Modern texts, Year 11: a novel written after the Second World War, symbols, setting and language (Lord of the Flies option)

1954

提示In the decade after the Second World War.

为什么It 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.

The Royal Navy: he commanded a landing craft on D-Day

提示He knew war at first hand.

为什么William Golding had been a philosophy teacher before the war. His experience of violence shaped his view of what human beings are capable of.

The Coral Island

提示An adventure story for boys in which they stay civilised.

为什么That novel praises the civilising influence of the British. Golding thought it unrealistic and asked what children would really do.

The Cold War and the danger of nuclear destruction

提示A conflict between two superpowers, without direct fighting.

为什么The 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.

Strangers from Within

提示The title said where the danger lay.

为什么An editor thought the title unsuitable. The idea of strangers within the boys matches the novel's message.

The hope of rescue and the link with civilisation

提示Ralph keeps returning to it as the sign of what matters.

为什么One reading: the fire starts as hope, and in the last chapter becomes a weapon. The same object serves both sides of the novel.

The beast within every human being: the evil that civilisation holds back

提示It is a thing the boys offered, which spoke to Simon.

为什么Simon'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.

It looks like a paradise, but turns into a place of fear and death

提示Beauty can be the setting for horror.

为什么The 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 children would be like without adult rules to control them

提示The experiment needs the adults to be absent.

为什么The book works like a laboratory of human nature. Without adult control the boys build a society, and then destroy it.

The characters and events stand for larger ideas, such as order, savagery and the nature of humanity

提示People and objects mean more than themselves.

为什么Ralph, Jack and Piggy stand for ideas as well as being realistic boys. Golding makes them fully developed characters so they are not simple labels.