Lord of the Flies
(Authorial/historical Context)
Context
General
- The people of Britain had just been
through the Second World War.
- Food was still being rationed in Britain.
- It was thought that there might be a
nuclear war between Western countries
and the Soviet Union.
- Golding worked as a teacher in a boys’
school.
- Britain was having to come to terms with
the loss of the British Empire.
- Public schools still produced most of
Britain’s leaders and top professionals.
- Nazi Germany had adopted a system of
rewarding the strong and attacking the
weak.
The Second World War
Analysis
General
The adults the boys wish could help them are the
same ones who are fighting in the war and have
led them to the boys being stranded. The island
represents the microcosm of the world the boys
have left behind. This can be interpreted as an
irony which the author did not intend to convey.
The island itself is a physical manifestation of the
human world.
- Edible food sources were present in the
island as well.
- While the forest is the source of food, it
is also a forbidding place which hides
dark secrets. The only character that
seems to be at his ease there is Simon
who has a close relationship with nature.
Twice in the novel parts of the forest are
destroyed by fire, suggesting that human
world is being mistreated as something
that can be destroyed for a ‘reason’.
- One of the reasons which encouraged the
author to exclude
- Can be linked to Darwin’s theory of
natural selection-how people would
behave when there’s no system (or
institution) to regulate and punish
(prosecute).
The Second World War
- The boys' degradation into savagery and
violence
 - Britain declared war on Germany on 3
September 1939 and the war in Europe
lasted for almost 6 years. - On the island, the boys have varying
degrees of physical and mental ________
- The German leader Hitler adapted ideas as well as the characteristics Golding
from science and philosophy for his own portrays as gaining supremacy.
ends. Compare Hitler’s ideas of racial
purity and the supremacy of the Aryan
race with Darwin’s theory of natural
selection and survival of the fittest. - The brutal way in which the SS treated its
enemies is similar to the way Jack uses
- One of the most feared of the Nazi Roger to terrify the other boys into
organisations was the SS (Schutzstaffel: _________.
defence corps). The SS was fiercely loyal
to Hitler and was renowned for never
showing human weakness.
Golding’s War Experience - Golding's war experience has influenced
his writing; the book “lord of the flies" is
- During the Second World War, Golding a satire which illustrates human
served in the British Navy. behaviour and the nature of evil in
- He has observed the degradation of humankind.
humankind into savagery
- Golding was interested in the way that
violence can develop from innocent
human beings and how it permeates the
society.
The Cold War Idk what to write

- Following the Second World War,

Britain’s former ally, the Soviet Union,
became the potential enemy of the west.
-
Attitudes The transformation into savagery suggests that
the war which takes place outside the island has
- The Second World War cost Britain its negatively affected the
empire
- The sun never sets on the British empire
-
Modern Interpretation
-