distinction of being one of the rare serious contemporary novels adapted into a film twice. The first adaptation, directed by Peter Brook in 1963 with an entirely English cast, has been called "compelling" but achieved only moderate success at the box office. This version is available from Home Vision Cinema and Fusion Video.
• The 1990 remake, directed by Harry Hook and featuring an American cast, is well-photographed and "visceral," with R-rated content. However, it is generally considered inferior to Brook's version. This adaptation is available from Columbia Tristar Home Video, The Video Catalog, and New Line Home Video.
• An 89-minute audio recording on cassette (JRH 109), along with a book and study guide produced in 1984 and featuring excerpts from the novel, are available from the Listening Library, Old Greenwich, CT.

Babb, Howard S. The Novels of William Golding. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1970. This study explores the recurring themes in Golding's novels and serves as a valuable resource for educators looking to introduce students to Golding's other works.

Biles, Jack I. Talk: Conversations with William Golding. New York: Harcourt, 1971. This book features an interview with Golding, making it ideal for mature students or teachers preparing to present the author's literature.

Johnson, Arnold. Of Earth and Darkness: The Novels of William Golding. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1980. A more recent analysis, this book is aimed at adult readers and delves into the moral aspects of Golding's novels.

Sources
Quotations from Lord of the Flies are sourced from the following edition:
Golding, William. Lord of the Flies. New York: Capricorn Books, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1954.

Some details in the Overview section are derived from E. L. Epstein’s biographical and critical notes accompanying the aforementioned edition of the novel.

Baker, James R. "The Decline of Lord of the Flies." In South Atlantic Quarterly, Vol. 69, Autumn, 1970, pp. 446-60.

Davis, Douglas A. "A Conversation with Golding." In New Republic, May 4, 1963, pp. 28-30.

Dick, Bernard F. William Golding, revised edition. Twayne, 1987.

Fahey, James J. Pacific War Diary, 1942-1945. Houghton Mifflin, 1963.

Green, Martin. "Distaste for the Contemporary." In Nation, Vol. 190, May 21, 1960, pp. 451-54.

Kermode, Frank. "The Novels of William Golding." In International Literary Annual, Vol. III, 1961, pp. 11-29. Also appears in a condensed form in Baker & Ziegler (1964), pp. 203-6.

Reilly, Patrick. 'Lord of the Flies': Fathers and Sons, Twayne's Masterwork Studies, No. 106, 1992.

Rexroth, Kenneth. Atlantic Monthly, May, 1965.

Riley, Carolyn, ed. Contemporary Literary Criticism: CLC 1. Detroit: Gale Research Co., 1973.

Rosenfield, Claire. "'Men of Smaller Growth': A Psychological Analysis of William Golding's Lord of the Flies." In William Golding's "Lord of the Flies," A Casebook Edition, edited by James R. Baker and Arthur P. Ziegler, Jr. Putnam, 1964, pp. 261-76. Also included in Leonard and Eleanor Manheim, editors, Hidden Patterns: Studies in Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism, Macmillan, 1966.

Ryan, Bryan, ed. Major 20th Century Writers. Detroit: Gale Research Inc., 1991, 2:E-K, 1206.

For Further Study
Baker, James R. and Arthur P. Ziegler, Jr., editors. William Golding's "Lord of the Flies," A Casebook Edition: Text, Notes, and Criticism. Putnam, 1964, particularly pp. IX-XXIV, 189-291. This edition includes the novel's text, early critical articles both for and against, two interviews with Golding, and a checklist of additional criticism.

Cox, C. B. Review of Lord of the Flies. In Critical Quarterly, Vol. 2, no. 2, Summer, 1960, pp. 112-17. This contemporary review describes Lord of the Flies as one of the most significant novels published in the 1950s.

Gindin, James. William Golding. St. Martin's, 1988. Gindin offers an insightful discussion on Golding's prose techniques and how he conveys abstract ideas through concrete details.

Herndl, G. C. "Golding and Salinger: A Clear Choice." In Wiseman Review, No. 502, Winter, 1964-65, pp. 309-22. Herndl argues that Golding emerges from a classical and Christian tradition that implicitly supports social institutions and opposes individualism.

Peter, John. "The Fables of William Golding." In Kenyon Review, Vol. 19, Autumn, 1957, pp. 577-92. A portion of this essay is reprinted in Baker & Ziegler, pp. 229-34. Peter regards this article as "important and influential in defining critical terms for understanding Golding's work." Bernard F. Dick mentions that Golding himself particularly appreciated this essay.

Spitz, David. "Power and Authority: An Interpretation of Golding's 'Lord of the Flies.'" In Antioch Review, Vol. 30, no. 1, Spring, 1970, pp. 21-33. This is a thorough study of the characterization in Golding's novel.

Stern, James. "English Schoolboys in the Jungle." In New York Times Review of Books, October 23, 1995, p. 38. Stern interprets the novel as a piece of social commentary.

Tiger, Virginia. William Golding: The Dark Fields of Discovery. Calder & Boyars, 1974. In this work, Tiger explores religious, political, psychological, and anthropological interpretations, asserting that the narrative's structure "portrays its thematic meaning."

Time, June 22, 1962, p. 64. This article examines the increasing popularity of Golding's novel in America.

Background
The critical notes by E.L. Epstein, following the text in the edition of the book used for this study guide, contain an informative interpretation of the story’s central image, integral to understanding the allegorical implications of the novel:

The central symbol itself, the “lord of the flies” [physically represented in the novel by the pig’s head Jack’s tribe mounts on a sharpened stick, and abstractly represented by the boy’s gradual descent into anarchy and violence] . . . is a translation of the Hebrew Ba’alzevuv (Beelzebub in Greek). It has been suggested that it was a mistranslation of a mistransliterated word which gave us the pungent and suggestive name for the Devil, a devil whose name suggests that he is devoted to decay, destruction, demoralization, hysteria, and panic and who therefore fits very well in Golding’s theme.

In a historical sense, Lord of the Flies has been present in literature, literally and figuratively, since Loki, the god of mischief in Norse mythology, and in works as diverse as Dante’s “Inferno” and the modern works of Stephen King and other contemporary horror authors. Chaos and destruction have even reigned supreme at times in the modern world. Consider Adolph Hitler and the nightmare reign of the Third Reich, forces that Golding himself fought against, as a prime example of this. But since the embodiment of evil in literature has largely been reduced to an amusing conceit, Golding had to approach his presentation of Beelzebub on a more figurative level. Having witnessed himself the evil that man is capable of, he took a more symbolic approach to presenting what author Anthony Burgess called, “[The] most stinking and depraved of all the devils.” In Lord of the Flies:

The Devil is not presented in any traditional religious sense; Golding’s Beelzebub is the modern equivalent, the anarchic, amoral, driving force that Freudians call the Id, whose only function seems to be to insure the survival of the host in which it is embedded or embodied, which function it performs with tremendous and single-minded tenacity.

On speaking of the same central image in the novel, Stephen Medcalf writes, “The book dares to name the beast, the evil in man’s heart, as the beast.” Shaped by brute experience, and his dashed conceptions of the good world, Golding’s Lord of the Flies is, therefore, a study of man’s willing (and inevitable) descent into the heart of darkness, fueled by his own fear, and guided by his own inwardly twisted nature.

Considering Golding’s own experiences with chaos, fear, death, and destruction on a massive scale during World War II, and his own altered moral philosophy and loss of innocence, it is no surprise that he has chosen to examine their origins in Lord of the Flies.

Golding claims to have written Lord of the Flies as a response to the novel Coral Island: A Tale of the Pacific Ocean, by R.M. Ballantyne. According to Major 20th Century Writers:

These two books share the same basic plot line and even some of the same character names (two of the lead characters are named Ralph and Jack in both books). The similarity, however, ends there. Ballantyne’s story, about a trio of boys stranded on an otherwise uninhabited island, shows how, by pluck and resourcefulness, the young castaways survive with their morals strengthened and their wits sharpened. Lord of the Flies, on the other hand, is “an allegory on human society today, the novel’s primary implication being that what we have come to call civilization is, at best, not more than skin-deep,” as James Stern explains in a New York Times Book Review article.

Golding’s view of civilization and the pure innocence of youth, however, was quite different from Ballantyne’s. Having witnessed the grand scale of death and destruction in World War II, Golding described the theme of his own highly allegorical novel Lord of the Flies as “an attempt to trace the defects of society back to the defects of human nature.” He no longer agreed with Ballantyne’s hypothesis that the proper English civilized way of life was good and Christian, and that evil was its antithesis: un-Christian and savage. According to author Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange), Golding’s characters, unlike Ballantyne’s, are inherently evil. Without the restraints of civilization they, “will choose chaos rather than order. The good intentions of the few are overborne by the innate evil of the many. Instead of a boy-scout camp, we get young savages—painted, naked, gorging on pigflesh, given to torture, murder, human sacrifice to false gods.”

Baker, James, ed. Critical Essays on William Golding. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1988. Twelve wide-ranging essays by critics and part of Baker’s interview with Golding. Includes Golding’s Nobel Prize address.

Dick, Bernard F. William Golding. Rev. ed. Boston: Twayne, 1987. Contains a chronology of Golding’s literary career.

Friedman, Lawrence S. William Golding. New York: Continuum, 1993. Sets Lord of the Flies in the context of Golding’s entire body of work. The philosophical first chapter is especially useful in focusing on significant themes and concerns.

Gindin, James. William Golding. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988. A biography and survey of Golding’s literary career. Includes an enlightening comparison of Lord of the Flies with R. M. Ballantyne’s nineteenth century novel, The Coral Island.

Reilly, Patrick. “Lord of the Flies”: Fathers and Sons. Boston: Twayne, 1992. Defends the novel from charges of unrelieved despair.