PROJECT FOR COLLEGE

CHAPTER - 1

INTRODUCTION

William Golding was born in 1911 in Cornwall, England. His father was a
schoolmaster and his mother was in the women's movement. Golding studied science
from his school days upto the second year of college in Oxford when he decided to
reject it and read English literature instead. After a brief period of writing
poetry and working on the stage as an actor Director and writer, he took to school
teaching like his father had done, During the second world war, he entered the
Royal Navy and served on destroyers and rocket launchers. The horrors of the second
world war taught him that evil was always present in human beings and manifested
itself at the appropriate time, a subject he explored in Lord of the Flies But it
was not just the experience of the War that influenced Golding; it was also his
experiences as a schoolmaster, in dealing with young boys, that taught him that
evil is often interred in the bones. His conviction was further strengthened when
he returned to school teaching after the war which gave him the opportunity of
observing young boys and how they behaved towards each other in times of stress and
crisis. Lord of the Flies was a great success and has often been described as a
great study on the nature of evil and the form in which it is expressed in modern
society.