Table
of content
Preface
William Golding
“Lord of the Flies” - short
description
Political symbolism and allegory in
“Lord of the Flies”
Psychological and Social symbolism and
allegory in “Lord of the Flies”
Religious symbolism and allegory in
“Lord of the Flies”
Conclusion
Preface
“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. The clinching references to a world war that would have then
been in the future as a Third World War are: "about the atom bomb. They’re
all dead." and "We might get taken prisoner by the Reds"
In what has become the authoritative interpretation of “Lord of the
Flies”, James R. Baker and Bernard Dick, who base their respective arguments on
textual evidence and Golding's professed admiration for Greek tragedy, conclude
that the form and substance of Golding's myth owes much to Euripides's Bacchae.
Both Baker and Dick argue that “Lord of the Flies” is an allegory on the
disintegration of society due to a tragic flaw in human nature: man fails to
recognize, and thereby appease, the irrational part of his soul.
Despite those attempts to find inspiration for Lord of
the Flies in literary classics like Euripides' “Bacchae”, many identify only
one book as a direct influence: Robert Michael Ballantyne's “The Coral
Island”. “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 and
they work hard together to save themselves.
…
