Lord of the flies is a novel many of us read in school in our teenage years. I personally agreed with the novels view on humanity & truly believed that a group of children in that situation wouldn’t be able to keep themselves sane. All the time I thought to myself would I be rational like Piggy? Would I be savage like Jack? Would I be innocent and kind like Simon?
I only ever looked at the book through the view of humanity that I was familiar with:
- Climate change
- Racism
- Humans killing humans
…the list goes on.
Especially coming from a background where I have not gotten to see my homeland and lived in fear when using my right to speech because of the painful actions taken by humanity.
So William Golding (the author of the well-known novel Lord of the flies) wrote this based off what? Well, most people who know anything about Golding know that he fought in WW2 & lived in a time where society was not fair too many. This with no doubt had a huge impact on the point of view Golding had when writing this story.
As I was saying previously I never really sat down to question whether or not the story was too biased to be trusted until I read this article:
The real Lord of the flies.
In order to truly understand this article you obviously need to read the novel so here is a link to a free pdf if you are interested:
Lord of the flies.
Ok, now that you have read the article I would like to explain how and why this article changed my point of view completely + what this article reveals about William Golding and his view of life.
This article is evidence that Golding had a very one-sided view on humanity and that in our modern-day world he would have probably been told to get mental help.
In this article we can see that Golden himself was somewhat savage because he even admitted to understanding where the Nazis were coming from ‘’I have always understood the Nazis,” Golding confessed, “because I am of that sort by nature.” The nazis are obviously very evil. Golding was also a depressed alcoholic. This shows that maybe William Golding isn’t someone to necessarily learn the way humans behave from. This could all be linked to his experience with war and the trauma that war causes. Golding hasn’t only admitted to feeling or thinking in a savage way but he also admits to hitting his four-year-old with a pillow until his child was on the verge of tears. I think that incident could probably be the idea behind the game the boys in the novel play on the island where one of them acts like a pig being beaten up.
The real-life scenario proved that the boys would keep on helping each other and were mature enough to realise that staying alive is what each of them needed rather than seeking power & blood. The fact that the boys in real life drank the blood as well as ate the meat of the birds proves that they adapted to the situation they were in rather than forced the environment they were in to change for them.
Conclusion:
William Golding himself had a savage approach to life therefore he had a savage point of view to humanity. The boys who got stranded in real life didn’t have a savage approach to life as they had no reason to view humanity in a bleak manner. This also goes against the idea that everyone is actually savage which is an idea Golding insists on in the novel. However, I do believe that Lord of the flies is an allegory that represents real harsh facts about life just in situations where the human mind is being manipulated by other human minds or being forced to let their inner savagery out just not an island with coconuts and an ocean.
Thank you that's all for now :)
Have a good one X
