On The Continuation And Development Of Desert Island Literature

William Golding (1911-1993) is one of the most outstanding novelists in contemporary English literature. His masterpiece Lord of the Flies (1954) brings him great reputation and wins him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983. Being his first novel, Lord of the Flies has gained much attention from the readers and critics for several generations because of its philosophical depth and artistic charm. Since its publication, it has remained the most popular of all Golding's novels, and brought him a lasting fame.The previous research on this novel has mainly been conducted from the following perspectives: thematic study on evil, myth prototype, feminism, the allegoric feature, etc. This thesis, by identifying Lord of the Flies as a piece of work in the desert island literature, aims at the exploration of its features in theme and technique, which signify its continuation and development of desert island literature.In addition to the introduction and conclusion, the thesis is composed of three chapters.The introduction briefly introduces Golding the writer and the already conducted research on his literary creation home and abroad.Chapter One traces the origin of the desert island literature and the image of desert island in Lord of the Flies. As a branch of marine literature, desert island literature has its own artistic features. British colonial history is well embodied in island literature, since this form of literature provides fertile soil for its culture and its spirit of adventure. Lord of the Flies is an island tale. Though it gives this literary genre fairly new meaning, it still belongs to this genre and shares the common features. Both the desert island location and trilogy of desert island adventure are reflected in this novel. And the absence of women in Lord of the Flies extends the tradition of desert island fictions to the extreme: All the characters are male. With these characteristics, it is easy to infer that Lord of the Flies is the continuation of the desert island literature. Chapter Two makes a comparison between the theme of the traditional desert island woks and that of Lord of the Flies. Desert island literature is a kind of diachronic literary phenomenon. The themes of literary works correspond to the social change. Shakespeare's Tempest, as the real start, is an epitome of Humanism. It praises the great power of human and contains Utopian fantasy; Defoe's Robinson Crusoe also expresses the belief that"Human conquers nature"; Ballantyne's The Coral Island and Stevenson's The Treasure Island reveal the extreme self-confidence of the Victorian era and the optimistic affirmation of the values of British youth civilization. In a word, the works earlier than Lord of the Flies are generally optimistic. However, due to the experience in the disastrous World War II and the reading of Greek tragedies, Golding's Lord of the Flies is completely pessimistic with the evil in human nature as its target of scathing censure. Thematically it is a subversion of the Utopian ideal fantasized in the traditional desert island works.Chapter Three analyzes the breakthroughs in its narrative strategy. Its way of presentation is endowed with postmodern features. A big step forward than the traditional ones, it has its unique plot and special artistic techniques such as symbol, irony and parody which are hardly found in the traditional island fictions. In this novel, the characters also hunt for living, but this hunt gradually loses all sense of reason, and shows the degeneration of human nature. With the guise of masks, the boys release their potential violence without humiliation and humanity. Though it has the same trilogy pattern of desert island tales, it reveals different human behaviors and different destiny of the characters. As for the artistic techniques, Lord of the Flies quite departs from the traditional desert island fictions. Metaphors and symbols are frequently used in this novel. The characters in this novel are permeated with symbolic meaning. It is also an elaborate web of ironies: both in characters and in events. What is more, it is a rewriting of English desert island literature Robinson Crusoe and The Coral Island. It is a parody of the history of primitive society, and of Promethean fire.The concluding part summarizes the whole thesis. Golding is a master of language who is good at employing delicately the medium of language to serve the expression of theme. Lord of the Flies is the continuation and development of desert island literature for it shares the common characteristics of the genre: the setting and the trilogy pattern of island adventure. Yet Golding makes it assume particular features. Thematically, it subverts the former dream of Utopia, the belief that man can conquer nature. The evil and darkness of the human nature is what the novel lashes at and determines to expose. Technically, it has unique plot and its artistic methods depart from traditional island fictions. By employing symbol, irony and parody, Golding makes the novel depart from the traditional ones. In this sense, Lord of the Flies can be regarded as a landmark of desert island literature.