After the war, Golding resumed teaching and started to write novels. Golding’s experience in World War II had a profound effect on his view of humanity and the evils of which it was capable. To read the full journal article, click HERE. These experiences caused him to ponder the origins of violence and humanity’s capacity for good and evil. Author William Golding had been a junior officer in the Royal Navy during the war and witnessed firsthand its violence and cruelty. The context of the novel’s production, release, and reception was the immediate post-World War II era and the Cold War clash of ideologies between East and West. The novel is, though, multilayered and complex: its plot, characterization, symbolism, and themes invite analysis of opposing dualities such as Christianity and paganism, innocence and guilt, childhood and adulthood, civilization and anarchy, collectivism and individuality, and democratic values as opposed to tyranny. Many critics have explored the theme in Lord of the Flies (1954) of a group of children’s descent from civilization to savagery of a loss of innocence on an Edenic island, where a mysterious and fearful “beast” causes the children to divide into factions, with murderous outcomes. William Golding’s Lord of the Flies in Historical Context
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