LOTF context

Question 1

what is a robinsonade?

Answer 1

literary genre named after Robinson Crusoe which explores how people behave when they’re stranded in an isolated place

Question 2

how does LOTF link to Coral Island?

Answer 2

• the 3 boys in Coral Island are called Jack, Ralph, and Peter
• use bravery and good christian values to defeat savages and pirates

Question 3

how does LOTF differ from usual desert island stories, philosophically speaking?

Answer 3

• most desert island stories follow Jean-Jacques Rousseau who believed humanity to be at its best and most innocent in its state of nature and that social order was a corrupting influence
• golding is closer to thomas hobbes who described life in a state of nature as ‘nasty, brutish, and short’ and thought that without social constraints humanity would immediately fall into violence which is why we need society and good government

Question 4

what is an example of an allegorical microcosm in LOTF?

Answer 4

the naval officer is just a grown up and socially acceptable version of the boys’ violence

Question 5

What themes and messages does LOTF explore?

Answer 5

• english exceptionalism
• the desire for social and political order through parliaments, govts and legislatures
• the belief in supernatural or divine intervention in human destiny
• In lotf the dangers arent external, theyre internal. There arent any savages to fight, just the savagery that apparently dwells within each of us
• leadership

Question 6

what do the platform and the conch represent in LOTF?

Answer 6

the desire for social and political order through parliaments, govts and legislatures (the platform and conch)

Question 7

What does golding suggest about the desire for social and political order?

Answer 7

• moral and societal constraints are learned rather than innate - the human tendency to obey rules, behave peacefully, and follow orders is imposed by a system that is not in itself a fundamental part of human nature. Young boys are a fitting illustration of this premise, for they live in a constant state of tension with regard to the rules and regulations they are expected to follow.
• Golding sees moral behavior, in many cases, as something that civilization forces upon the individual rather than a natural expression of human individuality. When left to their own devices, Golding implies, people naturally revert to cruelty, savagery, and barbarism

Question 8

what does golding suggest about the natural inclination toward evil and violence?

Answer 8

• capacity for evil was always there, just hidden under certain aspects of politics
• all politicians hide evil (even democratic ones) and this evil trickles down the political system
• the issue isn’t just that evil exists, but projecting it onto someone or thing else and believing it only exists in pockets (eg when Piggy and Ralph deny killing simon, they are just as savage as when they are killing him, because denial breeds more savagery)
• manifested in every country’s need for a military ( the choir boys and the war outside the island)
• LOTF explores the dark side of humanity, the savagery that underlies even the most civilized human beings. Golding intended the novel to be a tragic parody of children’s adventure tales, illustrating humankind’s intrinsic evil nature

Question 9

what does golding argue about our ‘savage selves’?

Answer 9

that they lie dormant within us, controlled only by the restrictions of society and the facade of civilisation, waiting to be unleashed, as in WWII where the release of these savage impulses was legitimised

Question 10

what are golding’s 3 main conclusions in LOTF?

Answer 10

• all humanity is capable of evil
• people (ie the allies) justified destruction in the name of morality, which is incongruous because killing itself is morally wrong
• people normalise pain, death, and destruction (in the war) using their own world-views and supposed morality to justify them

Question 11

What are some quotes from Golding?

Answer 11

• “I believe that man suffers an appalling ignorance of his own nature”
• “It was what simply seemed sensible for me to write after the war when everyone was thanking God they weren’t Nazis. I’d seen enough to realise every single one of us could be Nazis”
• “It seemed to me that man’s capacity for greed, his innate cruelty and selfishness, was being hidden behind a kind of pair of political pants”
• “Before WWII 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…but after the war I did not because I was unable to. I had discovered what one man could do to another…I must say that anyone who moved through those years without understanding that man produces evil like a bee produces honey, must have been blind or wrong in the head” is not evil, but with others produces evil
• “Before the war my generation had a naïve belief in the perfectibility of man. After it, we saw what man could do to man; it was like lamenting the lost childhood of the world. The theme of Lord of the Flies is grief, sheer grief. Grief, grief, grief.”
• “One of the faults of the British is to believe that evil is somewhere else and inherent in another nation.”
• “The terrible disease of being human”

Question 12

what does jack represent, in terms of leadership, in LOTF?

Answer 12

• totalitarianism and dictatorship
• uses the boys’ fear of the beast to gain control and violence is born from fear
• in times of widespread socio-economic distress, the general public feels itself vulnerable and turns to the leader who exhibits the most strength or seems to offer the most protection. Jack and the hunters, who offer the luxury of meat and the comforts of a dictatorship, fill that role, somewhat mirroring Germany’s economic suffering, which paved the way for the radical politics of Adolph Hitler’s Nazism in the aftermath of World War I

Question 13

What does Ralph represent, in terms of leadership, in LOTF?

Answer 13

• democracy, law, order
• golding uses ralph to explore the hobbesian view that governments care to protect men from each other, by slowly destroying ralph’s democratic leadership, this shows that no amount if civilisation can mask man’s inherent evil

Question 14

What does Golding suggest about leadership in LOTF?

Answer 14

• ralph’s democratic approach doesn’t work in all situations (eg voting on ghosts doesnt make sense, therefore democracy often fails when fear is involved)
• society helps but is never perfect (boys not accepting piggy [are people inherently bad? if the boys are conditioned by british society ie aiming to miss, then they have been conditioned in other ways too ie reactions to piggy], golding not believing in the ‘perfectibility of man’), because man is innately evil - same for leadership - roger throqing to miss but then the island is mimicked with the wider world being at war ie the captain
• golding provides a complex presentation of leadership, but ultimately champions democracy and rationalism, tempered by spiritualism, as positive values for leadership. However, he simultaneously warns of each’s fragility, as seen in the midst and aftermath of WWII, where these same values were used to legitimise many acts of violence and savagery.
• both ralph and jack have a desire and instinct to be in control and have power, however jack’s use of the boys’ fear and ruling by violence, exemplify the rise of a dictator and militaristic state leaders. Ralph attempts to spearhead a democracy and reassures the boys, showing rule by equality and logic - although this is not complete, hinting at the downfalls many democratic systems have
• both ralph and jack use external factors to become stronger leaders, however ralph uses the hope of rescue to enforce democracy, whereas jack uses the fear of the east to secure his own power through manipulation, showing how those in power can harness emotions to strengthen their own status