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Unit 24: William Golding — Lord of the Flies

a supporter of female suffrage. As a child, William Golding was educated at the Marlborough Notes
Grammar School, where his father worked, and later at Brasenose College, Oxford. Although
educated to be a scientist at the request of his father, the young Golding developed an interest
in literature, becoming devoted first to Anglo-Saxon texts and then to poetry, which he wrote
avidly. At Oxford he studied natural science for two years and then transfered to a program
for English literature and philosophy. Following a short period of time in which he worked
in various positions at a settlement house and in small theater companies as both an actor and
a writer, Golding became a schoolmaster at Bishop Wordsworth’s School in Salisbury. During
the Second World War he joined the Royal Navy and was involved in the sinking of the
German battleship Bismarck, after which he returned to Bishop Wordsworth’s School, where
he taught until the early 1960s.

In 1954, Golding published his first novel, Lord of the Flies, which details the adventures of
British schoolboys stranded on an island in the Pacific who descend into barbaric behavior.
Although at first rejected by twenty-one different publishing houses, Golding’s first novel
became a surprise success. E.M. Forster declared Lord of the Flies the outstanding novel of its
year, while Time and Tide called it “not only a first-rate adventure story but a parable of our
times.” Golding continued to develop similar themes concerning the inherent violence in
human nature in his next novel, IThe Inheritors, published the following year. This novel
deals with the last days of Neanderthal man. The Inheritors posits that the Cro-Magnon “fire-
builders” triumphed over Neanderthal man as much by violence and deceit as by any natural
superiority. His subsequent works include Pincher Martin (1956), the story of a guilt-ridden
naval officer who faces an agonizing death, Free Fall (1959), and The Spire (1964), each of
which deals with the depravity of human nature. The Spire is an allegory concerning the
protagonist’s obsessive determination to build a cathedral spire regardless of the consequences.

Did u know? In addition to Golding’s novels and his early collection of poems, Golding
published a play entitled The Brass Butterfly in 1958 and two collections of
essays, The Hot Gates (1965) and A Moving Target (1982).

Golding’s final works include Darkness Visible (1979), the story of a boy horribly injured
during the London blitz of World War II, and Rites of Passage (1980). This novel won the
Booker McConnell Prize, the most prestigious award for English literature, and inspired two
sequels, Close Quarters (1987) and Fire down below (1989). These three novels portray life
aboard a ship during the Napoleonic Wars.

Task Write biography of William Golding.

In 1983, Golding received the Nobel Prize for literature for his novels which, according to the
Nobel committee, “with the perspicuity of realistic narrative art and the diversity and universality
of myth, illuminate the human condition in the world of today.” In 1988 he was knighted by
Queen Elizabeth II. Sir William died in 1993 in Perranarworthal, Cornwall. At the time of his
death he was working on an unfinished manuscript entitled “The Double Tongue,” which
focused on the fall of Hellenic culture and the rise of Roman civilization. This work was
published posthumously in 1995.

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