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Lord of the Flies Literary Criticism

1) "The overall intention [in writing the novel] may be stated simply enough. Before the second world war I believed in the perfectibility of social man; that a correct structure of society would produce goodwill; and that therefore you could remove all social ills by a reorganisation of society. It is possible that today I believe something of the same again; but after the war I did not because I was unable to. I had discovered what one man could do to another."

Burris, Skylar Hamilton. “‘[W]hat makes things break up like they do?” Alternative Explanations For the Societal Breakdown in William Golding's Lord of the Flies. Literary Classics.

2) In William Golding's Lord of the Flies, Ralph asks Piggy, "[W]hat makes things break up like they do?" (127). It is a question that has given rise to much speculation in critical circles. What causes the societal breakdown on the island in Lord of the Flies? Golding himself has said the cause is nothing more than the inherent evil of man; no matter how well-intentioned he is, and no matter how reasonable a government he erects, man will never be able to permanently contain the beast within.

3) Golding's own explanation for the breakdown of civilization in Lord of the Flies was delivered in a lecture given in 1962 at the University of California at Los Angeles. He describes the breakdown as resulting from nothing more complex than the inherent evil of man: "So the boys try to construct a civilization on the island; but it breaks down in blood and terror because the boys are suffering from the terrible disease of being human" (Golding, "Lord of the Flies as Fable" 42). For Golding, the structure of a society is not responsible for the evil that erupts, or, at least, it is responsible only insofar as the society reflects the nature of the fallen man. The shape of the society the boys create is "conditioned by their diseased, their fallen nature" (Golding, "Fable" 41). Indeed, Golding claims to have intentionally avoided inserting some things into the novel that might have led readers to conclude that the society itself, rather than the fallen man, is responsible for the breakdown:

The boys were below the age of overt sex, for I did not want to complicate the issue with that relative triviality. They did not have to fight for survival, for I did not want a Marxist exegesis. If disaster came, it was not to come through the exploitation of one class by another. It was to rise, simply and solely out of the nature of the brute. (Golding, "Fable" 42)

Many critics, in spending time explaining the breakdown, talk about what the children did (or failed to do) to make the breakdown occur. The implicit assumption behind all of these explanations is that if the children had simply done something different, the breakdown might not have occurred; in other words, the beast within man can be contained under certain circumstances. But Golding's explanation provides no such hope. Disaster arises "simply and solely out of the nature of the brute."

4) However, all of the clashes can be explained in Golding's view; they are the result of the beast inherent in both boys. The clash that arises from the discussion of the beast does not result from Ralph's extreme rationalism, but rather from the murmurings of the beast within him: "Something he had not known was there rose in him and compelled him to make the point, loudly and again" (Golding 34). Motivated by that inherent evil, that original sin of pride, both boys assert their power. Later, Ralph agrees to look for the beast, and "[s]omething deep" within him speaks for him when he says, "I'm chief. I'll go. Don't argue" (Golding 94). When the boys begin to clash yet again, Ralph senses "the rising antagonism, understanding that this was how Jack felt as soon as he ceased to lead" (Golding 107). Although Ralph may end up agitating for reason and Jack for sensation, the two begin in the same place. Both are a mixture of the Dionysian-Apollonian. They are rational, well-intentioned, and desire law and order, but the beast within both leads them to an inevitable and horrifying clash. "Things are breaking up," Ralph says, "I don't understand why. We began well; we were happy. And then--" (74). And then the beast drew them apart.

5) Golding does not fail to face the issue of World War II. In fact, the issue is very much at the heart of his novel. …The novel presents the war of the "grownup" world… as a tragedy, a breakdown of society not unlike the one that is occurring on the island. If Roger's sadism is temporarily restrained by the taboos that were once imposed through strict law and order, then let us not forget that this restraint is "conditioned by a civilization that knew nothing of him and was in ruins" (Golding 56). If the civilization is in ruins, then obviously strict law and order did not work there.

Piggy remarks that "Grownups know things . . . They'd meet and have tea and discuss. Then things 'ud be all right--" (Golding 85). …But Piggy's assertion is clearly meant to be perceived as naive. There are only two "grownups" in the story. The first is the dead parachuter whose corpse is the result of a horrible war and who is associated with the beast. The second is the officer who comes to rescue the boys. As Golding has been quoted as saying, here "'adult life appears, dignified and capable, but in reality enmeshed in the same evil as the symbolic life of the children on the island. The officer, having interrupted a man-hunt, prepares to take the children off the island in a cruiser which will presently be hunting its enemy in the same implacable way'" (Esptein 186). The officer's white drill, epaulets, and revolver are not all that far removed from Jack's stick, sharpened at both ends. The officer's "row of gilt buttons down the front of a uniform" is something like the paint that frees the savages from the shame of killing (Golding 182).

The officer asks Ralph cheerfully, "What have you been doing? Having a war or something?" (Golding 183). And he also says, "I should have thought a pack of British boys . . . would have been able to put up a better show than that" (Golding 184). But since the officer is himself involved in a war, there seems no logical reason why he should have expected better of the boys. And, since the officer is himself a part of a democracy that employs strict law and order, there is no reason [we] should think that Lord of the Flies makes a case for its success.

Gangopadhyay, Avik. “Regressive Instinct & Civilization in Lord of the Flies.” Literary Classics.

6) Thus, Simon is a life as well as a symbol. Truth becomes the first casualty and Simon’s struggle and fate bring him within the long tradition of truth-seekers. Simon’s attempt to tell the truth synchronizes with his death. Golding gives an epic dimension to Simon’s death when the entire elemental nature pays a tribute to Simon—the infinite dark sky, ceaseless waves of eternal sea, the thunder and rain. The whole vision of sea-burial reflects nature’s glorification of a ‘crucified martyr’ and places the ‘saint’ into a cosmic perspective.
The necessity of Simon’s character in Lord of the Files is ideographically suggested by Golding. If seen as a ‘moral fable’, Simon is a ‘saint’ – Golding’s term for the boy – precisely because he tries to know comprehensively and inclusively; he possesses a quality of imagination which forces an ‘ancient, inescapable recognition’. If seen as a ‘social and political fable’, Simon is a ‘truth-seeker’ gripped by the ‘political nightmare of authoritarianism ‘Charismatic’ and who is eventually murdered because a truth-seeker has no place in the modern world and becomes a ‘victim of totalitarian butchery’. If seen as a ‘religious fable’, Simon is a ‘martyr’; Golding admits in ‘theological terms’ that man is a ‘fallen being’ and ‘is gripped by original sin’ and thus Simon’s “Edenic island also turns into a fiery hell”.
To add a critic’s view who places the fable in a mythic frame will not be irrelevant; he suggests, “Simon is a ritual hero, who is metaphorically swallowed by a serpent or dragon ‘whose belly is the world, he undergoes a symbolic death in order to gain the elixir to revitalize his stricken society, and returns with his knowledge to the timid world as a redeemer”. The certainty of truth is incomprehensible to the rest. Truth-seekers are always walled up within an uncertain-certainty.