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 civilization is not
responsible. Rousseau's social philosophy fails the test, and the
essentially confused notion of nature which Rousseau bequeathed to the
contemporary world is exposed for the fraud that it is.
Moreover, the irony implicit in Ralph's inadequacy is extended to the
other characters, either as they participate in the same inadequacy or as
they question symbolically the solution offered for human ills by Ralph's
faith in Rousseauvian democracy. Piggy participates in the "grand design" of
restoration. As a figure of the Enlightenment, he cannot accept the extremes
of romanticism, and he votes for Ralph only "grudgingly"; but he will use
the more popular romantic concept of government and will try to direct ft.
Yet, even with his discerning rational assessment of the problem of forming
a government for the refugees, his inherent weaknesses are evident
Ultimately, he is destroyed, not because his intellectual gifts are
depraved, but because he falls into the mistaken belief that they are
sufficient unto themselves. Piggy is intelligent enough, for example, to
question Ralph's blind faith in rescue by the military (a scathing
commentary on the Western democracies' current worship at the shrine of Cape
Canaveral), but he remains blind to the limitations of his own reason.
Jack and Simon, on the other hand, are not taken in by the Rousseauvian
solution. Jack's approach to the human condition is much too twisted for
even the remotest comparison with the idealism, fanciful though it is,
implicit in Rousseau; Simon's view of humanity is so penetrated with
realistic self-appraisal that he transcends the idealism of the French
reformer. Jack descends to the subhuman; Simon soars to the superhuman.
While Ralph and Piggy exemplify ironically the "noble savage," Jack and
Simon provide the necessary counterpoint; Jack exploits the savagery, and
Simon explores the nobility.
And it is probably through the figure of Jack that William Golding
pronounces his severest condemnation of the romantic myth of human progress.
For, in the last analysis, it is the dictator who has benefited most from
Rousseau's social view. When man's efforts toward progress and eventual
fulfillment, however altruistic his motivation, proceed from sloppy
thinking, then brute force takes over to direct the course of progress and
subverts even the good in human nature to its own destructive ends.
Yet, Golding is not interested merely in the altruism or the
subversion; between these two forces in contemporary civilization he places
the figure of Simon. He introduces him to the reader in somewhat
melodramatic fashion: the boy faints. In this, the first of Simon's actions,
we have a possible ironic twist on Swinburne's famous line: "Thou hast
conquer'd, O pale Galilean; the world has grown gray from thy breath." It is
obvious from Simon's subsequent history that he is a Christ-figure; and the
romantic view of
humanity proposed by Rousseau has so infiltrated every aspect of life
in the contemporary world that even Christ is seen through the rose-colored
glasses of sentimentality, which is the logical and real successor to
romanticism.
Thus, the Christ of Lord of the Flies is the "pale Galilean"; yet it is
this same weak Christ who, in the first act he performs, forces a concession
from Jack, and the choir boys are allowed to rest The irony is evident: even
a weak Christ is more than a strong dictator.4 Further, when
Simon announces his name (and his name has the strongest biblical
overtones), Jack says: "We've got to decide about being rescued."
Immediately, Simon is linked, however vaguely, with the idea of salvation.
After the boys have elected Ralph as leader by "this toy of voting,"
Jack, Simon and Ralph begin exploring the mountain. This section of the
novel is crucial, for it is here that Golding gives his abbreviated ironical
summary of the romantic view of human progress. The passage needs analysis
in depth (impossible in an article of this length), but it should be pointed
out that Golding has chosen as explorers those who have dominated the
history of man: the totalitarian, the parliamentarian and the mystic-poet
And, as is clear from the text, Simon is the realist of the triumvirate.
When the boys examine the bushes on the mountain, Simon accepts them for
what they are. Ralph and Jack are concerned only with how the buds can be
used That Golding's figure of religious faith accepts reality as it is
provides an interesting comment on the limited approaches of the
parliamentarian and the dictator.
As we follow Simon through the novel, we discover that he is the mystic
who separates himself from the others to ponder the mysteries of existence.
Simon is the carpenter who continues building the shelters after the other
boys have abandoned the work; Simon feeds the "littluns"; Simon encounters
the beast in all its loathsomeness and does not succumb to the beast's
temptation to despair. This encounter is the boy's Gethsemane: he comes face
to face with evil, recognizes it for what it is, and, despite the agony and
horror of the meeting, he is neither defeated
4.Simon's martyrdom, however, indicates that the saint or Christ-like
personage (in spite of his spiritual strength) fails to rescue man from the
nightmare of history.-Eds.
nor intimidated by it. Immediately after he recovers consciousness, he
ascends the mountain to free the dead pilot, whose parachute lines have
become entangled in the rocks. In other words, Simon climbs the mountain to
free "fallen man."
He returns then to the boys to announce the good news; they need no
longer fear the beast. But the group will not listen to him. Like the One in
whose place he stands symbolically, Simon is murdered during a religious
festival- the diabolical liturgy of the pig. His death occurs while the
island world cowers under the lash of a gigantic storm. And it is only after
Simon has actually died that the dead man in the parachute is finally freed
and washed out to sea, the sea which is Golding's symbol of mystery, not
chaos.
Finally, Simon has his symbolic hour of glorification: his body is
surrounded by "moonbeam-bodied creatures with fiery eyes"; gleaming in this
unearthly phosphorescence, he is carried gently out to sea. And it is
difficult not to recognize the hint of a resurrection motif here, for the
pattern is that of the hero carried through the waters to his apotheosis.
Lord of the Flies, as I have suggested, is not an optimistic novel, but
at least it is pessimistic about the right things. It states quite clearly
that the time has come for the Western world to abandon its fantastic belief
in the Rousseauvian concept of the natural goodness of the human species,
which goodness must lead inevitably to the total perfection of the race. It
shows what happens to scientific man, when he trusts only in the activity of
his unaided reason. It castigates the Western democracies for their blind
acceptance of salvation through militarism. It pictures the tragic
destruction of any society which nourishes and exalts the dictator.
Ultimately, it presents the awesome spectacle of a world which, not
satisfied with murdering Simon, continues to neglect the significance of his
sacrifice.
But William Golding's world is not merely pessimistic. There is
goodness in his characters; there is order in his universe.5
However, like all authors who have tried their
5.It might well be noted, however, that the goodness and the order are
overcome in every instance. True, Ralph survives and he steps forward to
announce himself to the rescuer" as the leader, but the rescue is decidedly
ironic; the boys are freed from primitive and childish militarism only by
sophisticated adult militarism.-Eds.
hand at the intellectual exercise we call fable, he wants to teach man
some hard truths about his own .nature. In the complexity and ambiguity of a
highly elaborated symbolism, he has reminded modern man of the fact of
original sin. This is a reminder that we all need every so often. In a later
novel, The Inheritors, Golding places the following ironic words in the
mouth of one character: "People understand each other." Lord of the Flies
answers: "Perhaps; but not well enough."
"Men of a Smaller Growth":
A Psychological Analysis
of William Golding's
Lord of the Flies1
CLAIRE ROSENFIELD
When an author consciously dramatizes Freudian theory- and dramatizes
it successfully-only the imaginative recreation of human behavior rather
than the structure of ideas is apparent. In analyzing William Golding's Lord
of the Flies, the critic should assume that Golding knows psychological
literature,2 and must then attempt to show now an author's
knowledge of theory can vitalize his prose and characterization. The plot
itself is uncomplicated; so simple, indeed, that one wonders how it so
effortlessly absorbs the burden of meaning. During some unexplained man-made
holocaust a plane, evacuating a group of children, crashes on the shore of a
tropical island. All adults are conveniently killed. The narrative follows
the children's gradual return to the amorality of childhood, a non-innocence
which makes them small savages. Or we might make the analogy to the
childhood of races and compare the child
1.This essay appeared in Literature and Psychology, 11 (Autumn, 1961),
93-101, and is reprinted in a revised version here by permission of the
author and the editor, Leonard F. Manheim.
2.Note Golding's comment that he has read "absolutely no Freud" in
"Lord of the Campus," Time, LXXIX (June 22, 1962), 64. Reprinted in this
volume, p. 285.-Eds.
to the primitive. Denied the sustaining and repressing authority of
parents, church, and state, the boys form a new culture, the development of
which reflects that of the genuine primitive society, evolving its gods and
demons, its rituals and taboos, its whole social structure. On the level of
pure narrative, the action proceeds from the gradual struggle between Ralph
and Jack, the two oldest boys, for precedence. Consistent clusters of
imagery imply that one boy is godlike, the other satanic-thus making a
symbolic level of meaning by transforming narrative events into an
allegorical struggle between the forces of Good and those of Evil. Ralph is
the natural leader by virtue of his superior height, his superior strength,
his superior beauty. His mild expression proclaims him "no devil." He
possesses the symbol of authority, the conch, or sea shell, which the
children use to assemble their miniature councils. Golding writes, "The
being that had blown . . . [the conch] had sat waiting for them on the
platform with the delicate thing balanced on his knees, was set apart."
Jack, on the other hand. is described in completely antithetical terms; he
is distinguished by his ugliness and his red hair, a traditional demonic
attribute. He first appears as the leader of a church choir, which
"creature-like" marches in two columns behind him. All members of the choir
wear black; "their bodies, from throat to ankle, were hidden by black
cloaks." 3 Ralph initially blows the conch to discover how many
children have escaped death in the plane crash. As Jack approaches with his
choir from the "darkness of the forest," he cannot see Ralph, whose back is
to the sun. The former is, symbolically, sun-blinded. These two are very
obviously intended to recall God and the Devil, whose confrontation, in the
history of Western religions, establishes the moral basis for all actions.
But, as Freud reminds us, "metaphysics" becomes
"metapsychology";4 gods and devils are "nothing other than
processes projected into the outer world." 5 If Ralph is a
projection of man's good impulses from which we derive the authority
figures-whether god, king, or father
3.P. 16. All page references are to this edition of Lord of the Flies
and will hereafter be noted in parentheses in the text.
4.Sigmund Freud, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, as quoted by
Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud (New York: Basic Books,
1957), III, 53.
5. Ibid.
-who establish the necessity for our valid ethical and social action,
then Jack becomes an externalization of the evil instinctual forces of the
unconscious; the allegorical has become the psychological.
The temptation is to regard the island on which the children are
marooned as a kind of Eden, uncorrupted and Eve-less. But the actions of the
children negate any romantic assumptions about childhood innocence. Even
though Golding himself momentarily becomes a victim of his Western culture
and states at the end that Ralph wept for the "end of innocence," events
have simply supported Freud's conclusion that no child is innocent. On a
fourth level, Ralph is every man-or every child-and his body becomes the
battleground where reason and instinct struggle, each to assert itself. For
to regard Ralph and Jack as Good and Evil, as I do in the previous
paragraph, is to ignore the role of the child Piggy, who in the child's
world of make-believe is the outsider. Piggy's composite description not
only manifests his difference from the other boys; it also reminds the
reader of the stereotype image of the old man who has more-than-human
wisdom: he is fat, inactive because asthmatic, and generally reveals a
disinclination for physical labor. Because he is extremely near-sighted, he
wears thick glasses- a further mark of his difference. As time passes, the
hair of the other boys grows with abandon. "He was the only boy on the
island whose hair never seemed to grow. The rest were shock-headed, but
Piggy's hair still lay in wisps over his head as though baldness were his
natural state, and this imperfect covering would soon go, like the velvet on
a young stag's antlers" (59). In these images of age and authority we have a
figure reminiscent of the children's past - the father. Moreover, like the
father he counsels common sense; he alone leavens with a reasonable gravity
the constant exuberance of the others for play or for play at hunting. When
they scamper off at every vague whim, he scornfully comments, " Like a pack
of kids. " Ungrammatically but logically he tries to allay the "littluns''
fear of a "beast" "Life is scientific, that's what it is. ... I know there
isn't no beast-not with claws and all that, I mean-but I know there isn't no
fear, either'" (77). He has excessive regard for the forms of order: the
conch must be held by a child before that child can speak at councils. When
the others neglect responsibility, fail to build shelters, swim in the pools
or play in the sand or hunt, allow the signal fire on the mountain to go out
or get out of hand and burn up half the island, he seconds Ralph by
admonishing the others vigorously and becomes more and more of a spoilsport
who robs play of its illusions, like the adult who interrupts the game.
Ralph alone recognizes Piggy's superior intelligence, but wavers between
what he knows to be wise and the group acceptance his egocentricity demands.
Finally, Piggy's role-as man's reasoning faculties and as a father-derives
some of its complexity from the fact that the fire which the children foster
and guard on the mountain in the hope of communicating with the adult world
is lighted with his glasses. In classical mythology, after all, fire brought
civilization-and, hence, repression-to man. As the hold of civilization
weakens, the new community becomes more and more irrational, and its
irrationality is marked by Piggy's progressive blindness. An accident
following an argument between Ralph and Jack causes one of the lenses of
Piggy's glasses to break. When the final breach between the two occurs and
Piggy supports Ralph, his remaining lens is stolen in a night raid by Jack.
This is a parody of the traditional fire theft, which was to provide light
and warmth for mankind. After this event Piggy must be led by Ralph, When he
is making his final plea for his glasses-reasoned as always-he is struck on
the head by a rock and fails. "Piggy fell forty feet and landed on his back
on that square, red rock in the sea. His head opened and stuff came out and
turned red. Piggy's arms and legs twitched a bit, like a pig's after it has
been killed" (167). What Golding emphasizes here is the complete animality
to which Piggy is reduced, His mind is destroyed; his body is subject to
motor responses alone; he is "like a pig after it has been killed."
The history of the child Piggy on the island dramatizes in terms of the
individual the history of the entire group. When they first assemble to
investigate their plight, they treat their island isolation as a temporary
phenomenon. They are, after all, still children, wanting only to play games
until they are interrupted by the action of parents, until the decisions of
their elders take them from make-believe to the actuality of school or food
or sleep; until they are rescued, as it were, from "play." This microcosm of
the great world seems to them to be a fairy land.
A kind of glamour was spread over them and the scene and they were
conscious of the glamour and made happy by it (22).
The coral was scribbled in the sea as though a giant had bent down to
reproduce the shape of the island in a flowing, chalk line but tired before
he had finished (25).
"This is real exploring," said Jack. "I'll bet nobody's been here
before" (23).
Echoes and birds flew, white and pink dust floated, the forest further
down shook as with the passage of an enraged monster: and then the island
was still (24).
They compare this reality which as yet they do not accept as reality to
their reading experiences: it is Treasure Island or Coral Island or like
pictures from their travel books. This initial reaction reaffirms the
pattern of play which Johan Huizinga establishes in Homo Ludens6
In its early stages their play has no cultural or moral function; it is
simply a "stepping out of real life into a temporary sphere of activity."
7 Ironically, the child of Lord of the Flies who thinks he is
"only pretending" or that this is "only for fun" does not realize that his
play is the beginning of the formation of a new society which has regressed
to a primitive state, with all its emphasis upon taboo and communal action.
What begins by being like other games in having a distinct "locality and
duration" 8 apart from ordinary life is-or becomes-reality. The
spatial separation necessary for the make-believe of the game is represented
first by the island. In this new world the playground is further narrowed:
not only are their actions limited by the island, but also the gatherings of
the children are described as a circle at several points, a circle from
which Piggy is excluded:
For the moment the boys were a closed circuit of sympathy with Piggy
outside (18).
They became a circle or boys round a camp fire and even Ralph and Piggy
were half-drawn in (67).
Piggy approximates the spoilsport who "robs the play of its illusion,"
9 who reminds them of space and time outside the charmed circle,
who demands responsibility.
6.Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955).
7.Ibid.,p.8.
8.Ibid.,p.9.
9.Ibid.,p.7.
The games of the beginning of the novel have a double function: they,
first of all, reflect the child's attitude toward play as a temporary
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 civilization is not
responsible. Rousseau's social philosophy fails the test, and the
essentially confused notion of nature which Rousseau bequeathed to the
contemporary world is exposed for the fraud that it is.
Moreover, the irony implicit in Ralph's inadequacy is extended to the
other characters, either as they participate in the same inadequacy or as
they question symbolically the solution offered for human ills by Ralph's
faith in Rousseauvian democracy. Piggy participates in the "grand design" of
restoration. As a figure of the Enlightenment, he cannot accept the extremes
of romanticism, and he votes for Ralph only "grudgingly"; but he will use
the more popular romantic concept of government and will try to direct ft.
Yet, even with his discerning rational assessment of the problem of forming
a government for the refugees, his inherent weaknesses are evident
Ultimately, he is destroyed, not because his intellectual gifts are
depraved, but because he falls into the mistaken belief that they are
sufficient unto themselves. Piggy is intelligent enough, for example, to
question Ralph's blind faith in rescue by the military (a scathing
commentary on the Western democracies' current worship at the shrine of Cape
Canaveral), but he remains blind to the limitations of his own reason.
Jack and Simon, on the other hand, are not taken in by the Rousseauvian
solution. Jack's approach to the human condition is much too twisted for
even the remotest comparison with the idealism, fanciful though it is,
implicit in Rousseau; Simon's view of humanity is so penetrated with
realistic self-appraisal that he transcends the idealism of the French
reformer. Jack descends to the subhuman; Simon soars to the superhuman.
While Ralph and Piggy exemplify ironically the "noble savage," Jack and
Simon provide the necessary counterpoint; Jack exploits the savagery, and
Simon explores the nobility.
And it is probably through the figure of Jack that William Golding
pronounces his severest condemnation of the romantic myth of human progress.
For, in the last analysis, it is the dictator who has benefited most from
Rousseau's social view. When man's efforts toward progress and eventual
fulfillment, however altruistic his motivation, proceed from sloppy
thinking, then brute force takes over to direct the course of progress and
subverts even the good in human nature to its own destructive ends.
Yet, Golding is not interested merely in the altruism or the
subversion; between these two forces in contemporary civilization he places
the figure of Simon. He introduces him to the reader in somewhat
melodramatic fashion: the boy faints. In this, the first of Simon's actions,
we have a possible ironic twist on Swinburne's famous line: "Thou hast
conquer'd, O pale Galilean; the world has grown gray from thy breath." It is
obvious from Simon's subsequent history that he is a Christ-figure; and the
romantic view of
humanity proposed by Rousseau has so infiltrated every aspect of life
in the contemporary world that even Christ is seen through the rose-colored
glasses of sentimentality, which is the logical and real successor to
romanticism.
Thus, the Christ of Lord of the Flies is the "pale Galilean"; yet it is
this same weak Christ who, in the first act he performs, forces a concession
from Jack, and the choir boys are allowed to rest The irony is evident: even
a weak Christ is more than a strong dictator.4 Further, when
Simon announces his name (and his name has the strongest biblical
overtones), Jack says: "We've got to decide about being rescued."
Immediately, Simon is linked, however vaguely, with the idea of salvation.
After the boys have elected Ralph as leader by "this toy of voting,"
Jack, Simon and Ralph begin exploring the mountain. This section of the
novel is crucial, for it is here that Golding gives his abbreviated ironical
summary of the romantic view of human progress. The passage needs analysis
in depth (impossible in an article of this length), but it should be pointed
out that Golding has chosen as explorers those who have dominated the
history of man: the totalitarian, the parliamentarian and the mystic-poet
And, as is clear from the text, Simon is the realist of the triumvirate.
When the boys examine the bushes on the mountain, Simon accepts them for
what they are. Ralph and Jack are concerned only with how the buds can be
used That Golding's figure of religious faith accepts reality as it is
provides an interesting comment on the limited approaches of the
parliamentarian and the dictator.
As we follow Simon through the novel, we discover that he is the mystic
who separates himself from the others to ponder the mysteries of existence.
Simon is the carpenter who continues building the shelters after the other
boys have abandoned the work; Simon feeds the "littluns"; Simon encounters
the beast in all its loathsomeness and does not succumb to the beast's
temptation to despair. This encounter is the boy's Gethsemane: he comes face
to face with evil, recognizes it for what it is, and, despite the agony and
horror of the meeting, he is neither defeated
4.Simon's martyrdom, however, indicates that the saint or Christ-like
personage (in spite of his spiritual strength) fails to rescue man from the
nightmare of history.-Eds.
nor intimidated by it. Immediately after he recovers consciousness, he
ascends the mountain to free the dead pilot, whose parachute lines have
become entangled in the rocks. In other words, Simon climbs the mountain to
free "fallen man."
He returns then to the boys to announce the good news; they need no
longer fear the beast. But the group will not listen to him. Like the One in
whose place he stands symbolically, Simon is murdered during a religious
festival- the diabolical liturgy of the pig. His death occurs while the
island world cowers under the lash of a gigantic storm. And it is only after
Simon has actually died that the dead man in the parachute is finally freed
and washed out to sea, the sea which is Golding's symbol of mystery, not
chaos.
Finally, Simon has his symbolic hour of glorification: his body is
surrounded by "moonbeam-bodied creatures with fiery eyes"; gleaming in this
unearthly phosphorescence, he is carried gently out to sea. And it is
difficult not to recognize the hint of a resurrection motif here, for the
pattern is that of the hero carried through the waters to his apotheosis.
Lord of the Flies, as I have suggested, is not an optimistic novel, but
at least it is pessimistic about the right things. It states quite clearly
that the time has come for the Western world to abandon its fantastic belief
in the Rousseauvian concept of the natural goodness of the human species,
which goodness must lead inevitably to the total perfection of the race. It
shows what happens to scientific man, when he trusts only in the activity of
his unaided reason. It castigates the Western democracies for their blind
acceptance of salvation through militarism. It pictures the tragic
destruction of any society which nourishes and exalts the dictator.
Ultimately, it presents the awesome spectacle of a world which, not
satisfied with murdering Simon, continues to neglect the significance of his
sacrifice.
But William Golding's world is not merely pessimistic. There is
goodness in his characters; there is order in his universe.5
However, like all authors who have tried their
5.It might well be noted, however, that the goodness and the order are
overcome in every instance. True, Ralph survives and he steps forward to
announce himself to the rescuer" as the leader, but the rescue is decidedly
ironic; the boys are freed from primitive and childish militarism only by
sophisticated adult militarism.-Eds.
hand at the intellectual exercise we call fable, he wants to teach man
some hard truths about his own .nature. In the complexity and ambiguity of a
highly elaborated symbolism, he has reminded modern man of the fact of
original sin. This is a reminder that we all need every so often. In a later
novel, The Inheritors, Golding places the following ironic words in the
mouth of one character: "People understand each other." Lord of the Flies
answers: "Perhaps; but not well enough."
"Men of a Smaller Growth":
A Psychological Analysis
of William Golding's
Lord of the Flies1
CLAIRE ROSENFIELD
When an author consciously dramatizes Freudian theory- and dramatizes
it successfully-only the imaginative recreation of human behavior rather
than the structure of ideas is apparent. In analyzing William Golding's Lord
of the Flies, the critic should assume that Golding knows psychological
literature,2 and must then attempt to show now an author's
knowledge of theory can vitalize his prose and characterization. The plot
itself is uncomplicated; so simple, indeed, that one wonders how it so
effortlessly absorbs the burden of meaning. During some unexplained man-made
holocaust a plane, evacuating a group of children, crashes on the shore of a
tropical island. All adults are conveniently killed. The narrative follows
the children's gradual return to the amorality of childhood, a non-innocence
which makes them small savages. Or we might make the analogy to the
childhood of races and compare the child
1.This essay appeared in Literature and Psychology, 11 (Autumn, 1961),
93-101, and is reprinted in a revised version here by permission of the
author and the editor, Leonard F. Manheim.
2.Note Golding's comment that he has read "absolutely no Freud" in
"Lord of the Campus," Time, LXXIX (June 22, 1962), 64. Reprinted in this
volume, p. 285.-Eds.
to the primitive. Denied the sustaining and repressing authority of
parents, church, and state, the boys form a new culture, the development of
which reflects that of the genuine primitive society, evolving its gods and
demons, its rituals and taboos, its whole social structure. On the level of
pure narrative, the action proceeds from the gradual struggle between Ralph
and Jack, the two oldest boys, for precedence. Consistent clusters of
imagery imply that one boy is godlike, the other satanic-thus making a
symbolic level of meaning by transforming narrative events into an
allegorical struggle between the forces of Good and those of Evil. Ralph is
the natural leader by virtue of his superior height, his superior strength,
his superior beauty. His mild expression proclaims him "no devil." He
possesses the symbol of authority, the conch, or sea shell, which the
children use to assemble their miniature councils. Golding writes, "The
being that had blown . . . [the conch] had sat waiting for them on the
platform with the delicate thing balanced on his knees, was set apart."
Jack, on the other hand. is described in completely antithetical terms; he
is distinguished by his ugliness and his red hair, a traditional demonic
attribute. He first appears as the leader of a church choir, which
"creature-like" marches in two columns behind him. All members of the choir
wear black; "their bodies, from throat to ankle, were hidden by black
cloaks." 3 Ralph initially blows the conch to discover how many
children have escaped death in the plane crash. As Jack approaches with his
choir from the "darkness of the forest," he cannot see Ralph, whose back is
to the sun. The former is, symbolically, sun-blinded. These two are very
obviously intended to recall God and the Devil, whose confrontation, in the
history of Western religions, establishes the moral basis for all actions.
But, as Freud reminds us, "metaphysics" becomes
"metapsychology";4 gods and devils are "nothing other than
processes projected into the outer world." 5 If Ralph is a
projection of man's good impulses from which we derive the authority
figures-whether god, king, or father
3.P. 16. All page references are to this edition of Lord of the Flies
and will hereafter be noted in parentheses in the text.
4.Sigmund Freud, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, as quoted by
Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud (New York: Basic Books,
1957), III, 53.
5. Ibid.
-who establish the necessity for our valid ethical and social action,
then Jack becomes an externalization of the evil instinctual forces of the
unconscious; the allegorical has become the psychological.
The temptation is to regard the island on which the children are
marooned as a kind of Eden, uncorrupted and Eve-less. But the actions of the
children negate any romantic assumptions about childhood innocence. Even
though Golding himself momentarily becomes a victim of his Western culture
and states at the end that Ralph wept for the "end of innocence," events
have simply supported Freud's conclusion that no child is innocent. On a
fourth level, Ralph is every man-or every child-and his body becomes the
battleground where reason and instinct struggle, each to assert itself. For
to regard Ralph and Jack as Good and Evil, as I do in the previous
paragraph, is to ignore the role of the child Piggy, who in the child's
world of make-believe is the outsider. Piggy's composite description not
only manifests his difference from the other boys; it also reminds the
reader of the stereotype image of the old man who has more-than-human
wisdom: he is fat, inactive because asthmatic, and generally reveals a
disinclination for physical labor. Because he is extremely near-sighted, he
wears thick glasses- a further mark of his difference. As time passes, the
hair of the other boys grows with abandon. "He was the only boy on the
island whose hair never seemed to grow. The rest were shock-headed, but
Piggy's hair still lay in wisps over his head as though baldness were his
natural state, and this imperfect covering would soon go, like the velvet on
a young stag's antlers" (59). In these images of age and authority we have a
figure reminiscent of the children's past - the father. Moreover, like the
father he counsels common sense; he alone leavens with a reasonable gravity
the constant exuberance of the others for play or for play at hunting. When
they scamper off at every vague whim, he scornfully comments, " Like a pack
of kids. " Ungrammatically but logically he tries to allay the "littluns''
fear of a "beast" "Life is scientific, that's what it is. ... I know there
isn't no beast-not with claws and all that, I mean-but I know there isn't no
fear, either'" (77). He has excessive regard for the forms of order: the
conch must be held by a child before that child can speak at councils. When
the others neglect responsibility, fail to build shelters, swim in the pools
or play in the sand or hunt, allow the signal fire on the mountain to go out
or get out of hand and burn up half the island, he seconds Ralph by
admonishing the others vigorously and becomes more and more of a spoilsport
who robs play of its illusions, like the adult who interrupts the game.
Ralph alone recognizes Piggy's superior intelligence, but wavers between
what he knows to be wise and the group acceptance his egocentricity demands.
Finally, Piggy's role-as man's reasoning faculties and as a father-derives
some of its complexity from the fact that the fire which the children foster
and guard on the mountain in the hope of communicating with the adult world
is lighted with his glasses. In classical mythology, after all, fire brought
civilization-and, hence, repression-to man. As the hold of civilization
weakens, the new community becomes more and more irrational, and its
irrationality is marked by Piggy's progressive blindness. An accident
following an argument between Ralph and Jack causes one of the lenses of
Piggy's glasses to break. When the final breach between the two occurs and
Piggy supports Ralph, his remaining lens is stolen in a night raid by Jack.
This is a parody of the traditional fire theft, which was to provide light
and warmth for mankind. After this event Piggy must be led by Ralph, When he
is making his final plea for his glasses-reasoned as always-he is struck on
the head by a rock and fails. "Piggy fell forty feet and landed on his back
on that square, red rock in the sea. His head opened and stuff came out and
turned red. Piggy's arms and legs twitched a bit, like a pig's after it has
been killed" (167). What Golding emphasizes here is the complete animality
to which Piggy is reduced, His mind is destroyed; his body is subject to
motor responses alone; he is "like a pig after it has been killed."
The history of the child Piggy on the island dramatizes in terms of the
individual the history of the entire group. When they first assemble to
investigate their plight, they treat their island isolation as a temporary
phenomenon. They are, after all, still children, wanting only to play games
until they are interrupted by the action of parents, until the decisions of
their elders take them from make-believe to the actuality of school or food
or sleep; until they are rescued, as it were, from "play." This microcosm of
the great world seems to them to be a fairy land.
A kind of glamour was spread over them and the scene and they were
conscious of the glamour and made happy by it (22).
The coral was scribbled in the sea as though a giant had bent down to
reproduce the shape of the island in a flowing, chalk line but tired before
he had finished (25).
"This is real exploring," said Jack. "I'll bet nobody's been here
before" (23).
Echoes and birds flew, white and pink dust floated, the forest further
down shook as with the passage of an enraged monster: and then the island
was still (24).
They compare this reality which as yet they do not accept as reality to
their reading experiences: it is Treasure Island or Coral Island or like
pictures from their travel books. This initial reaction reaffirms the
pattern of play which Johan Huizinga establishes in Homo Ludens6
In its early stages their play has no cultural or moral function; it is
simply a "stepping out of real life into a temporary sphere of activity."
7 Ironically, the child of Lord of the Flies who thinks he is
"only pretending" or that this is "only for fun" does not realize that his
play is the beginning of the formation of a new society which has regressed
to a primitive state, with all its emphasis upon taboo and communal action.
What begins by being like other games in having a distinct "locality and
duration" 8 apart from ordinary life is-or becomes-reality. The
spatial separation necessary for the make-believe of the game is represented
first by the island. In this new world the playground is further narrowed:
not only are their actions limited by the island, but also the gatherings of
the children are described as a circle at several points, a circle from
which Piggy is excluded:
For the moment the boys were a closed circuit of sympathy with Piggy
outside (18).
They became a circle or boys round a camp fire and even Ralph and Piggy
were half-drawn in (67).
Piggy approximates the spoilsport who "robs the play of its illusion,"
9 who reminds them of space and time outside the charmed circle,
who demands responsibility.
6.Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955).
7.Ibid.,p.8.
8.Ibid.,p.9.
9.Ibid.,p.7.
The games of the beginning of the novel have a double function: they,
first of all, reflect the child's attitude toward play as a temporary