Grade 9 English Literature (AQA) GCSE - very in depth AO3 context on Lord of the Flies. Including Golding's life, WW2, social context of 1950s Britain, literary context of The Coral Island, and context about the setting. Can be used to aid essays.
William Golding’s life:
● His father, Alex, worked as a schoolmaster and Golding received his early education
at the school his father ran, Marlborough Grammar School.
● In 1935 William Golding landed the position of an English and philosophy teacher at
a boy’s grammar turned Public School called Bishop Wordsworth's School in
Salisbury, Britain. He was often distressed by the savage behaviour of some of the
students. The boys in LOTF attend all-boys boarding schools (private schools) and
mercilessly tease Piggy, an easy target for ridicule, like what happens at school.
● The violence in the book starts as a game but goes too far. A typical ‘play fight’ easily
ends up becoming more serious, and young children don’t always see the
boundaries between play and reality. For many of the younger boys in the novel, this
is what happens. Golding was interested in the way that violence can develop from
innocent beginnings. In an extract from one of his autobiographical works, ‘Scenes
from a Life’, he discusses a childhood accident: “I swung the bat in a semicircle,
missed the ball but hit José [his older brother Joseph] with the wooden bat across the
side of the head. Instantly he turned and ran for home, one hand holding the side of
his head. I was the one who made a noise, anguished to think of the awful thing I had
done. But he made not a sound. He always was the silent one… But years later my
parents told me that José had described the whole scene to them. He wasn’t really
hurt they said. But I crept in to the house with my terror and hid from everyone else
under the dining room table”. This is similar to Piggy’s violent death.
Historical context - war:
● During World War 2, Golding was a junior officer in the British Royal Navy. He took
part in the battle that sank the Bismarck (a German battleship) in 1941, and was in
charge of the specially adapted rocket-launching ship for the D-day landings in
Normandy, in 1944. He witnessed first-hand war’s horror, and came to the conclusion
that humans aren’t naturally kind.
● The (enemy) Nazi’s treatment of those in the concentration camps and the way the
Japanese mistreated their prisoners appalled Golding. The consequences of the
British and American mass bombing against civilians - and even by what he himself
did as a naval officer The Allies' actions concerned him too. It justified destruction in
the name of morality, yet such a claim led to a moral grey area where inhumane
behaviour became acceptable. Golding came back from the war believing anyone,
including children, were capable of evil/cruelty if the circumstances demanded or
allowed it.
● Most of the boys he taught would have been British upper-middle class and
descended from Brit’s who committed crimes against humanity.
● In the book the boys were on a plane as they were being evacuated from a nuclear
war in Europe. This parallels with the evacuations of children from London during
World War II.
● Jack’s reign of terror resembles Hitler’s violent repression of political dissent, or
Stalin’s bloody political purges of the 1930’s.
● LOTF was written post World War 2 and during the Cold War. The concerns of the
novel are timeless but it would have held particular resonance for readers just
recovering from global conflict and felt paranoia about the fate of the world in the face
of fascism, totalitarianism, and increasing nuclear threat (for the first time), which
would cause mass destruction. It was entirely plausible to the novel's original
audience that an atom bomb really could destroy civilization.
● LOTF begins as the boys are stranded on the island because their plane was shot
down. They believe a nuclear bomb has destroyed the world, and they are worried
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