Lord of the Fliesby Sir William Golding

Author: William Golding Year: 1954 Famous for: The Beast, a talking pig’s

head on a stake, a horrific descent into chaos and savagery

Main character: Ralph

The scoop:Every kid dreams of what life would be

like without adults. No rules, no curfews, and as much of your favorite food as you could ever want to eat. Sounds like paradise right?

Not for the cast of William Golding’s novel. Of course, the complicating factor for these boys is that they’re marooned on a desert island. Which means they have to worry about survival – and a lurking Beast – and can’t just enjoy life without adults.

Photo AnalysisThe best way to understand the time period is to see what was going on.

Early Life Born September

19, 1911 in Cornwall, England

Raised next door to a graveyard

Mother was a suffragette

Father was a schoolmaster

Tried his first novel at age 12; failed

Turned to bullying Studied English

literature at Brasenose College at Oxford University

Teaching Took a position

teaching English and philosophy in 1935

This experience would later serve as inspiration for his novel

Royal Navy Took a break from

teaching to join the Navy from 1940-1947

Fought battleships at the sinking of the Bismarck, he ended as a Lieutenant in command of a rocket-launching craft

Golding on the war “I began to see what people were

capable of doing. Anyone who moved through those years without understanding that man produces evil as a bee produces honey, must have been blind or wrong in the head.”

Lord of the Flies Golding said that his experiences in World

War II inspired a view of humanity’s capacity for evil that led him to write Lord of the Flies.

Turned down by 21 publishers A junior editor, Charles Monteith, rescued

the manuscript from the reject pile at one of those publishers

Sold 3000 copies before going out of print in 1955

Helped cement Golding’s nomination for Nobel Prize

Golding on Lord of the Flies“It was simply what seemed sensible for me to write after the war when everyone was thanking God they weren’t Nazis. I’d seen enough to know that every single one of us could be Nazis.

Nobel Prize Won the Nobel Prize

for Literature in 1983 “for his novels which,

with the perspicuity of realistic narrative art and the diversity and universality of myth, illuminate the human condition in the world today”

Themes of the Book Civilization

democracy - dictator

Religion established -

created Identity

society/school - island

Power absolute - limited

Fear unknown - known

Loss of innocence Child - adult

Golding’s Literary Technique Heavy use of

symbolism Irony Abundant imagery

and sensory detail Figurative Language

Simile Metaphor Personification

Some Terms You Need to Know

You might want to open your study guides and take a few notes. HINT HINT!!!!

Allegory a story with a symbolic level of

meaning, where the characters and setting represent other things like political systems, religious figures, or philosophical viewpoints

Irony – 3 types Situational Irony Verbal Irony Dramatic Irony

Situational IronyWhen the expected outcome does not happen. - A fire station burns down.

Verbal IronyUsing words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of the literal meaning; sarcasm

Dramatic IronyWhen the audience knows something that the characters don’t.

SimileA direct comparison between two different things using “like” or “as”

MetaphorAn implicit (hidden) comparison between two unlike things that actually have something in common; no “like” or “as”

Personification