Lord Of The Flies: Defects Of Society Due To Nature Of Individuals :: essays research papers

Lord of THe Flies: Defects of Society Due to Nature of Individuals The venturesome novel, Lord of the Flies, is an enchanting, audacious account that depicts the defects of society as the incorrigible nature of individuals when they are immature and without an overlooking authority. The author of the novel, William Golding, was born in Britain, which accounts for the English, cultured characters in the novel. After studying science at Oxford University for two years, he changed his emphasis as a major to English literature. When World War II broke out in 1939, Golding served in the Royal Navy for five years. The atrocities he witnessed changed his view about mankind's essential nature. He came to believe that there was a very dark and evil side to man, which accounts for the savage nature of the children in the novel. He said, "The war was unlike any other fought in Europe. It taught us not fighting, politics, or the follies of nationalism, but about the given nature of man." After the war he returned to teaching and wrote his first novel, Lord of the Flies, which was finally accepted for publication in 1954. In 1983, the novel received the Noble Prize and the statement, "[His] books are very entertaining and exciting. . . . They have aroused an unusually great interest in professional literary critics (who find) deep strata of ambiguity and complication in Golding's work. . . ." (Noble Prize committee) Some conceived the novel as bombastic and didactic. Kenneth Rexroth stated in the Atlantic, "Golding's novels are rigged.. . . The boys never come alive as real boys. . . . " Other critics see him as the greatest English writer of our time. In the Critical Quarterly in 1960, C.B. Cox deemed Lord of the Flies as "probably the most important novel to be published. . . in the 1950's." The setting of the novel takes place on an island in the Pacific Ocean. The author never actually locates the island in the real world or states the exact time period. The author does state that the plane carrying the children had been shot down in a nuclear war, so the time period must be after the making and the use of nuclear weapons. Even though the location of the island is not definite, the author vividly describes the setting. Golding tells us that the island is tropical and shaped like a boat. At the low end are the jungle and the orchards, which rise up to the treeless and rocky mountain ridge. The beach,