When William Golding wrote his Lord of the
Flies in response to Ballantyne's Coral Island, a novel
in which British boys are stranded on a tropical island, but the boys overcome the evil
forces of the natives and survive in peace with one another, he had abandoned his
preconceptions of man as essentially pure and good, with society as evil. For, having
served in the Royal Navy of England, Golding witnessed first hand the sinking of the
Bismarck, and he participated in the D-Day invasion of Germany in World War II. After
these experiences, he stated,
When I was young before the war, I did have some
airy-fairy views about man....But I went through the war and that changed me. The war
taught me different and a lot of others like
me.
In Lord of the
Flies, Golding has the characters "behave as they really would," to use the
words that he said when he discussed writing the novel to his wife. Thus, the tone, or
attitude of the author is neither pessimistic nor optimistic--at least to Golding. It
is simply realistic. Given the situation of the schoolboys
stranded upon an island away from a civilization that "knows nothing" of them, boys such
as Roger and Jack revert to their intrinsic sadistic and savage natures. The "beast"
within them communicates to the intuitive boy, Simon:
"You knew, didn't you? I'm part of you?....I'm
the reason why it's no go? Why things are what they
are?"
Having witnessed the
destructive power and evil in men in World War II, it is a darkly realistic portrayal of
man's nature that Golding presents in his novel. Perhaps, his view is rather
pessimistic after his horrific war experiences, but it is a pessimistic view shared by
many of his era as well as the Book of Genesis:
At the door [through which the newborn child
issues] sin crouches. (Genesis 4:7)
[God to Noah] "I will
never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man's heart is evil
from his youth." (Genesis
8:21)
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