Every card in Modern texts, Year 11: a novel written after the Second World War, symbols, setting and language (Lord of the Flies option)
The whole deck, in order — so you can read it through before your child ever sees it.
- In which year was Lord of the Flies published? (year, four digits)
1954
HintIn the decade after the Second World War.
WhyIt was Golding's first novel. Many publishers turned it down before Faber and Faber took it, and the first printing of 3,000 copies sold slowly.
- In which armed service did the author serve during the Second World War?
The Royal Navy: he commanded a landing craft on D-Day
HintHe knew war at first hand.
WhyWilliam Golding had been a philosophy teacher before the war. His experience of violence shaped his view of what human beings are capable of.
- Golding wrote his novel as an answer to an earlier adventure story about boys on an island. What is it called?
The Coral Island
HintAn adventure story for boys in which they stay civilised.
WhyThat novel praises the civilising influence of the British. Golding thought it unrealistic and asked what children would really do.
- What threat hung over the world in the 1950s that shaped Golding's view of humanity?
The Cold War and the danger of nuclear destruction
HintA conflict between two superpowers, without direct fighting.
WhyThe novel's war background and the nuclear evacuation that was cut from the first draft come from this fear. Golding wanted to explore what people are like when civilisation fails.
- What was the working title of the novel before the final one was chosen?
Strangers from Within
HintThe title said where the danger lay.
WhyAn editor thought the title unsuitable. The idea of strangers within the boys matches the novel's message.
- What is the signal fire a symbol of?
The hope of rescue and the link with civilisation
HintRalph keeps returning to it as the sign of what matters.
WhyOne reading: the fire starts as hope, and in the last chapter becomes a weapon. The same object serves both sides of the novel.
- What does the pig's head on a stick come to symbolise?
The beast within every human being: the evil that civilisation holds back
HintIt is a thing the boys offered, which spoke to Simon.
WhySimon's imagined dialogue with it is the novel's key moment. One reading is that the head shows that evil cannot be killed by hunting.
- How does the setting of the novel contrast with the island of The Coral Island?
It looks like a paradise, but turns into a place of fear and death
HintBeauty can be the setting for horror.
WhyThe island seems to promise freedom and adventure, the opposite of what happens there. Golding uses the contrast to make the descent into savagery more shocking.
- What does the island's lack of adults allow the novel to show?
What children would be like without adult rules to control them
HintThe experiment needs the adults to be absent.
WhyThe book works like a laboratory of human nature. Without adult control the boys build a society, and then destroy it.
- Golding is said to have written Lord of the Flies as a kind of allegory. What does that mean?
The characters and events stand for larger ideas, such as order, savagery and the nature of humanity
HintPeople and objects mean more than themselves.
WhyRalph, Jack and Piggy stand for ideas as well as being realistic boys. Golding makes them fully developed characters so they are not simple labels.
1★ GCSE-ENLI-MOD-0105
2★ GCSE-ENLI-MOD-0106
3★ GCSE-ENLI-MOD-0107
4★ GCSE-ENLI-MOD-0108
5★ GCSE-ENLI-MOD-0109
6★ GCSE-ENLI-MOD-0110
7★ GCSE-ENLI-MOD-0111
8★ GCSE-ENLI-MOD-0112
9★ GCSE-ENLI-MOD-0113
10★ GCSE-ENLI-MOD-0114
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