William Golding

William Golding

          Biography

From childhood on, he was drawn to the unpleasant and the dark. He had generally very pessimistic view of human ability.

He wrote an autobiographical piece under the title the Ladder and the Tree in which he describes the house in which he was raised as being under the shadow of a nearby graveyard.

At the age of seven, he became fascinated with the ancient Egyptian civilization, its world view and its mysticism.

His first work entitled Poems (1934) had a conventional, Georgian form, but the attitude reflected in it was of the feeling of loss and satire.

Before having written The Lord of the Flies, he experienced two things that affected his further work.

First was that he served in the navy during the WWII

and the second was that he learned ancient Greek.

Golding’s novels frequently involve a change of perspective.

Lord of the Flies (1954) is still his most popular work of art. This novel astonished, appalled and consternated many people because it reflected what many understood in private.

It revealed that men enjoyed violence. He was not modernist himself in terms of form, but his pessimism and scepticism made him close to modernists.

He wanted to show that aggression and violence were particularly appealing to the humankind.

Scholars have competed in determining the form of the novel. (Is it an allegory, is it a parable, is it a science fiction, it is a romance). We see it either as a moral fable, or as a social fable.

Another important note is that the title itself is highly suggestive; Lord of the Flies in Bible is the devil. There are various contradictory interpretations of the novel.

            The Lord of the Flies

The story itself is very simple. On the surface, it is just a regular adventure story. The basis is a simple adventure story of a group of boys who are trying to survive on the deserted island after the shipwreck, much like the story of Robinson Crusoe or the Treasure Island.

If we read it as a moral fable, the novel concentrates on human psyche. It examines psychological disintegration of characters; we have a group of boys who are seen as representatives of various patterns of behaviour, various instincts and various aspects of personality. All of them symbolize almost allegorically one of these aspects. Each boy character stands for a particular aspect of human behaviour.

Piggy stands for intelligence, reason and civilisation. Piggy, associated with pig is not negative quality, but just the opposite, because pigs are believed to be intelligent animals. Glasses he wears reinforce this symbolism; he is the character who analyses, looks under the surface of things.

Jack stands for evil and destructive instincts in human nature. He stands for the darkest drives within human beings. He is also very manipulative and charismatic person.

Ralph symbolises a natural born leader, politician, statesman, capable of either good or bad, depending on a context in which he is placed.

Simon is a saint – like figure. Simon stands for honesty and decency; that is what makes him a saint–like figure. The author wants to show that such decency and honesty in our world strikes us as something out of place, something naïve. He is a Jesus like figure.

The problem is that each of the characters lacks some vital element, and none of them is a complete person.

So, if we read the novel as the moral fable, the novel is not about the devil (Beelzebub – The Lord of the Flies), though the title suggests it, it is about an unconscious level of the human mind. The title and its suggestion to devil, suggests the dark, immoral, most primitive drive of the human mind, which is present in each of us and which is devastating when come to the surface.

Golding wants to show that some people are capable of acting morally, when put into extreme situations they prove able to resist evil and take moral action. Simon, being a saint like figure, proves capable to resist the instinct which he recognises in himself and admit the evil in himself. That is one of the most important points that Golding wants to make. In order to act morally, the first and the most important step is to recognise the evil in oneself and admit it. Denying evil is no answer. That is what makes Simon a saint like figure.

Other characters do not have the ability that Simon has, the ability of moral behaviour. All of the other characters are not capable of that, because they do not consciously admit the existence of the evil within themselves, they are unable to recognise it. Instead, they try to rationalise it, they try to find justification for it, they try to blame the other for it, they try to find the scapegoats. They find various kinds of excuses for what is not excusable.

When we look at Ralph, who in contrast to Simon, we find he lacks moral imagination. He is not capable of recognising his own motives, he is motivated by selfishness, at times, blind selfishness, and usually he places his personal interest above the interest of the community and puts everyone in danger. That is exactly what political leaders are often accused of, namely, of taking their own interest to be more important then the interest of the community.

This novel shows immense pessimism of its author. Establishing order in the society has much to do with individual recognition. That is what revolutions proved throughout the history. It one wants to reform the society from above, such attempt will likely fail, because the true change can only come from the individual. This is the point of awareness raising campaigns of today. Society is just the sum of individuals; one cannot change the society if individuals are not changed.

Individual reform requires one’s own awareness of one’s own evil deep inside, inclination towards savagery, inevitably leads to anarchy, chaos, deterioration. He has a very positive view of society, unlike most modernists.

To Golding, nature is opposed to culture, nature suggests instincts, animalistic drives, anarchic forces, while culture suggest civilisation, control of one’s instincts, society, laws of behaviour. Golding believed that society, no matter how faulty and imperfect, was the only true environment for men.

We see at the very beginning that when boys are physically put into the nature, they automatically try to establish some form of the society; unfortunately they fail in their ‘project’. According to Golding, the society ensures that the evil would be kept in check, that is what the government structure is there for.

Looking at another aspect of the novel, namely the novel as a social fable, the novel becomes a very harsh satire, anti utopian social satire.

What Golding presents in the novel is not an utopia, he tricks the reader at the beginning into believing it would turn out to be the utopia, but it turns out quite the opposite, the so-called dystopia. The society created by the boys on the island symbolises the society in general and the boys symbolise the human race in general.

One interpretation would also be that this island society stands for all primitive societies at the beginning of their development, without the organised structures of state apparatus..

The reason adults were shocked with what they have seen on the island is the result of their own inability to recognise this evil that resides in all human beings, children and adults alike. The ruin that the boys bring upon themselves is universal.

In the chapter Beast from the Water, Golding offers not only different elements of human psyche, but also various possible elements of social system.

In this case it is a very dark social satire. It shows how intelligence (Piggy) and common sense (Ralph) will always be overthrown by totalitarianism (Jack) or savagery (Roger). It is a very pessimistic view. According to Golding, every kind of system, including this parliamentarian system, seem to be inefficient. He also suggests that totalitarian leaders, such as Jack, obviously have some charismatic ability to appeal to the darkest in us.

The novel can be read as a dramatisation of an extreme political scenario, which shows how democracy, a responsible kind of a system, which is unfortunately boring to most people, can quickly be replaced by totalitarianism. The charismatic, the totalitarian, the evil, always seem to be more exciting to most people then the good. When we look at the context (1954) it must be brought in connection with disillusionment of the author after the war.