Introduction
The title of the book which I am reviewing is "Lord of the Flies" by William Golding written in 1954. It is a novel about a group of boys stranded on an island after a plane crash and deals with the conflicts they have to face on this deserted island.
William Golding was born in 1911 in Cornwall, he went to a private school and later on studied at Brasenose College Oxford. He mainly lived in a farming community in southern England but joined the Navy in 1940 and had fairly wide military experience travelling with the Navy. The war left a deep impression on him, he was involved in the D-Day landings.
In 1945 he became a school teacher in Salisbury where he remained until the end of his working life. He has written several other novels but "Lord of the Flies" is his most famous work.
"Lord of the Flies" is certainly based on some of the author`s autobiographical experience during the Second World War, but it looks at a more general aspect of man's behaviour and reaction to political extremes.
The novel can be read, studied and appreciated on several levels. Younger people can mainly enjoy the story and be fascinated by the adventure element. It can also be understood as an example of the effect which political chaos, war and destruction have on civilisation and thirdly it can be seen as a more general work on man's hidden evil character and its possible eruption under extreme circumstances.
In my opinion "Lord of the Flies" is a book of great depth and lasting significance, because it deals with a fundamental human problems which in short can be expressed by how long it takes and how strong the pressure has to be on man before he shows...