A Deconstructive Interpretation Of Lord Of The Flies

Lord of the Flies, published in1954, is generally considered to be WilliamGolding’s masterpiece. It tells a seemingly simple yet thought-provoking story, in whichGolding exposes the evil nature of mankind through an allegory. Since its publication,Lord of the Flies has drawn extensive attention of scholars at home and abroad.Numerous treatises and articles have probed into this novel from the perspective ofmythological archetypes, psychoanalysis, feminism, narrative strategies and so forth, butthere is hardly any article analyzing from the perspective of deconstruction.This thesis interprets the novel with deconstructionism, which deconstructs thebinary oppositions pervasive in Lord of the Flies and subverts the hierarchy betweenthem. From the idea of “différance”, it also analyzes the indeterminacy and theambiguity in the text. This thesis has five parts. Chapter one is the introduction, whichgenerally introduces William Golding and Lord of the Flies, literature review on thisnovel and deconstructive criticism. Chapter two explores the indeterminacy of thesymbolic meaning of “fire” and “conch”, the ambiguity of children’s laughter and beastfrom the idea of “différance” to subvert the traditional interpretations of them. Chapterthree centers on two important subversions of the fiction, namely, a subversion of theconventional image of children and a subversion of Phallocentrism and Logocentrism,which breaks the traditional hierarchy that children are superior to adults and men aresuperior to women. Chapter four analyzes the fusion of two pairs of binary opposites,namely, the fusion of good and evil and the fusion of rationality and irrationality. Theanalysis demonstrates that man is a fusion of good and evil, rationality and irrationality,and there is no distinct boundary between these binary opposites. Chapter five is theconclusion. Through a deconstructive interpretation, Lord of the Flies embodiesGolding’s contradictory attitudes towards human nature that man is a fusion of good andevil, which is also a subversion of the evil nature of human in traditional analysis ofLord of the Flies. This deconstructive analysis not only enriches the theme of the novelbut also triggers the readers deep thinking about human nature.