Lord of the Flies

Lord of the Flies by William Golding is, on the surface, an adventure story about a group of boys who are lost on an island and have to struggle to survive alone. The characters of Jack and Ralph compete in order to have power over the rest of the survivors of their plane crash. But when you look at it on a deeper level, you can see that this is a story with a moral. The novel is a political allegory. This means that it reflects Golding's view of politics. He shows, through Jack and Ralph, the struggle between democracy and totalitarianism; in other words, the struggle between a country ruled by an elected government or one with a singular ruler

To understand the context [context: The factors surrounding a text which help us to understand it; the background events which help to explain something. ] of Lord of the Flies you need some background on the writer himself and his experiences during World War Two. It's also useful to do some thinking about the 'desert island' as it has appeared in earlier stories.

William Golding

William Golding

William Golding was born in 1911. After leaving Oxford University, he worked as an actor, producer and writer, and then as a teacher in a boy's public school.

During World War 2 Golding was lieutenant in the Royal Navy, in command of a small rocket ship. While carrying out his duties he ordered the destruction of German ships and submarines and he shelled German troops from sea during the D-Day landings.

Golding and War

US soldiers in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp

Golding was horrified by what war revealed about people's capacity to harm their fellow humans.…