Lord of the Flies

1. Lord of the Flies By William Golding

2. About the Author Born in Cornwall, England, in 1911 Joined the Royal Navy in 1940 and served for six years during World War II Won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983 Died on June 19, 1993

3. Historical Context World War II was a global war that took place from 1939-1945 and involved most of the world’s nations. World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history, resulting in an estimated 50-85 million deaths.

4. Historical Context The atrocities of World War II made people reconsider their perception of humanity. For many, man’s purity and innocence were gone, and were replaced with the belief that man was inherently evil. Golding’s experience in the Navy during World War II had a profound affect on his writing and shaped many of the themes in Lord of the Flies.

5. Golding said of his experience in the war: “I began to see what people were capable of doing. Anyone who moved through those years without understanding that man produces evil as a bee produces honey, must have been blind or wrong in the head.”

6. The Cold War: After WWII, the United States and its allies were in a Cold War with the Soviet Union. A cold war is a conflict without open fighting. People all over the world lived in fear that a nuclear war would break out between the two super powers.

7. When the Germans attacked England during WWII, the English evacuated their children from the cities and sent them to the countryside. Lord of the Flies begins with a group of school boys being evacuated from England during a fictional flare-up of the Cold War. The enemy attacks their plane and they crash before they get away.

8. On Writing ‘Lord of the Flies” “It was simply what seemed sensible for me to write after the war when everyone was thanking God they weren’t Nazis. I’d seen enough to realize that every single one of us could be Nazis.” --William Golding