William Golding was born in Cornwall, England in
1911
He was the son of an English schoolmaster who
believed strongly in science and rational thought.
He was raised in the sheltered environment of an
English private school
The prevailing concept of man and society at that
time, before World War II, included two basic
viewpoints:
Man was essentially good
Society was inherently evil
Growing up, Golding read adventure stories:
These stories featured good and pure men in
their struggle against the evils of society.
After two years in college Golding
switched majors from Science to English
This marked the beginning of his
disillusionment with his father’s
rationalism—the practice of guiding one’s
actions and opinions solely by what
seems reasonable
He graduated from Brasenose College,
Oxford, in 1935 with a degree in English
Golding joined the British Royal Navy in 1940
He was unprepared for the violence unleashed
by war
He witnessed firsthand the destructive power of
man operating during war, essentially outside the
restrictive limits of society
Those experiences with chaos, fear, death, and
destruction on a massive scale during World War
II altered his moral philosophy
Golding was present at the sinking of the
Bismarck, the Walcheren Operation, and DDay landings in France
He later described his experience in the war
as one in which “one had one’s nose rubbed
in the human condition”
“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.”
With war as his tutor, Golding began to
view man as a creature with a very dark
and evil side to his nature.
The German air force bombing had devastated the
England Golding retuned home to.
The nations infrastructure was severely damaged.
This marked the beginning of a serious decline in
the British economy.
Wartime rationing continued well into the postwar
period.
Meat, bread, sugar, gasoline, and tobacco were all
in short supply and considered luxuries.
Key industries, such as coal, electric power, gas
companies and the transportation industry were
nationalized in an attempt to turn the economy
around.
Socialized medicine and government-sponsored
insurance were introduced.
Political Climate of the 1950’s
A new phase of world geopolitics began
after World War II
Cold War existed between the Iron Curtain
of the communist countries of Eastern
Europe and the Soviet Union and the Free
World of Western Europe and the United
States.
The atmosphere of the first half of the
1950’s was one of distrust, suspicion, and
threats among the big powers of the time.
November 1, 1952, the United States
successfully tested a hydrogen bomb at
Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific
March 1, 1954, a device hundreds of times
more powerful than the atomic bombs
dropped on Japan was tested at Bikini Atoll.
In the United States, fallout shelters were
designated for large cities to protect citizens
from the rain of radioactive materials.
School children practiced taking cover under
their desks during regular air raid drills.
In 1954 Canada and the United States agreed
to build a “DEW” line (Distant Early Warning
Line) of radar stations across the Arctic to
warn of approaching aircraft of missiles over
the Arctic.
An atomic war on the scale that Lord of
the Flies suggests did not seem out of
the realm of possibility during the early
1950’s.
Against this historical background and
William Golding’s personal
experiences, after reading a bedtime
boys’ adventure story to his children,
Golding wondered out loud to his wife
whether it would be a good idea to
write such a story but to let the
characters “behave as they really
would.” She thought it would be, and
Golding wrote Lord of the Flies.
Coral Island
R.M.Ballantyne, 1858
Ralph, Jack and Peterkin,
deserted on a coral island
in the Pacific, work hard
together to save
themselves. The only
evil is external and
personified by a group of
cannibals that live on the
island.
This book expresses the Victorian World
View that through hard work and serious
intent, one can overcome any hardship.
The boys survive and return to England
with strengthened morals and sharpened
wit.


Allegory: the
expressions
through
symbolism of
truths or
generalizations
about human
experience
Parable: a simple
story told to
illustrate a moral
truth
•Satire: biting wit, irony
or sarcasm used to
expose a vice or folly
•Parody: A literary or
musical work that
imitates the style of
some other work in a
satirical or humorous
way.
Lord of the Flies is an allegorical
novel: Golding conveys his main
ideas and themes through
symbolic characters and objects.
It is an allegory of politics, human
psychology and religion.
It is a satirical imitation of the
Victorian “World View.”
It is a parody of Coral Island.