“All around him the long scar smashed into the jungle was a bath of heat.” The symbolism Golding uses here is a fore runner for the damage the boys will cause later.
In the beginning, Crusoe’s isle is a prison, a hell from which he cannot escape. He thinks often of leaving the isle, escaping is solitude. He tries many schemes and ideas to leave the island, one of which is the construction of a boat/canoe from a log. This idea fails him.
Later Crusoe comes to love the island, it becomes his home. He builds a small homestead that is house and in times of danger his castle. He builds a garden which he cultivates and cares for. He makes a little England in the midst of a tropical landscape. As he is there for so long, 26 years, that he is galled at leaving. He feels that is his island, that he is its king or appointed governor. He has weathered the storm of faith and savages, wild animals and pirates and loves his home, which is what the island is to him. The boys in “the Coral Island” are the same, but a faster scale. They are on their island for a few months, at the most three quarters of a year. They feel a sadness at leaving their isle much more as it was never a prison or a hell to them. They liked their isle from the start, the loved the adventure. With the deaths of their crew neatly sweeped under the carpet they can enjoy the adventure of the isle. They also do not have a large sense of religious or divine interference in their stay on the isle. They are free to enjoy themselves and they do so. This is rather contrary to the experience of the boys in “Lord of the Flies”.
The boys first see the island as an adventure playground, a place away from adults where they can be free. This buoyant sense of freedom is gradually worn down to a harsh awakening to reality. They are alone and unable to care for themselves. This is mainly due to their young ages, but also their inability to coordinate a survival situation. In this way it is not their fault.
“Aren’t there any grown ups? … We’ll have to look after ourselves then.”
What is common to all three islands is the fact that the islands are essentially ‘good’. The islands are capable of supporting live, providing food and shelter and safety. None of the islands are intentionally ‘bad’ none to damage to their impromptu visitors. Nature is not malevolent, but not overly benevolent. All three parties are lucky to land on islands free of highly dangerous creatures; lions, tigers, jaguars, komodo dragons etc. the only danger that is a common thread is humanity. The cannibals of Crusoe’s Caribbean island are a great danger to him. The pirates from the Spanish colonies also are a human danger. This is true in “the Coral Island” also. Yet in “Lord of the Flies”, the boys arrive on a neutral island and bring the danger in with them. Like with Eve in the creation story, mankind causes itself the most harm. The danger is an internal one that we all carry with us is what Golding is trying to get across. The external dangers of Crusoe and the boys from “the Coral Island” pale to insignificance in the face of the internal malice of mankind.
Two of the books, “Robinson Crusoe” and “Lord of the Flies” are trying to get across something to us. They are giving a message that is entirely different in both. The expectation of Defoe in “Robinson Crusoe” is for the book to be accepted as an art-form in its own right. It is the very first novel, and in an attempt to validate it Defoe adds long passages of scripture references and Christian reflection. This is also an attitude of Defoe, as he was an early Dissenter, a Methodist. This meant that in his own world he was a second class citizen. He wasn’t allowed many rights to property and selling manufacture. The stringent Church of England tried to choke out all such different facets of Christianity, just as with the Catholics in Elizabeth I reign. He argues with himself almost through the medium of Crusoe. Crusoe’s wailings and internal battles over faith and his apparent abandonment of his isle are a keyhole into the mind of Defoe. The characters of Crusoe and Friday and the savages etc, cannot think, cannot understand. All you get from them is what Defoe puts into them. This is obvious from Crusoe’s great intellect, Friday’s lesser so intellect and the savages complete under development as a story feature. They could be further extended, but all Defoe wanted to do was show his manuscript as a real diary, the written accounts of a marooned man. His Crusoe is manipulated totally to what Defoe wants. Defoe doesn’t every extend Crusoe beyond that.
The message of “Lord of the Flies” is a rather bleak one. Golding’s boys are his medium to communicate his views on human nature and the perceived darkness of man’s heart. The boy’s thin veneer of civilisation degrades very quickly and boys descend, as we see it, into complete savagery. They kill their own, bicker and fight and lose track of what is important. Golding’s message is that civilisation and manners and polite society are nothing but a veneer. It can be broken down, pulled apart to show mankind’s true being. To Golding, that being is savagery. With nothing to stop them but themselves, the boys become nothing but animals. For Golding, this is the fall of mankind, to drop from grace. Yet for Golding there is no redemption, no salvation. You can link that to Christian theology, the apparent fall of the Jews from the grace of God, the saving grace of the butchered Christ. Reading into it a little more, Simon is the Christ figure for Golding. His death at the hands of his fellow boys is an apparent link to Christ. An even more tenuous link is that Simon’s own name can moved around a little to fit in with that of Peter, the Rock of Jesus. Peter’s original was Simon; he is even refereed to as Simon-Peter. Yet even with Simon’s sacrifice, there is no saving grace, no return to God. Mankind’s failure is a complete one, with no way out of it. Mankind’s heart is too dark and evil for that. This a heavily humanistic, pessimistic view that clashes with Defoe’s optimistic
