is one that most of us
make at one time or another. "Of course," we say of someone, "he's not
really like that at all," and then we go on to construct an account which
assumes that a distorting film of circumstance hate come between us and the
man's "real self." What Mr. Golding has done in Lord of the Flies is to
create a situation which will reveal in an extremely direct way this "real
self," and yet at the same time keep our sense of credibility, our sense of
the day-to-day world, lively and sharp. It is rather like performing a
delicate heart operation, but feeling that the sense of human gravity comes
not through the actual operation but through the external scene -the
green-robed figures, the arc light which casts no shadow, the sound of a car
in the street outside. And it was in Ballantyne's Coral Island, a book
published in the middle of the last century, that Mr. Golding found the
suggestion for his "external scene." This is not a question of turning
Ballantyne inside out, so that where his boys are endlessly brave,
resourceful and Christian, Mr. Golding's are frightened, anarchic and
savage; rather Mr. Golding's adventure story is to point up in a forceful
and economic way the terrifying gap between the appearance and the reality.
We do not need to know Coral Island to appreciate Lord of the Flies, but if
we do know it we will appreciate more vividly the power of Mr. Golding's
book. If we take Ralph's remark about "the darkness of man's heart" as
coming very close to the subject of the book, it is worth just remembering
that this book, published in 1954, was written in a world very different
from Ballantyne's, one which had seen within twenty years the systematic
destruction of the Jewish race, a world war revealing unnumbered atrocities
of what man had done to man, and in 1945 the mushroom cloud of the atomic
bomb which has come to dominate all our political and moral thinking.
Turning from these general considerations of Mr. Golding's fable to the
way it is actually worked out, we find the novel divided into three
sections. The first deals with the arrival of the boys on the island, the
assembly, the early decisions about what to do; the emphasis falls on the
paradisal landscape, the hope of rescue, and the pleasures of day-to-day
events. Everything within this part of the book is contained within law and
rule: the sense of the aweful and the forbidden is strong. Jack cannot at
first bring himself to kill a pig because of "the enormity of the knife
descending and cutting into living flesh; because of the unbearable blood."
Roger throws stones at Henry, but he throws to miss because "round the
squatting child was the protection of parents and school and policemen and
the law." The world in this part of the book is the world of children's
games. The difference comes when there is no parental summons to bring these
games to an end. These games have to continue throughout the day, and
through the day that follows. And it is worth noting that Mr. Golding
creates his first sense of unease through something which is familiar to
every child in however protected a society-the waning of the light. It is
the dreams that usher in the beastie, the snake, the unidentifiable threat
to security.
The second part of the book could be said to begin when that threat
takes on physical reality, with the arrival of the dead airman. Immediately
the fear is crystallized, all the boys are now affected, discussion has
increasingly to give way to action. As the narrative increases in tempo, so
its implications enlarge. Ralph has appealed to the adult world for help,
"If only they could send us something grown-up ... a sign or something," and
the dead airman is shot down in flames over the island. Destruction is
everywhere; the boy's world is only a miniature version of the adult's. By
now the nature of the destroyer is becoming clearer; it is not a beastie or
snake but man's own nature. "What I mean is ... maybe it's only us," Simon's
insight is confined to himself and he has to pay the price of his own life
for trying to communicate it to others. Simon's death authenticates this
truth, and now that the fact of evil has actually been created on the
island, the airman is no longer necessary and his body vanishes in a high
wind and is carried out to sea.
The third part of the book, and the most terrible, explores the meaning
and consequence of this creation of evil. Complete moral anarchy is
unleashed by Simon's murder. The world of the game, which embodied in
however an elementary way, rule and order, is systematically destroyed,
because hardly anyone can now remember when things were otherwise. When the
destruction is complete, Mr. Golding suddenly restores "the external scene"
to us, not the paradisal world of the marooned boys, but our world. The
naval officer speaks, we realize with horror, our words, "the kid needed a
bath, a hair-cut, a nose wipe and a good deal of ointment." He carries our
emblems of power, the white drill, the epaulettes, the gilt-buttons, the
revolver, the trim cruiser. Our everyday sight has been restored to us, but
the experience of reading the book is to make us re-interpret what we see,
and say with Macbeth "mine eyes are made the fools o' the other senses."
If we are to look at Lord of the Flies from the point of view of it
being a fable this is the kind of account we might give. And, as far as it
goes, it is a true account. The main weakness in discussing Lord of the
Flies is that we are too often inclined to leave our description at this
point. So we find a Christian being deeply moved by the book and arguing
that its greatness is tied up with the way in which the author brings home
to a modem reader the doctrine of Original Sin; or we find a humanist
finding the novel repellent precisely because it endorses what he feels to
be a dangerous myth; or again, on a different level, we find a Liberal
asserting the importance of the book because of its unwavering exposure or
the corruptions of power. Now whatever degree of truth we find in these
views, it is important to be dear that the quality or otherwise of Lord of
the Flies is not dependent upon any of them. Whether Mr. Golding has written
a good novel or not is not because of "the views" which may be deduced from
it, but because of his claim to be a novelist. And the function of the
novelist as Joseph Conrad once said is "by the power of the written word to
make you hear, to make you feel-it is, before all, to make you see." And it
is recognition of this that must take us back from Mr. Golding's fable,
however compelling, to his fiction. Earlier I suggested that these two
aspects occur simultaneously, so that in moving from one to the other, we
are not required to look at different parts of the novel, but at the same
thing from a different point of view.
Let us begin by looking at the coral island. We have mentioned the
careful literary reference to Ballantyne ("Like the Coral Island," the naval
officer remarks), the theological overtones with the constant paradisal
references, "flower and fruit grew together on the same tree," but all these
things matter only because Mr. Golding has imaginatively put the island
before us. The sun and the thunder come across to us as physical realities,
not because they have a symbolic part to play in the book, but because of
the novelist's superb resourcefulness of language. Consider how difficult it
is to write about a tropical island and avoid any hint of the travel poster
cliche or the latest documentary film about the South Seas. To see how the
difficulty can be overcome look at the following paragraph:
Strange things happened at midday. The glittering sea rose up, moved
apart in planes of blatant impossibility; the coral reef and the few,
stunted palms that clung to the more elevated parts would float up into the
sky, would quiver, be plucked apart, run like raindrops on a wire or be
repeated as in an odd succession of mirrors. Sometimes land loomed where
there was no land and flicked out like a bubble as the children watched, (p.
53.)
It is this kind of sensitivity to language, this effortless precision
of statement that makes the novel worth the most patient attention. And what
applies to the island applies to the characters also. As Jack gradually
loses his name so that at the end of the novel he is simply the Chief we
feel this terrible loss of identity coming over in his total inability to do
anything that is not instinctively gratifying. He begins to talk always in
the same way, to move with the same intent. But this is in final terrible
stages of the novel. If we turn back to the beginning of the novel we find
Mr. Golding catching perfectly a tone of voice, a particular rhythm of
speech. Ralph is talking to Piggy shortly after they have met:
"I could swim when I was five. Daddy taught me. He's a commander in the
Navy. When he gets leave he'll come and rescue us. What's your father?"
Piggy flushed suddenly.
"My dad's dead," he said quickly, "and my mum-"
He took off his glasses and looked vainly for something with which to
clean them.
"I used to live with my auntie. She kept a candy store. I used to get
ever so many candies. As many as I liked. When'll your dad rescue us?"
"Soon as he can." (p. 11.)
Notice how skillfully Mr. Golding has caught in that snatch of
dialogue, not only schoolboy speech rhythms,2 but also, quite
unobtrusively, the social difference between the two boys. "What's your
father?", "When'll your dad rescue us?" There are two continents of social
experience hinted at here. I draw attention to this passage simply to show
that in a trivial instance, in something that would never be quoted in any
account of "the importance" of the book, it is the gifts which are peculiar
to a novelist, "to make you hear, to make you feel . . . to make you see,"
that are being displayed.
Perhaps, however, we feel these gifts most unmistakably present not in
the way the landscape is presented to us, nor the characters, but rather in
the extraordinary momentum and power which drives the whole narrative
forward, so that one incident leads to another with an inevitability which
is awesome. A great deal of this power comes from Mr. Golding's careful
preparation for an incident: so that the full significance of a scene is
only gradually revealed. Consider, for instance, one of these. Early in the
book Ralph discovers the nickname of his companion with delight:
"Piggy! Piggy!"
Ralph danced out into the hot air of the beach and then returned as a
fighter plane, with wings swept back, and machine-gunned Piggy.
Time passes, games give way to hunting, but still the hunting can only
be talked about in terms of a game and when Jack describes his first kill,
it takes the form of a game:
"I cut the pig's throat---"
The twins, still sharing their identical grin, jumped up and ran round
each other. Then the rest joined in, making pig-dying noises and shouting.
2.In their notes for this edition the authors define all of the
schoolboy slang terms that are likely to confuse adult readers.- Eds.
"One for his nob!"
"Give him a fourpenny one!"
Then Maurice pretended to be the pig and ran squealing into the centre,
and the hunters, circling still, pretended to beat him. As they danced, they
sang.
"Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Bash her in."
Ralph watched them, envious and resentful. Not till they flagged and
the chant died away, did he speak "I'm calling an assembly."
There is an exasperation in Ralph's statement which places him outside
the game, the fantasy fighter plane has no place in this more hectic play;
the line between pretense and reality is becoming more difficult to see. The
first incident emerged from an overflow of high spirits, the second from the
deeper need to communicate an experience. When the game is next played, the
exuberant mood has evaporated. Maurice's place has been taken by Robert:
Jack shouted.
"Make a ring!"
The circle moved in and round. Robert squealed in mock terror, then in
real pain.
"Ow! Stop it! You're hurting!"
The butt end of a spear fell on his back as he blundered among them.
"Hold him!"
They got his arms and legs. Ralph, carried away by a sudden thick
excitement, grabbed Eric's spear and jabbed at Robert with it.
"Kill him! Kill him!"
All at once, Robert was screaming and struggling with the strength of
frenzy. Jack had him by the hair and was brandishing his knife. Behind him
was Roger, fighting to get close. The chant rose ritually, as at the last
moment of a dance or a hunt.
"Kill the pig! Cut his throat! Kill the pig! Bash him in!"
Ralph too was fighting to get near, to get a handful of that brown,
vulnerable flesh. The desire to squeeze and hurt was over-mastering.
The climax is reached when the game turns into the killing of Simon-the
pig, first mentioned in Ralph's delighted mockery of Piggy's name, made more
real in the miming of Maurice and then in the hurting of Robert, becomes
indistinguishable from Simon who is trampled to death. This series of
incidents, unobtrusive in any ordinary reading, nevertheless helps to drive
the book forward with its jet-like power and speed. Just before Simon's
arrival at the feast, there is a sudden pause and silence, the game is
suspended. "Roger ceased to be a pig and became a hunter, so that the centre
of the ring yawned emptily," It is that final phrase which crystallizes the
emotion, so that we feel we are suddenly on the brink of tragedy without
being able to locate it. It is now, after the violence, that the way is
clear for the spiritual climax of the novel. As Simon's body is carried out
to sea we are made aware, in the writing, of the significance of Simon's
whole function in the novel; the beauty of the natural world and its order
hints at a harmony beyond the tortured world of man and to which now Simon
has access. And Mr. Golding has made this real to us, not by asserting some
abstract proposition with which we may or may not agree, but by "the power
of the written word."
During the last part of this Introduction when I have been urging the
importance of Lord of the Flies as a fiction, you may think that I am
putting forward some claim for Mr. Golding as a stylist, a writer of fine
prose, rather in the manner of Oscar Wilde saying that there is no such
thing as good books and bad books, only well written and badly written
books. This is dangerously misleading if we interpret this as meaning we can
separate what is being said from how it is being said. If, on the other
hand, we intend that the content of a novel only "lives" in direct relation
to the writer's ability to communicate it imaginatively, then Wilde's remark
is surely true. Ultimately, Mr. Golding's book is valuable to us, not
because it "tells us about" the darkness of man's heart, but because it
shows it, because it is a work of art which enables us to enter into the
world it creates and live at the level of a deeply perceptive and
intelligent man. His vision becomes ours, and such a translation should make
us realize the truth of Shelley's remark that "the great instrument for the
moral good is the imagination."
An Old Story Well Told1
WILLIAM R. MUELLER
I
Lord of the Flies uncovers the fallen and unredeemed human heart; it
sketches the enormities of which man, unrestrained by human law and
resistant to divine grace, is capable. The varying degrees of goodness, as
manifested by Simon, Piggy and Ralph, are simply no match for a murderous
Jack or a head-hunting Roger. When we first meet the boys, recently dropped
onto an island after escaping from their bomb-ravaged part of the world,
they are still trailing faint clouds of glory. Even Roger, who shares with
Jack the most diabolic potentialities of them all, early in the novel
manifests a thin sheath of decency and restraint; in throwing stones at one
of the smaller boys he is careful to miss, to leave untouched and inviolate
a small circle surrounding his teased victim: "Here, invisible yet strong,
was the taboo of the old life. Round the squatting child was the protection
of parents and school and policemen and the law. Roger's arm was conditioned
by a civilization that knew nothing of him and was in ruins." The novel
delineates the gradual unconditioning of the arm and the unveiling of the
heart of Roger and some of his companions.
Lord of the Flies is, of course, more than an expository disquisition
on sin. Were it only that, it would have gone virtually unnoticed. The book
is a carefully structured work of art whose organization-in terms of a
series of hunts- serves to reveal with progressive clarity man's essential
core. There are six stages, six hunts, constituting the dark-
1.This article is reprinted in part by permission of The Christian
Century, 80 (October 2, 1963), 1203-06. Copyright (c) 1963 by the Christian
Century Foundation.
est of voyages as each successive one takes us closer to natural man.
To trace the hunts-with pigs and boys as victims-is to feel Gelding's full
impact.
As Ralph, the builder of fires and shelters, is the main constructive
force on the island, Jack, the hunter, is the primary destructive force.
Hunting does of course provide food, but it also gratifies the lust for
blood. In his first confrontation with a pig, Jack fails, unable to plunge
his knife into living flesh, to bear the sight of flowing blood, and unable
to do so because he is not yet far enough away from the "taboo of the old
life." But under the questioning scrutiny of his companions he feels a bit
ashamed of his fastidiousness, and, driving his knife into a tree trunk, he
fiercely vows that the next time will be different.
And so it is. Returning from the second hunt he proclaim; proudly that
he has cut a pig's throat. Yet he has not reached the point of savage
abandonment: we learn that he "twitched" as he spoke of his achievement-an
involuntary gesture expressing his horror at the deed and disclosing the
tension between the old taboo and the new freedom. His reflection upon the
triumph, however, indicates that pangs of conscience must certainly fade
before the glorious feeling of new and devastating power: "His mind was
crowded with memories; memories of the knowledge that had come to them when
they closed in on the struggling pig, knowledge that they had outwitted a
living thing, imposed their will upon it, taken away its life like a long
satisfying drink."
The third hunt is unsuccessful; the boar gets away. Nonetheless it
plants the seed of an atrocity previously undreamed, and it is followed by
an ominous make-believe, a mock hunt in which Robert, one of the younger
boys, plays pig, the others encircling him and jabbing with their spears.
The play becomes frenzied with cries of "Kill the pig! Cut his throat! Kill
the pig! Bash him in!" An almost overwhelming dark desire possesses the
boys. Only a fraction of the old taboo now remains; the terrified Robert
emerges alive, but with a wounded rump. What is worse, the make-believe is
but the prelude to an all too real drama.
II
The fourth hunt is an electrifying success, a mayhem accomplished with
no twitch of conscience, no element of pretense. The boys discover a sow
"sunk in deep maternal bliss," "the great bladder of her belly . . . fringed
with a row of piglets that slept or burrowed and squeaked." What a prize!
Wounded, she flees, "bleeding and mad"; "the hunters followed, wedded to her
in lust, excited by the long chase and the dropped blood." The sow finally
falters and in a ghastly scene Jack and Roger ecstatically consummate their
desires:
Here, struck down by the heat, the sow fell and the hunters hurled
themselves at her. This dreadful eruption from an unknown world made her
frantic; she squealed and bucked and the air was full of sweat and noise and
blood and terror. Roger ran round the heap, prodding with his spear whenever
pigflesh appeared. Jack was on top of the sow, stabbing downward with his
knife. Roger found a lodgment for his point and began to push till he was
leaning with his whole weight. The spear moved forward inch by inch and the
terrified squealing became a high-pitched scream. Then Jack found the throat
and the hot blood spouted over his hands. The sow collapsed under them and
they were heavy and fulfilled upon her. The butterflies still danced,
preoccupied in the center of the clearing.
The fifth hunt, moving us even closer to the unbridled impulses of the
human heart, is a fine amalgam of the third and fourth. This time Simon is
at the center of the hideous circle, yet the pursuit is no more make-believe
than it was with the heavy-teated sow. Simon is murdered not only without
compunction but with orgiastic delight.
The final and climactic abhorrence is the hunt for Ralph. Its terror
will not be celebrated here; suffice it to say that one refinement not
present in the Simon episode is added -a stick Roger sharpens at both ends.
It had indeed been used for the sow, with one point piercing the earth and
the other supporting the severed head, but its human use had not yet been
tested on that island paradise.
Such being Mr. Golding's art and conviction, it is little wonder that
some readers have judged him offensive, revolting, depravedly sensational,
utterly wicked. He has been impelled to say that many human beings, left
unrestrainedly to their own devices, will find the most natural expression
of their desires to lie in human head-hunting. Those who affirm that man is
made in God's image will be given some pause, but upon reflection they will
probably interpret the novel as a portrayal of the inevitable and ultimate
condition of a world without grace. Those who affirm that man is basically
and inherently good-and becoming better-may simply find the novel a
monstrous perpetuation of falsehood.
Golding's main offense, I suppose, is that he profanes what many men
hold most precious: belief that the human being is essentially good and the
child essentially innocent. Yet his offense, as well as his genius, lies not
in any originality of view or statement but in his startling ability to make
his story real, so real that many readers can only draw back in terror. I
would strongly affirm, however, that Golding's intention is not simply to
leave us in a negative state of horror. Lard of the Flies has a tough moral
and religious flavor,2 one which a study of its title helps make
clear.
The term "lord of the flies" is a translation of the Hebrew word
"Baalzebub" or "Beelzebub." The Baal were the local nature gods of the early
Semitic peoples. In II Kings 1:2 Baalzebub is named as the god of Ekron. All
three Synoptic Gospels refer to Beelzebub; in Luke 11:15 he is called "the
chief of the devils." In English literature among those who refer to him are
Christopher Marlowe and Robert Burton, though it is left to Milton to
delineate his character at some length. Weltering by Satan's side he is
described as "One next himself [Satan] in power, and next in crime, /Long
after known in Palestine, and nam'd Beelzebub." His subtle services to the
great Adversary of mankind are well known. To disregard the historical
background of Golding's title3 or the place of the Lord of the
Flies within the novel is to miss a good part of the author's intent; it is,
indeed, to leave us with nothing but horror.
2.Thomas M. Coskren, O. P., in "Is Golding Calvinistic?" America, 109
(July 6, 1963), 18-20, also speaks to this point at length. The essay is
reprinted on pp. 253-260 in this volume.- Eds.
3. Golding seems to attach no particular significance to the historical
Beelzebub but to regard him as simply another manifestation or creation of
the human heart. (See James Keating and William Golding, "The Purdue
Interview," p. 192 in this volume.) It is difficult to see how the
"historical background" for the title enhances understanding of Golding's
basic fable, although it certainly figures as a due to the theme.-Eds.
At the conclusion of the fourth hunt, after the boys have hacked the
multiparous sow, they place its head on a stick as a sacrificial offering
for some reputedly mysterious and awesome beast-actually a dead parachutist
who had plummeted to the ground, now unrecognizable as his body rises and
falls each time the wind fills the parachute and then withdraws from it.
Meanwhile Simon, whose love for his companions and desire to protect them
instill a courage extraordinary, leaves them to search out the darksome
creature. He finds himself confronted by the primitive offering, by "the
head grinning amusedly in the strange daylight, ignoring lie flies, the
spilled guts, even ignoring the indignity of being spiked on a stick." As he
is impelled to stare at the gruesome object, it undergoes a black, unholy
transfiguration; he sees no longer just a pig's head on a stick; his gaze,
we are told, is "held by that ancient, inescapable recognition." And that
which is inescapably recognized by Simon is of primordial root. Its
shrewdness and devastation have long been chronicled: it is on center stage
in the third chapter of Genesis; it gained the rapt attention of Hosea and
Amos and the prophets who followed them.
As Simon and the Lord of the Flies continue to face each other, the
nature of the latter is clearly and explicitly set forth in an imaginary
conversation which turns into a dramatic monologue. The head speaks:
"What are you doing out here all alone? Aren't you afraid of me?" Simon
shook.
"There isn't anyone to help you. Only me. And I'm the Beast." Simon's
mouth labored, brought forth audible words. "Pig's head on a stick."
"Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill" said
the head. . . . "You knew, didn't you? I'm part of you? Close, dose, close!
I'm the reason why it's no go? Why things are what they are?"
A moment later, the Beast goes on:
"I'm warning you, I'm going to get angry. D'you see? You're not wanted.
Understand? We are going to have
fun on this island. Understand? We are going to have fun on this
island! So don't try it on, my poor misguided boy, or else-"
Simon found he was looking into a vast mouth. There was blackness
within, a blackness that spread.
"-Or else," said the Lord of the Flies, "we shall do you. See? Jack and
Roger and Maurice and Robert and Bill and Piggy and Ralph. Do you. See?"
Simon was inside the mouth. He fell down and lost consciousness.
The "ancient, inescapable recognition" is that the Lord of the Flies is
a part of Simon, of all the boys on the island, of every man. And he is the
reason "things are what they are." He is the demonic essence whose
inordinate hunger, never assuaged, seeks to devour all men, to bend them to
his will. He is, in Golding's novel, accurately identified only by Simon.
And history has made clear, as the Lord of the Flies affirms, that the
Simons are not wanted, that they do spoil what is quaintly called the "fun"
of the world, and that antagonists will "do" them.
Simon does not heed the "or else" imperative, for he bears too
important a message: that the beast is "harmless and horrible." The direct
reference here is to the dead parachutist whose spectrally moving form had
terrified the boys; the corpse is, obviously, both harmless and horrible.
But it should also be remembered that the Lord of the Flies identified
itself as the Beast and that it too might be termed "harmless and horrible."
Simon alone has the key to its potential harmlessness. It will become
harmless only when it becomes universally recognized, recognized not as a
principle of fun but as the demonic impulse which is utterly destructive.
Simon staggers on to his companions to bear the immediate good news that the
beast (the rotting parachutist) is harmless. Yet he carries with him a
deeper revelation; namely, that the Beast (the Lord of the Flies) is no
overwhelming extrinsic force, but a potentially fatal inner itching,
recognition of which is a first step toward its annihilation. Simon becomes,
of course, the suffering victim of the boys on the island and, by extension,
of the readers of the book.4
4.Compare Donald R. Spangler, "Simon" on pp. 211-215 in this
volume.-Eds.
IV
To me Lord of the Flies is a profoundly true book. Its happy offense
lies in its masterful, dramatic and powerful narration of the human
condition, with which a peruser of the daily newspaper should already be
familiar. The ultimate purpose of the novel is not to leave its readers in a
state of paralytic horror. The intention is certainly to impress upon them
man's, any man's, miraculous ingenuity in perpetrating evil; but it is also
to impress upon them the gift of a saving recognition which, to Golding, is
apparently the only saving recognition. An orthodox phrase for this
recognition is the "conviction of sin," an expression which grates on many
contemporary ears, and yet one which the author seemingly does not hold in
derision.
Lecturing at Johns Hopkins University in the spring of 1962, Golding
said that Lord of the Flies is a study of sin. And he is a person who uses
words with precision. Sin is not to be confused with crime, which is a
transgression of human law; it is instead a transgression of divine law. Nor
does Golding believe that the Jacks and Rogers are going to be reconstructed
through social legislation eventuating in some form of utopianism-he and
Conrad's Mr. Kurtz are at one in their evaluation of societal laws which,
they agree, exercise external restraint but have at best a slight effect on
the human heart. Golding is explicit: "The theme [of Lord of the Flies]" he
writes, "is an attempt to trace the defects of society back to the defects
of human nature. The moral is that the shape of a society must depend on the
ethical nature of the individual and not on any political system however
apparently logical or respectable,"
William Golding's story is as old as the written word. The figure of
the Lord of the Flies, of Beelzebub, is one of the primary archetypes of the
Western world. The novel is the parable of fallen man. But it does not close
the door on that man; it entreats him to know himself and his Adversary, for
he cannot do combat against an unrecognized force, especially when it lies
within him.
Is Golding Calvinistic?1
A more optimistic interpretation of the
symbolism found in Lord of the Flies
THOMAS MARCELLUS COSKREN, O. P.
IN an issue of America last winter, two critics gave their
interpretations of William Golding's remarkably successful Lord of the
Flies.2 While the approach of each of these critics differed, Mr.
Kearns being concerned with the sociopolitical implications of the work and
Fr. Egan with the theological, both reached the same conclusion: Lord of the
Flies presents the Calvinist view of man as a creature essentially depraved.
As one of the professors who has placed the novel on his required reading
list, I should like to raise a dissenting voice.
While I am prepared to admit that Lord of the Flies is hardly the most
optimistic book that has appeared in recent times, I find it difficult to
accept the conclusion reached by Fr. Egan and Mr. Kearns. Both, it seems to
me, have left too much of the novel unexplained; indeed, their view of the
work seems to render important sections inexplicable. If Golding has
presented man as essentially depraved, why are three of his four major
characters good people? Granted that Ralph, Piggy and Simon possess a
limited goodness, the condition of all men, they are decidedly boys of high
1.This article is reprinted with permission from America, the National
Catholic Weekly Review, 920 Broadway, New York City. It appeared in the
issue of July 6, 1963, Volume 109, pp. 18-20.
2.Francis E. Kearns, "Salinger and Golding: Conflict on the Campus,"
America, 108 (January 26, 1963), 136-39, and John M. Egan, "Golding's View
of Man," 140-41.-Eds.
purpose, who use good means to achieve their ends. Jack may strike many
as the perfect symbol of essentially depraved man, but he is only one out of
four. Three-to-one seems a rather impressive ratio favoring at least a
limited goodness in the human community.
Moreover, if Golding hesitates "to view evil in a religious framework,"
as Mr. Kearns says, why is Simon, on the symbolic level, so cleverly
identified with Christ? 3 In fact, this identification is so
obvious that one is tempted to agree with Kearns' statement about Lord of
the Flies being "too neatly symbolic, too patently artistic." Certainly, the
very presence of a Christ-figure in the novel, a presence which pervades the
work, implies some kind of religious framework.
Again, if man were not good or innocent at some time in the long
history of the race, why should Ralph at the end of the novel weep "for the
end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air
of the true, wise friend called Piggy"? Ralph weeps for an innocence that
man once possessed; he laments the loss of goodness, and this is not some
vague goodness, but the palpable goodness in his "true, wise friend."
Thus far, the objections I have offered to the view presented by Mr.
Kearns and Fr. Egan concern only the characters in Lord of the Flies. These
objections are serious enough, but there are others which demand examination
by the critic. If the world into which these characters have been placed is,
as Fr. Egan states, a universe that is "a cruel and irrational chaos," why
does Golding indicate, with almost obsessive attention to detail, the
pattern, the order of the island world which the boys inhabit? Throughout
the novel we find natural descriptions which use metaphors from the world of
manufacturing.
In other words, the universe of Lord of the Flies is one that has been
made, created. The novel is filled with phrases like the following: "a great
platform of pink granite"; "a criss-cross pattern of trunks"; "the palms . .
. made a green roof "; "the incredible lamps of stars." Further, Golding's
adjectives indicate an ordered universe. This indication is especially
apparent after the terrible storm accompanying Simon's death. In this
section he uses such words as "angu-
2.Cf. Donald R. Spangler's "Simon" on pp. 211-215 in this volume. See
also Golding's remarks on Simon in the interview with James Keating, p.
192.-Eds.
lar" and "steadfast" to describe the constellations. If William
Golding's universe is "a cruel and irrational chaos," he has certainly
chosen most inappropriate words to describe it.
Basically, it seems to me, the real difficulty with the interpretation
of Lord of the Flies offered by Fr. Egan and Mr. Kearns is its failure to
treat the novel as a whole. William Golding's novel is not antihuman; it is
anti-Rousseau. It does not portray human nature as such; it presents human
nature as infected with the romantic chimera of inevitable human progress, a
progress which will be achieved because of the innate nobility and innocence
of the human species. In theological terms, which are perhaps the most
accurate critical tools for explaining this novel, Lord of the Flies is not
so much Manichean as it is anti-Pelagian. A more detailed analysis should
help to show this anti-Pelagian character of the work.
Lord of the Flies begins with all the paraphernalia of the romantic,
and sentimental, preconceptions that owe so much to Rousseau's social
philosophy. In the first chapter we are presented with a group of children,
the contemporary world's symbol of innocence. They are placed on a tropical
island, an earthly paradise, Rousseau's habitat for the "noble savage." But
these boys are not Adam-figures; they are not innocent. Each of them, in
varying degrees, reflects the influence of the serpent-which, by the way, is
introduced in the first chapter when Ralph unfastens "the snake-clasp of his
belt." Here begins the terrible irony that runs through the whole novel.
Romantic man thinks he can rid himself of evil merely by taking off his
clothes, the symbol of civilization and its effects.
In this superficially idyllic community, made up of refugees from an
atomic war, we discover Golding's four major characters: Ralph, Piggy, Jack
and Simon. It is with these characters that Golding's symbolism becomes
somewhat more complex than either Mr. Keams or Fr. Egan suggests. Lord of
the Flies is essentially a fable about contemporary man and contemporary
ideas. Thus, Ralph is not only the symbol of the decent, sensible
parliamentarian; he is also me figure of an idea: the abstract concept of
democratic government. The same double role is filled by the other
characters: Jack is at once the dictator and the concept of dictatorship;
Piggy is the intellectual, with all his powers and deficiencies, and
representative of the Enlightenment or scientific method. Finally, Simon is
the mystic and poet, who is also a Christ-figure and thus the symbol of
religious faith. The symbolism of Lord of the Flies, therefore, functions on
a number of levels, and it seems to be an injustice to Golding's
extraordinary dexterity in handling these multiple levels to reduce them to
one level, that of universal human nature.
Golding suggests the complexity of these symbolic figures in their
physical descriptions. Ralph is "the boy with fair hair [who has] a mildness
about his mouth and eyes that proclaimed no devil." On the literal level we
have the good boy, the "solid citizen." As such, Ralph engages our
sympathies. And on the most obvious symbolic level he still has our
sympathies, for he represents the decent, sensible parliamentarian, the
political ideal of the Western world.
But on another, and deeper, level Golding has introduced an ironic
twist. The symbolic value Ralph possesses as the abstract concept of the
democratic process is presented as a challenge to the reader. If, as the
Western world seems to believe, the democratic process of government is the
best devised by man throughout his history, why doesn't it work always and
everywhere? It is at this level that Golding suggests symbolically the
inadequacy, not the depravity, of the solely human; it is at this level that
he directs his devastatingly ironic commentary on the Rousseauvian myth of
the general will and its unproved presupposition of the natural goodness of
the human species.
In effect, Golding's modern fable puts Rousseau's social contract to
the test: Lord of the Flies takes man back to the primitive condition of
things, which the French social reformer had advocated as the one sure way
of restoring man to his proper dignity. Then it shows that, far from being
naturally good, man has some type of defect for which civ