Lord of the Flies (Golding)

Lord of the Flies
William Golding, 1954
Penguin Group USA
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780399537424


Summary
William Golding's compelling story about a group of very ordinary small boys marooned on a coral island has become a modern classic. At first it seems as though it is all going to be great fun; but the fun before long becomes furious and life on the island turns into a nightmare of panic and death. As ordinary standards of behaviour collapse, the whole world the boys know collapses with them—the world of cricket and homework and adventure stories—and another world is revealed beneath, primitive and terrible.

Lord of the Flies remains as provocative today as when it was first published in 1954, igniting passionate debate with its startling, brutal portrait of human nature. Though critically acclaimed, it was largely ignored upon its initial publication. Yet soon it became a cult favorite among both students and literary critics who compared it to J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye in its influence on modern thought and literature.

Labeled a parable, an allegory, a myth, a morality tale, a parody, a political treatise, even a vision of the apocalypse, Lord of the Flies has established itself as a true classic. (From the publisher.)

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Author Bio
• Birth—September 19, 1911
• Where—Conwall, England, UK
• Death—near Truro, Cornwall
• Where—June 19, 1993
• Education—B.A., Oxford University
• Awards—Nobel Prize; Man Booker Prize; James
   Tait Black Memorial Prize


Sir William Gerald Golding was a British novelist, poet, playwright and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate, best known for his novel Lord of the Flies. He was also awarded the Booker Prize for literature in 1980 for his novel Rites of Passage, the first book of the trilogy "To the Ends of the Earth."

In 2008, The Times (London) ranked Golding third on their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945."

Early years
William Golding was born in his grandmother's house in Newquay, Cornwall, England, and he spent many childhood holidays there. He grew up at his family home in Marlborough, Wiltshire, where his father, Alec Golding, was a science master at Marlborough Grammar School (1905 to retirement). Alec Golding was a socialist with a strong commitment to scientific rationalism, and the young William and his elder brother Joseph attended the school where his father taught. His mother, Mildred, kept house and supported the moderate campaigners for female suffrage.

In 1930 Golding went to Oxford University as an undergraduate at Brasenose College, where he read Natural Sciences for two years before transferring to English Literature. Golding took his B.A. (Hons) Second Class in the summer of 1934, and later that year his first book, Poems, was published in London through the help of his Oxford friend, the anthroposophist Adam Bittleston.

Golding married Ann Brookfield, an analytic chemist, in 1939. The couple had two children, Judy and David.

War service
Golding joined the Royal Navy in 1940. During World War II, Golding fought in the Royal Navy and was briefly involved in the pursuit and sinking of Germany's mightiest battleship, the Bismarck. He also participated in the invasion of Normandy on D-Day, commanding a landing ship that fired salvoes of rockets onto the beaches, and then in a naval action at Walcheren in which 23 out of 24 assault craft were sunk. At the war's end, he returned to teaching and writing.

Writing
In September 1953, Golding sent a manuscript to Faber & Faber of London. Initially rejected by a reader there, the book was championed by Charles Monteith, then a new editor at the firm. He asked for various cuts in the text and the novel was published in September 1954 as Lord of the Flies. It was shortly followed by other novels, including The Inheritors, Pincher Martin and Free Fall.

Publishing success made it possible for Golding to resign his teaching post at Bishop Wordsworth's School in 1961, and he spent that academic year in the United States as writer-in-residence at Hollins College, near Roanoke, Virginia. Having moved in 1958 from Salisbury to nearby Bowerchalke, he met his fellow villager and walking companion James Lovelock. The two discussed Lovelock's hypothesis that the living matter of the planet Earth functions like a single organism, and Golding suggested naming this hypothesis after Gaia, the goddess of the earth in Greek mythology.

In 1970, Golding was a candidate for the Chancellorship of the University of Kent at Canterbury, but lost to the politician and leader of the Liberal Party Jo Grimond. Golding won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1979, and the Booker Prize in 1980. In 1983 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, a choice which was, according to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ONDB), "an unexpected and even contentious choice, with most English critics and academics favouring Graham Greene or Anthony Burgess." He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1988.

Golding's later novels include Darkness Visible (1979), The Paper Men (1984), and the comic-historical sea trilogy To the Ends of the Earth, comprising the Booker Prize-winning Rites of Passage (1980), Close Quarters (1987), and Fire Down Below (1989).

The ONDB asserts that "At the end of the twentieth century, Golding's reputation was at its highest in continental Europe, particularly in Belgium, Holland, Germany, and France."

Later years and death
In 1985, Golding and his wife moved to Tullimaar House at Perranarworthal, near Truro, Cornwall, where he died of heart failure, eight years later, on 19 June 1993. He was buried in the village churchyard at Bowerchalke, South Wiltshire (near the Hampshire and Dorset county boundaries). He left the draft of a novel, The Double Tongue, set in ancient Delphi, which was published posthumously. He is survived by his daughter, the author Judy Golding, and his son David, who still lives at Tullimaar House. (Adapted from Wikipedia..)

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 Book Reviews
(Books prior to the Internet have few, if any, mainstream reviews online. See Amazon or Barnes & Noble for helpful customer reviews.)

Since first published in 1954, Lord of the Flies has stood as a sort of Rorsach test. Some readers see it as a religious allegory between good and evil...others as a Freudian battle between id vs. superego...still others as a history of the rise of civilization. Finally, many see it as a commentary on the world's political institutions.Any, in fact all of those readings lend themselves to Golding's chilling tale of boys gone bad. Read more
LitLovers LitPicks - Dec. 2011

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Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Lord of the Flies:

1. Talk about the differences between the two main antagonists, Ralph and Jack. How are they different from one another, and what broad "types" of individuals do they represent?

2. In what way can Piggy with his eye glasses be seen as representing the rational, scientific aspects of society?

3. What role does the conch play? How does it represent a civilizing force?

4. What does the beast represent? How is it used by Jack to control the others? Are there parallels  for "the beast" in the real world, the one outside of fiction?

5. What does Simon mean when he suggests that the beast is only the boys themselves?

6. Why do the littleuns choose to follow Jack and the hunters rather than Ralph? Is it because they feel safer with Jack's group, believing that Jack can protect them? Or do they enjoy what the hunters do?

7. What do you feel Golding's vision of humanity is? Do you think he believes we born with an instinct for peace and cooperation...or for dominance and savagery? Does his vision accord with your own?

8. What do you think about the rules of civilization? Do they free us and enable us to rise to our best selves? Or do the rules constrain our bad nature that lie at the heart of ourselves?

9. What does hunting mean to Jack...at the beginning, and then later? What happens to his mental state after he kills his first pig?

10. What is ironic about the naval officer who arrives to "rescue" the boys? How does Ralph feel about returning to the safety of civilization? Why does he weep—is it relief, or something else?

m. Golding wrote his novel 10 years after the close of  World War II and during the era of Communist containment. In what way does his book reflect the particular world politics of his time? Does the book have relevance today?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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