Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding. The paper aims to explore diverse concepts and themes discussed in the novel. Nonetheless, the paper also aims to analyze the concept of 4 races of mankind (gold, silver, bronze and iron). The paper will explore different concepts discussed in the paper. In addition, the paper will discuss the plot of the novel in reference of diverse concepts.

Table of Contents

Introduction3

The Concept of Race in the Novel4

Plot of the Novel6

Conclusion7

Works Cited9

The Lord of the Flies

Introduction

The Lord of the Flies is a Nobel-prize winning novel by author William Golding. Golding's novel was not a commercial success upon its publication in 1954, going out of publication after selling just a few thousand copies. By the end of the decade, though, it was being assigned often as required reading in schools. Still, it might have been forgotten if it had not been brought to the attention of renowned stage director Peter Brook, at that time primarily known for his work in theater and as a director of television plays. Golding's critique is not directed exclusively at Nazi war criminality but at the postwar complacency of the English who too readily distanced themselves from what the Nazis did. He reminds them of their long infatuation with social Darwinism. Graham Dawson maps the trajectory of the "soldier hero," an "idealized," militaristic masculinity at the symbolic heart of English national identity and British imperialism.

He argues that this "imagining of masculinities" in terms of warfare and adventure pervades the national culture, swamps boyhood fantasies, and, in particular, promotes rigid gendering, xenophobia, and racial violence.9 In Lord of the Flies, Golding's critique of British imperial, protofascist history is powerfully registered by the Nazification of English schoolboys: "Shorts, shirts, and different garments they carried in their hands: but each boy wore a square black cap with a silver badge in it. Their bodies, from throat to ankle, were hidden by black cloaks which bore a long silver cross on the left breast and each neck was finished off with a hambone frill". It tells the story of a group of schoolboys who, in the process of being evacuated from London during a mythical war, end up stranded on a deserted island in the Pacific Ocean. Social order is formed but then abandoned as fear, hunger, and a propensity toward tribalism cause the boys to turn against each other.

The Concept of Race in the Novel

In Lord of the Flies, fantastic and carnivalesque modes are used to subvert postwar English complacency about the deeds of Nazism, particularly the Holocaust. Although oblique, Golding effects integration between literature and cultural context. This interpretation renegotiates previous critical paradigms that have, for the most part, centered on the timeless or perennial concerns of this novel about a group of English schoolboys, deserted on a South Pacific island following a nuclear third world war, and their descent into ritual savagery and violence. As most critics attest, the characters replicate those ...