Post-modernistic Features In Lord Of The Files

William Golding (1911-1993) is one of the most famous English novelists in contemporary English literature, and the winner of Nobel Literature Prize of the year 1983. He starts his unusual literary career with a masterpiece, Lord of the Flies (1954), which is his first novel and his tour de force. Golding is a writer of exceptional quality and his works are philosophical and rich in meaning.Lord of the Flies tells us a story about how a group of"angle-like"boys are stranded on a desert island and change to be bloodthirsty savages at last. The story is Golding's bold exploration of the evil in human nature. Although the theme is serious and profound, it's still an interesting and compelling children's adventure story with realistic descriptions of the environment and vivid, convincing characters. Since it was published in 1954, it has become the most popular of all Golding's novel, which has been studied in schools and universities all over the world and brought him a lasting fame. It's no exaggeration to say that it's mainly this novel that enables Golding to win the Nobel Prize.Many critics defined Lord of the Flies as a modernist novel. But if we take a close look at it, we can find this novel bears some distinct postmodern features. This thesis aims to cast a new angle of view and argue that William Golding's Lord of the Flies is imbued with postmodern features. It is hoped that this thesis will be beneficial for further study of Golding's life and works.In terms of intertextuality, this thesis tries to analysis it in two facets: archetypes from the Bible and allusion to the Greek Tragedy The Bacchantes; In terms of parody, Lord of the Flies is relevant to Treasure Island, but Golding rewriting it. Though intentionally borrow the names of the hero and heroine, he changed their lives which create a strong ironic effect. Lastly, in terms of deconstruction traditional desert island fiction, though Lord of the Flies is a typical desert island fiction, it is different from traditional desert island fiction in its themes. The novel shares elements with novels like Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and R. M. Ballantyne's The Coral Island. What distinguishes William Golding, however, by employing a simple form, he makes a reversal of the paradisiacal desert island myth, which has been the common picture in desert island stories before the twentieth century. In traditional desert island fictions, such as Robinson Crusoe and The Coral Island, the central idea is"good defeats evil" and their writers cherish an optimistic viewpoint of human nature. William Golding is the first to introduce the theme of"darkness of man's heart"to desert island literature. Throughout the novel, he attempts to reveal that evil is innate in human nature. In this way, his novel reaches a philosophical depth that is absent in other traditional desert island fictions. In plot, Lord of the Flies is also different from traditional desert island fictions. Finally, in artistic methods, Golding employs many symbols and metaphors, which are seldom used in traditional desert island fictions.The using of intertextuality and parody, deconstruction of traditional desert island novels, rewriting the pattern of traditional fable made Golding's Lord of the Flies has some new elements that beyond the aesthetic experience of his time and become an budding postmodern masterpiece.