Lord of the Flies

William Golding

Description

William Golding was born at St. Columb Minor, Cornwall, in 1911. He was educated at Brasenose College, Oxford. He joined the Navy in 1940, and served in cruisers, destroyers, minesweepers, and a rocket-ship, which he came to be in command of at the end of the war. He saw action against submarines and aircrafts..ect. In 1945, he was appointed a school-master at Bishop Wordsworth's School, Salisbury, where he has remained ever since. Outside writing, Golding's main interests are sailing and classical Greek, which he avidly reads. In 1961-62 he was a visiting professor at Hollins College, Virginia. He is now Fellow of the Royal Society in Literature. Golding wrote a great deal of poetry, and a play entitled Brass Butterfly, which he published m 1958. He elicited public recognition when he published his first novel Lord of the Flies in 1954. He has undoubtedly established a literary reputation for himself by Lord of the Flies and his subsequent novels: The Inheritors (1955), Pincher Martin (1956), and Free Fall (1959).

Sujets

• ENGLISH LITERATURE

Informations

• Publié par: The Anglo-Egyptian Bookshop
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 252
• EAN13: 9796500118451
• Langue: English

Extrait

WILLIAM GOLDING

LORD OF THE FLIES

(TEXT, CRITICISM, GIOSSARY & NOTES)

EDITED BY PROF. R. AWAD

Golding , William . LORD OF THE FLIES William Golding; Edited By / Ramses Awad Cairo : The Anglo – Egyptian Bookshop 2013 326 P. – 14×20 cm . 1- English poetry – history and criticism I-Ramses Awad (ed) II Title Deposit Number : 17876 I.S.B.N :978-977-05-2800-6 Press: MOHAMED ABD AL KAREM PRESS Publisher: The Anglo– Egyptian Bookshop Address : 165 Mohamed Farid St. Cairo – Egypt Tel : (+2) [phone] Fax : (+2) [phone] E-mail : [e-mail] Website : www.anglo-egyptian.com

Contents

Lord of the Files (Text)

Part 1

9-234

Part 2 Summaries - Glossary - Philosophy - Allegory-Plot and Structure - Language and Imagery Charac- ters 235-291

Questions and Answers Bibliography

Part 3

293-324 325-326

LORD OF THE FLIES

Introduction

5

William Golding was born at St. Columb Minor, Cornwall, in 1911. He was educated at Brasenose College, Oxford. He joined the Navy in 1940, and served in cruisers, destroyers, mine- sweepers, and a rocket-ship, which he came to be in command of at the end of the war. He saw action against submarines and air- crafts...ect. In 1945, he was appointed a school-master at Bishop Wordsworth's School, Salisbury, where he has remained ever since. Outside writing, Golding's main interests are sailing and classical Greek, which he avidly reads. In 1961-62 he was a visiting profes- sor at Hollins College, Virginia. He is now Fellow of the Royal So- ciety in Literature. Golding wrote a great deal of poetry, and a play entitledBrass Butterfly, which he published m 1958. He elicited public recognition when he published his first novel Lord of the Flies in 1954. He has undoubtedly established a literary reputation for himself by Lord of the Flies and his subsequent novels:The In- heritors(1955),Pincher Martin(1956), andFree Fall(1959).

William Golding is essentially a moralist and a religious writer. In a sense, he is a metaphysician and theologist. He sub- scribes to the Christian doctrine of original sin. The quality of his themes reveals the religious temper of his mind. His central theme does not depict the relation between man and man but the relation between man and the universe, and through the universe, between man and God. It is this preoccupation that chiefly justifies one in calling William Golding a metaphysician and a theologist Golding is not simply a social novelist trying to trace human reaction to a given society or social circumstances.

William Golding is a symbolist. As Peter Green has pointed out in his article on Golding inA Review of English Literature (April, 1966), the symbolism of his novels is, in essence, theologi- cal. Golding is entirely pre-occupied with the problem of the exis- tence of evil in this world. Man is the introducer of evil into the world. Golding's reply to a critic, who suggested that good is equal-

6

LORD OF THE FLIES

ly an exclusive human concept, is expressive of how much pre- occupied with the problem of evil he is. "Good can look after it- self', Golding replied, "Evil is the problem". As John Peter points out in his article "The Fables of William Golding" (The Kenyon Re- view. Vol. XIX, Autumn 1957), Golding's theme is that Evil is in- herent in the human mind itself, whatever innocence may cloak it. This Evil is ready to put forth its appearance as soon as the occa- sion is propitious. In John Peter's own words:

Like any orthodox moralist Golding insists that Man is a fal- len creature, but he refuses to hypostatize Evil and locate it in a di- (1) mension of its own.

Golding's profound concern with evil is the vigorous main- spring of his work. Peter Green draws our attention to an obvious paradox underlying William Golding's work; but he finds a justifi- cation for this paradox. On the theological level, Golding repre- sents himself as a Deist, whereas, on the artistic level, the whole moral framework of his novels is conceived in terms of traditional Christian symbolism. Peter Green' s justification for this paradox is this. Golding, as an artist, has to be communicative; he needs a re- sponsive audience. By writing in the tradition of Christian symbol- ism, he can communicate his artistic vision to the general public to which his symbolism is familiar. Furthermore, so Peter Green argues, labels and names are anathema to William Golding, who believes that what actually matters is the ultimate reality that must at all costs be communicated.

"Self-knowledge" is the key-note of William Golding’s creed. The only hope for humanity lies in self-knowledge, which should be attained and practised by the individuals. Man has been led astray. He has come to identify himself with God, and he has grown away from nature and himself. The only means of salvation open to man is to know himself, and to have the courage to face the natural chaos of existence without imposing artificial patterns on it. The difference between being alive and being an inorganic sub- stance, William Golding claims, is just this proliferation of experi- (1) Peter, John. "The Fables of William Golding", Kenyon Review, XIX Autumn, 1957, p. 578.

LORD OF THE FLIES

7

ence, this absence of pattern. William Golding once wrote of the function of the novelist that his job is to scrape the labels off things, to take nothing for granted, to show the irrational where it is exists. And this is precisely what William Golding himself under- takes to do. He maintains that if a novelist is a serious Aeschylean, he is pre-occupied with human tragedy, that is to say, he is commit- ted to looking for the root of the disease instead of describing the symptoms. Obviously, this is what Golding himself has set out to do. His concern with the loss of human innocence in his novels: Lord of the FliesandFree FallandThe Inheritorsis reminiscent of the story of the Fall of Man in the Bible.

Part 1

LORD OF THE FLIES (Text)

CHAPTER ONE The Sound of the Shell

The boy with fair hair lowered himself down the last few feet of rock and began to pick his way towards the lagoon. Though he had taken off his school sweater and trailed it now from one hand, his grey shirt stuck to him and his hair was plastered to his forehead. All round him the long scar smashed into the jungle was a bath of heat. He was clambering heavily among the creepers and broken trunks when a bird, a vision of red and yellow, flashed upwards with a witch-like cry; and this cry was echoed by another. "Hi!" it said, "wait a minute!" The undergrowth at the side of the scar was shaken and a multitude of raindrops fell pattering. "Wait a minute," the voice said, "I got caught up" The fair boy stopped and jerked his stockings with an auto- matic gesture that made the jungle seem for a moment like the Home Counties. The voice spoke again. "I can't hardly move with all these creeper things." The owner of the voice came backing out of the undergrowth so that twigs scratched on a greasy wind-breaker. The naked crooks of his knees were plump, caught and scratched by thorns. He bent down, re- moved the thorns carefully, and turned round. He was shorter than the fair boy and very fat. He came forward, searching out safe lodgements for his feet, and then looked up through thick spectacles. "Where's the man with the megaphone?" The fair boy shook his head. 'This is an island. At least I think it's an island. That' a reef out in the sea. Perhaps there aren't any grown-ups anywhere."