William Golding Impact On Lord Of The Flies

In 1954 William Golding wrote his first published book “Lord Of The Flies.” The book became popular almost overnight as well as creating controversy in the psychological community. Golding used experiences from his life to write the book. Both from his childhood and time in the war. Golding was born September 19, 1911 in the rural area of Cornwall England. During a time where there wasn't much to do. Where radio was non-existent and gramophones were few and far between. Reading and watching his father paint filled his free time. His father had access to the local school’s library. But golding had already mostly read most of the books inside. His favourite being “Nat the Naturalist” By George Manville Fenn. Eventually Golding had to leave
William Golding (then training to be a teacher) left his country to serve in the British Royal Navy. The war had a big effect on him. As here Golding himself explains; "The war produced one notable effect on me. It scared me stiff. It was the turning point for me. I began to see what people were capable of doing. Where did the Second World War come from? Was it made by something inhuman and alien - or was it made by chaps with eyes and legs and hearts?" (Dangar). Golding saw not only what happened to his men in combat but what Germans had done to their own people. When he returned home golding went straight back to writing. He would come out with his first publication “Lord of The Flies”. With his experience as a boy, and in war driving the main idea. Little did golding know that it would become famous overnight and eventually became a cult classic. And with that came controversy, and outside
As described here by E. L. Epstein “In this book, as in few others at the present time, are findings of psychoanalysis of all schools, anthropologists, social psychologists and philosophical historians mobilized into an attack upon the central problem of modern thought: the nature of the human personality and the reflection of personality on society.” Most people argued the principles laid out by John Locke and Sigmund Freud. In which man is born good and is made evil by outside forces. In “Lord of the flies” the boys have nothing to corrupt them yet they still become savages. More in line with what was laid out by Thomas Hobbes, that men are created evil and can only become good when trained to. Golding’s boys followed this by slowly losing their civility until most of them become savages. This stirred up a lot of debate, for there was a similar text called “The Coral