Lord of the Flies
William Golding
• Born September 19, 1911 in Cornwall, England
• He attended both Malboro and Oxford Colleges, but
he graduated from Oxford
• He studied natural science and English
•Golding trained as a scientist, briefly
worked as an actor, and finally settled on
being a teacher,
•During World War II, Golding joined the
Royal Navy.
•After seeing the atrocities of war first hand,
Golding’s opinion of man changed after he
witnessed the evil of war from both sides.
He no longer believed that humans beings
were inherently good.
•After the war, Golding resumed
teaching and began writing novels and
published an anthology of poems.
•Lord of the Flies was written in 1954,
during The Cold War.
•Golding won the Nobel Prize for
Literature in 1983.
•Golding died in 1993—he was considered
one of the most acclaimed writers in
England
What should you come to understand by
the end of this unit?
• Man’s capacity for evil
• The true nature of humans has perplexed thinkers
for thousands of years.
• Novelists often use their fiction to make
statements about their personal or political
beliefs.
Lord of the Flies
The novel takes place
during a fictional
nuclear war.
A group of British
schoolboys are flown
out of their country to
“protect” them from
the horrors of war.
Lord of the Flies
However, their plane crashes, killing all
the adults on board.
The boys remain stranded on the
tropical island to fend for themselves…
In Golding’s day a popular boys adventure
story was…
• The Coral Island
• Written in 1858, it’s a
lighthearted tale about boys
stranded on a deserted,
tropical island.
• The major characters are
Jack, Ralph, and Peterkin.
• It’s an adventure story with
hidden treasure and a happy
ending.
Is Lord of the Flies like The Coral Island?
Golding wrote Lord of
the Flies in response to
The Coral Island and
how he felt boys
would really behave if
stranded on an island.
Is man essentially good or evil?
Kohlberg’s Stages of Morality
Charles Darwin
• English naturalist (1809-1882)
• Says that the question is really beside the point—
people are neither good or bad, they are most like
animals.
• Believed in the idea of the survival of the fittest.
• Like animals, people bring certain knowledge into the
world—instincts.
Darwin continued:
•
Categories for instincts:
1. Eating
2. Self-defense
3. Propagation of the species
4. Maternal instincts
5. Territorial imperative (defending one’s territory)
Sigmund Freud
•
•
Austrian psychiatrist (1856-1939)
Believes in 3 components of the human mind:
1. ID—functions in the irrational and emotional part of the mind. It is
the primitive mind and is concerned only with the pleasure
principle—I want it and I want it now!
2.
EGO—functions with the rational mind. The EGO’s job is to get
the ID’s pleasures while negotiating the long-term consequences. It
denies instant gratification and pious delay of gratification.
3.
SUPEREGO—the moral part of the mind. It is the embodiment
of parental and societal values—it stores and enforces the rules. Its
power to enforces rules comes from its ability to create anxiety.