William Golding - Lord of the Flies :: Free Essay Writer

William Golding - Lord of the Flies William Golding William Gerald Golding, born in Cornwall, September 19, 1911, is a prominent English novelist, an essayist and poet, and winner of the 1983 Nobel Prize for literature. Golding's often allegorical fiction makes broad use of allusions to classical literature, mythology, and Christian symbolism. Although no distinct thread unites his novels and his technique varies, Golding deals principally with evil and emerges with what has been characterized as a kind of dark optimism. Contents: A plane crashes over the Atlantic. The only survivors are schoolboys and a choir. There are no grown-ups on the island they landed on. Ralph and Piggy find a shell and Ralph blows it. All the boys come together and they call an assembly. Ralph wins the vote for a chief and he and Jack, the leader of the boys choir, and Simon climb the mountain to explore the land. They discover it being an island. The boys have another meeting in which a little boy describes a beast he maybe has seen in one of his nightmares. Ralph gets the idea to make a fire and smoke on the mountain in order to get noticed and rescued. At first the boys collect wood as fuel, but they haven't got any matches or other instruments to inflame the pile. Then Jack suggests to use Piggy's specs to light it. So they do, but by accident they burn down a large part of the forest. Piggy calls their attention to the disappearance of the little boy who has uttered his fear about the beast. It is most likely that he died in the flames in the forest because he has never been seen again. While Ralph and Simon try to build shelters Jack and the others either hunt or rush off and do whatever they want. Neither the hunting nor the building of the shelters is successful because they don't work together. Ralph thinks that huts are more urgent in case that it rains and accuses Jack not to have helped them. This is the first sign of Ralph's and Jack's antagonism. Simon is seen to separate himself from the others; sometimes he goes to a place he likes and stays there for a long time. Jack and his choir go hunting. At the same time a ship passes the island. Because Jack needed all of them to hunt a pig they let the fire out. Ralph and Piggy are indignant of Jack's carelessness. This drives Jack to violence and he breaks Piggy's specs. This evening for the first time the hunters play their game: one pretends to be the