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Lord of the Flies by William Golding In brief

Set on an unnamed tropical island, Lord of the Flies sees the survivors of a plane crash – all of which are children under the age of thirteen – creating a makeshift society for themselves as they await rescue. Initially, a semblance of order is established by Ralph, one of the older boys, and his cerebral cohort, Piggy. They find a conch shell and - at Piggy’s suggestion - they realise that blowing in it creates a commanding noise that summons the rest of the boys, who go on to elect Ralph as leader. However, Jack, the head of the choir, is jealous of the role, and consistently undermines Ralph. Before long, the infant islanders split into two factions: those who want to concentrate on keeping the fire alight, to ensure that smoke attracts any passing ships, and those that are inspired by the more bloodthirsty pursuits of hunting and killing for food. Ralph’s rational and democratic approach eventually gives way to the savage dictatorship of Jack’s. Anarchy and death follow shortly afterwards.

Faber Book Club: Lord of the Flies by William Golding

Background Lord of the Flies was an unexpected bestseller. Initially rejected by publishers, it was championed by the late Charles Monteith at Faber & Faber, and was not a hit when initially published. However, all this changed within a couple of years. As Monteith recalls, ‘The book began not only to be talked about but to sell and before long we had to order a reprint. In the United States, where we had great difficulty in placing it, it made little impression at first, but after a year or two, a paperback edition began to spread like forest fire through university campuses.’

Lord of the Flies is seen as a companion piece or ‘realist answer’ to Ballantyne’s 1857 adventure novel The Coral Island in which three boys names Ralph, Jack and Peterkin land on a deserted island but have a largely happy and successful experience. But despite consciously using the same character names, and even having a naval officer refer to the novel in the final page of the book, William Golding was working to an altogether different agenda. His novel is a classic fable of democracy and reason (Ralph and Piggy) versus anarchy and dictatorship (Jack and the choir). It sees every schoolboy’s dream of a playground without adults turning into every child – and adult’s – nightmare. Games turn to war, imagination turns to terrifying hallucination and reason turns to weakness.

Published only a decade after the end of the Second World War, Lord of the Flies is a savage analysis of what can happen when regimes fall, fear rules and power must be fought for. Golding himself served in the Royal Navy during the war, and was involved in both the pursuit and sinking of Germany’s key battleship, The Bismarck, and the invasion of Normandy on D-Day. As such, he was no stranger to the brutality that human beings are capable of inflicting on each other.

On a smaller scale, he also worked as a schoolteacher both before and after the war, so he was keenly aware of the way that young boys interact and the power games that they engage in, even on the most innocent level and when under adult supervision. It is against this backdrop, combined with the aftermath of the holocaust and onset of the Cold War, that Lord of the Flies was written. ‘The Beast’ that comes to terrify the children – and proves to be fear and savagery itself – has been interpreted variously as the fear that drove both the Nazism in 1930s Germany and fuelled the Cold War years.

In addition to these socio-political concerns, it is also worth noting that Golding’s father Alec was a schoolteacher and great believer in rationalism and did not believe that emotional experiences held much sway. His son clearly disagreed.

Faber Book Club: Lord of the Flies by William Golding

For discussion • William Golding was working as a schoolteacher when he wrote Lord of the Flies. How do you think this affected his characterisation of the boys in the novel? • Have you read The Coral Island? How do the two novels compare? • There is a constant sense of tension throughout the novel – how does William Golding achieve this, even during scenes that are not pivotal or terrifying per se? • In the first half of the novel, Jack makes a reference to wishing that he had some green paint to camouflage his face with, and a few pages later he reappears with his face painted. But realistically, there is nowhere that he could have obtained green paint. Do you think that this inconsistency detracts from the novel? Or does it add to the fantastical nature of the narrative? • The physical nature of the island is portrayed as being almost paradise-like. There is plenty of delicious fruit, the sand and sea provides fun for the ‘littluns’ to play in, and even the are never portrayed as being frightening. Do you think Golding has done this to highlight the negative aspects of human nature that the boys reveal on the island? Or simply to create a backdrop that does not distract from the action itself? • What narrative function do the ‘littluns’ have? They are seldom referred to individually, tending to act as a group dominated by the older boys. Discuss. • Much of the interaction in the novel between Ralph and Jack takes place via reported speech. Does this add to the immediacy of their conflict? Do you think it adds a sense of urgency to their interaction? • The conch shell is quickly adopted as an emblem of power, as it temporarily affords its holder the prime position to communicate his ideas. Do you think that Golding is suggesting that the ability to communicate effectively is more important than the message itself? Can you think of examples where this might be the case? And how does the conch shell lose its power, prior to its physical destruction? • How does Golding make the prospect of The Beast terrifying to the reader? What do you think it represents allegorically? • What tactics does Jack use to gain power over the rest of the island, and what tactics does Golding employ to portray this change as effectively as possible? • Piggy is twice vindicated regarding his plan to keep a fire going: on the occasion that the fire goes out, a passing ship does not stop. Once it is lit again, they are rescued. But what are Piggy’s weaknesses, and what do you think that they might represent in society? • Ralph can be seen as the representative of democracy and reason, while Jack is anarchy or dictatorship. As such, do you think that Golding sees the novel as an optimistic or pessimistic one? After all, Jack’s army of hunters eventually overpowers Ralph and Piggy and their reasonable methods. But then again, when the naval officers arrive, Ralph seizes the initiative to say that he is the leader, so he could be seen as the ultimate ‘victor’. • William Golding was an avid reader of the Greek classics, believing that ‘this is where the meat is’. Can you think of any examples of Greek literature that might have influenced Lord of the Flies? • There are frequent references to the Queen, the Empire, and the English being ‘best at everything’ that date the novel very specifically. What changes do you think would have to be made, were it to be written today? Or do you think that the fable Golding is telling is too specific to its era? • Lord of the Flies has in turn had a great deal of influence in popular culture: as well as being turned into two separate motion pictures, it has inspired episodes of TV shows such as and South Park, as well as being an obvious influence of Lost. Have you seen any of these? If so, what did you think of the ripples that the book has created? • Initially, Lord of the Flies was rejected from the reading pile at Faber & Faber. Even when it was published it did not become a bestseller until a few years later. What is it that you think makes it such an enduring read – the allegory, or the fact that it works as an effective page-turner?

About the author

William Golding was born in Cornwall in 1911. He was educated at Marlborough Grammar School and at Brasenose College, Oxford, after which he worked as an actor, a lecturer, a small craft sailor, a musician, and finally a schoolmaster. A now rare volume, Poems, appeared in 1934. He joined the Royal Navy in 1940 and saw action against battleships, submarines and aircraft. He was present at the sinking of the Bismarck, and finished the war as a Lieutenant in command of a rocket ship. After the war he returned to the Bishop Wordsworth’s School in Salisbury and was there when is first novel, Lord of the Flies, was published in 1954. He gave up teaching in 1961, and went on to write twelve more novels.

Golding listed his hobbies as music, chess, sailing, archaeology and classical Greek (which he taught himself). He won the Booker Prize for his novel Rites of Passage in 1980, and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983. At this time he moved from the Wiltshire village where he had lived for half a century, to a house near Truro in Cornwall. He was knighted in 1988. He died at his home in the sum- mer of 1993, leaving a draft of a novel, The Double Tongue, which was published posthumously.

Resources http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/literature/golding/index.html Lord of the Flies game from the Nobel Prize website http://www.william-golding.co.uk/ Author’s official website

Suggested further reading Fiction The Coral Island - R. M. Ballantyne Robinson Crusoe – Robert Louis Stevenson Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome Tunnel in the Sky - Robert A. Heinlein – Gone – Michael Grant –

Faber Book Club: Lord of the Flies by William Golding

Other books by William Golding Fiction The Inheritors Free Fall The Pyramid The Scorpion God Rites of Passage Close Quarters Fire Down Below (comprising Rites of Passage, Close Quarters and Fire Down Below in a revised text; forward by the author) The Double Tongue

Plays The Brass Butterfly Lord of the Flies – adapted for the stage by

Essays

Travel An Egyptian Journal

Faber Book Club: Lord of the Flies by William Golding