On The Continuation And Development Of Desert Island Literature In Lord Of The Flies

Works of William Golding,the Nobel Prize winner for Literature,are noted for their incisive style,poetic narration and keen percipience into humanity.Lord of the Flies is Golding's first novel and also has been regarded as his best.When it first appears in 1954, both critics and book-reviewers greatly welcome it as a literary sensation.Schools that are concerned with Golding study consequently come into being.Meanwhile,large masses of critical journals or periodicals have discussed Golding's works,especially his Lord of the Flies,in the west.Comparatively,in China,studies of William Golding and his novels start lately.They appear only after Golding is introduced to China for being granted Nobel Prize in 1983.Compared with other works of Golding,Lord of the Flies causes most attention among readers and critics,and thus there are some valuable theses in periodicals,journals or other academic magazines.As an excellent work of contemporary literary world,Lord of the Flies has significant literary values.Even so many critics or scholars interpret it in various ways,this book is still open to study.Since Lord of the Flies is a representative of desert island literature,a complete and profound study of this novel may serve as a key for better understanding the development of desert island literature.Here are some major fields that the previous interpretations focus on:"original sin", narrative structure,symbolism,allegory combination and so on.Yet few people,especially in China,discuss the relationship between Lord of the Flies and its literary genre in a thorough and complete way.Actually,compared with previous traditional desert island literary works,Lord of the Flies has some brilliant achievements,which make it shining and outstanding among abundant great contemporary literary works.In another word,Lord of the Flies is both the continuation and the development of desert island literature.It is the landmark of this literary genre.This thesis tries to study the relationship between Lord of the Flies and desert island literature.First,Lord of the Flies is obviously inspired by the tradition of desert island literature.Starting with an accidental stay on a remote and unspoiled island,ending with a miraculous rescue,this novel shares some common elements with previous desert island literary works.However,Golding does not merely follow this kind of tradition.He makes a reversal of the paradisiacal "desert island myth", which appears frequently in traditional desert island literary works.Since this novel has some common elements like other desert island literary works and it also has some own artistic features,it is meaningful and helpful to study clearly and completely the relationship between Lord of the Flies and traditional desert island literary works.This thesis will discuss their relationship with the reference to the tradition of desert island literature.And the thesis consists of five parts:The first part is the introduction of the theme and structure.It also briefly introduces Golding's life and the previous study on Lord of the Flies.Chapter one provides the statement that Lord of the Flies is the continuation of desert island literature,because both its setting and its plot follow the same tradition as previous desert island literary works. Chapter two talks about the breakthrough of the theme in Lord of the Flies.Golding abandons the traditional pattern that protagonists turn the desert island into Eden-like paradise.Under his description,the evil nature controls those British schoolboys and drives them to savagery step by step.The second part of this chapter tries to find out the major factors that influence this degeneration.Basically speaking,the factors include war and human's desire for power.Chapter three is concerned with the achievements in character portrayal.Characters of previous desert island literary works are a bit idealized,and thus they look unreal.However,in Lord of the Flies,Golding portrays his characters with great care and skill.As a result,characters that Golding portrays are well rounded and realistic, which makes the whole story more convincing and meaningful.Furthermore,Golding uses a special artistic method in his Lord of the Flies to prove the importance and necessity of women.This kind of literary creation idea is totally different from previous desert island literary works.Female characters in traditional desert island literary works serve as noting but to illustrate the great importance of male characters.Almost all the female characters that portrayed in previous desert island literary works are pale and flat.Although Golding follows the tradition of the absence of women in Lord of the Flies,he does not show any ignorance of women.On the contrary,Golding uses the absence of women as an important narrative part of "disrobing" to demonstrate the necessity of women.Without women's restraints and observation,boys show their real nature and degenerate gradually.In the end of the whole story,boys are brought to a world without women.How long can a world exist without women? Here,Golding shows his respect for women from a different angle and brings new significance to the absence of women.From above analysis,the conclusion of this thesis is clear:Lord of the Flies is both the continuation and the development of desert island literature.It is the landmark of desert island literature,and its achievements show the new significance of this literary genre.