“GIFT FOR THE DARKNESS”

WILLIAM GOLDING’S LORD OF THE FLIES

WILLIAM GOLDING: NOBEL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE

CONVERSATION WITH WILLIAM GOLDING: WHAT PART DID THE WAR PLAY IN THE WRITING OF YOUR NOVEL?

I don’t think I can answer that question, except in general terms and by putting it this way: in a way one saw during the war much more… what happened. All this had nothing to do, directly, with the Nazis or anything; it has much more to do with people. One had one’s nose rubbed in the human condition.

… CONTINUED:

[During the war] I had discovered what one man could do to another. I am not talking of one man killing another with a gun, or dropping a bomb on him or blowing him up or torpedoing him. I am thinking of the vileness beyond all words that went on, year after year, in the totalitarian states.

“LEST I SHOULD BE PHYSICALLY SICK”

It is bad enough to say that so many Jews were exterminated in this way and that, so many people liquidated – lovely, elegant word – but there were things done during that period from which I shall have to avert my mind lest I should be physically sick. They were done skillfully, coldly by educated men….

SIMON’S ENCOUNTER WITH THE LORD OF THE FLIES…

Whether Simon’s encounter is imagined, dreamed or supernatural is not very clear…

… THE “LORD’S” MESSAGE IS CENTRAL TO THE NOVEL:

The Lord of the Flies explains to Simon that it is useless to try to kill the beast:

“I am part of you,” he says.

Golding seems to IMPLY that no matter what name you give to EVIL: sin, devil, neurosis, beast, violence, hate, terrorism, destruction…

These traits are inside of man; we are, by nature, evil.

MICROCOSM:

The book pictures the downfall of a small society on an unknown island:

MACROCOSM:

It also gives a portrait of what it means to be human – in light of the atrocities of World War Two…