Reacting against Victorian optimism and to the horrors of the 20th Century, William Golding chose to express his anti-Utopian views about humanity in ‘Lord of the Flies’ (1954). Explore how Golding crafts his narrative in order to voice his phil

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Reacting against Victorian optimism and to the horrors of the 20th Century, William Golding chose to express his anti-Utopian views about humanity in ‘Lord of the Flies’ (1954). Explore how Golding crafts his narrative in order to voice his philosophical views about ‘man’s essential illness’. To what extent do you agree with his views?

Golding’s dystopian views of ‘man’s essential illness’ are derived from his experience of 20th Century warfare. ‘Lord of the Flies’ is a fable in which Golding displays man’s flaws inside a microcosm. This didactical work shows us that we have far to go, but there is hope. I will study his novel to discover his views, and will decide if I concur with them.

Golding was born in Cornwall in 1911, and brought up in Wiltshire. His father was a teacher and a socialist and his mother actively supported the campaign for votes for women, so from an early age he was aware of social and political systems and their influence on people. During the Second World War, Golding joined the Royal Navy and took part in the sinking of the Bismarck and the Normandy landings on D-Day. His experience of the war had a profound effect on his view of the world. He learnt how brutal people can be.

Although he was appalled by the evils of Nazism and the Third Reich, he said in an interview in 1963 that everyone was capable of inhumanity, not just the German or the Japanese. He saw Nazism as an evil system, and so horrifying that it could not be explained through reason alone. Later on he looked for an explanation in the nature of human beings, in their capacity for brutality and inhumanity.

He read adventure stories such as ‘Coral Island’ to his children, and wondered what would really happen to children stranded on a desert island. He took the idea of an innocent experience on an island and saw it in relation to the experience of Nazism and World War Two.

In ‘Lord of the Flies’ Golding refers twice to R.M Ballantyne’s ‘Coral Island’. The writer deliberately wrote ‘The Lord of the Flies’ in direct contest with the ’Coral Island’. This is known because of an unpublished letter Golding wrote to his wife:

        ‘Wouldn’t it be a good idea to write a book about real boys on an island, showing what a mess they’d make?’

Golding then went ahead and wrote the book to turn Ballantyne’s simplistic assumptions and optimistic hopes on its head. Golding is even bold enough to use identical names as Ballantyne’s for his main characters. Jack and Ralph in both books are protagonists, and are each other’s nemesis.

In the ‘Coral Island the stranded British boys work co-operatively and loyally together to form a stable and upstanding society. They do not forget that they are representatives of the world’s greatest colonial empire. At the time when Ballantyne was writing his novel, Victorian optimism was at its height. The British army had colonised most of the once ’savage’ world, and brought civilisation to these people.

The boys are all from a middle-class Victorian background. The book was written to mirror and please the Victorian assumptions of the period. They would have believed this to be a realistic portrayal of British boys in a crisis.

Ballantyne is very racist and naïve in the book. He writes of evil, but identifies it only as savagery in black skin. The reason for this was probably due to the slave trade at the time. People with black skin were considered sub-human and evil. The only evidence of evil comes from outside the structured society, when the ‘savages’ invade their camp. Ballantyne only goes as far to say that Ralph cannot look away when the cannibals are eating. This only hints that there may be some evil inside of Ralph that makes him watch.

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Golding’s ‘British’ boys have nothing in common with Ballantyne’s, bar that their initial joy of finding themselves in a paradise island with no adults to hold them back.

In Ballantyne’s period wars were fought for valour, renown and glory, but in Golding’s time all they meant was blood, death and barbarism.

Because Ballantyne never saw the real human psyche emerge when in a crisis he used his idealistic views instead. Whereas Golding had first hand knowledge of human weakness and violence. So would be able to draw upon his experiences and write accurately about the human psyche.

‘Lord of ...

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