The Astray On The Land

William Golding's first novel Lord of the Flies, which was published in 1954, is one of the most perennial classic works in the British literature history due to its rich connotation and its reveal of human being's life from several angles. More than ten books and hundreds of commentary articles have analyzed its theme and narration structure from the perspectives of Original Sin theory, the Mythos-archetypical Criticism and Feminism, gradually deepening our understanding of Golding and his works.In the modern novel study, the exploration of initiation theme provides a new way and perspective for the study of characters and their surroundings. By capturing a series of incidents during the protagonist's learning about the world, this novel shows the development of the protagonist from ignorance to maturity. Lord of the Flies inherits the archetypal experiences of Initiation Story in terms of structure, characters, as well as the arrangement of plots, embodying the traditional features of the initiation stories meanwhile not without its distinction on how to show the initiation theme. Each character's initiation has its own complexity and particularity. To Ralph, a boy growing up in an English middle-class family, his greatest puzzlement in the process of adventure is how to find himself a place between good and evil in the human nature. Therefore, the initiation theme of Lord of the Flies is embodied by Ralph's maturity of self-cognition and social cognition. The paper intends to use the specific literary genre"initiation story"to explore and analyze the novel's initiation theme under the special setting of tropical island adventure.The essay will be divided into four sections:Chapter One tries to elaborate some aspects concerned about Initiation Story. It mainly discusses the definition of initiation story, its development traces and its elements and themes related to this specific literary genre. In the end of the chapter, it discusses the initiation theme of the novel"Lord of the Flies".Chapter Two mainly explores the track of the protagonist's maturity. Firstly it studies Ralph's character and secondly analyzes the setting–the island adventure as special growing background. It also analyses the plot of the novel and displays Ralph's initiation experiences. Then, by exerting Mythos-archetypical Criticism theory, it reveals that the plot pattern conforms with the basic plot pattern of initiation stories, that is, temptation - leave - ordeals - puzzlement - epiphany - loss of innocence-knowledge of life and self-cognition, thereby it embodies the literary archetype of human beings'common experience of initiation, and at the same time it also has its own individuality. Through these ordeal and insight, protagonists complete their initiation by learning the true meaning of human nature.Chapter Three analyses the influence of other characters on the hero's initiation. Those who enter into Ralph's life during the course of his initiation play very important roles to his initiation, and they respectively represent various types of people that influence the initiation of the adolescent.Chapter Four attempts to compare the two modes of initiation journeys by analyzing Lord of the Flies and Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, through their different plots and conclusion we can find out the same concern about adolescence. Views of initiation journeys reflected in these two works have also been discussed and a brief comparison and review of the different growth patterns of different periods not only explains Lord of the Flies'historical heritage and development on adolescent issues but also stresses the significance of further exploration of adolescent problems in modern time.In a word, this paper employs the initiation theory to analyze Lord of the Flies and study the archetype of the hero, his initiation experiences, the mentors of initiation, the initiation insight, and the traditional narrative techniques. Besides, it analyzes the specialty of this work, which embraces the modernity and the unique display of Ralph's moral rebirth, making it different from the traditional initiation novels.