To What Extent Does a Marxist Reading of Lord of the Flies Lead to a Fuller Understanding of the Novel?
To what extent does a Marxist reading of ‘Lord of the Flies’ lead to a fuller understanding of the novel?
‘Lord of the Flies’ is based almost entirely on Golding’s view that evil is an inherent force in every man, “man produces evil as a bee produces honey”. Golding acquired this belief while he was a soldier in the Second World War. From that point on, he became extremely pessimistic about human nature, calling it “the disease of being human”. This belief is shown very clearly, as he puts ‘innocent’ children on a deserted island, free of all corruption; free of an external threat, therefore with no need of an army; abundant in food and supplies, therefore with no need to steal. Therefore, what evil was left could only come from the inside and indeed, despite the boys’ mimicry of the social organization that they think would reflect the adult world realistically it turned into savagery and bloody violence. By leaving a group of English schoolboys to fend for themselves on a remote jungle island, Golding creates a kind of human nature laboratory in order to examine what happens when the constraints of civilization vanish and raw human nature takes over. In ‘Lord of the Flies’, Golding argues that human nature, free from the constraints of society, draws people away from reason toward savagery. However, it could be argued that there is a hidden, implicit meaning behind the novel, one which Marxist theory could help us understand.
The ‘treasure chest’ theory states that no one can know a book and its characters better than the author him/herself. This is because the reader arguably cannot take out of the ‘chest’ more than the author originally put in. This is a view, however, that even William Golding himself had come to reject eventually, stating that “I no longer believe that the author has a sort of patria potestas over his brainchildren. Once they are printed they have reached their majority and the author has no more authority over them, knows no more about
‘Lord of the Flies’ is based almost entirely on Golding’s view that evil is an inherent force in every man, “man produces evil as a bee produces honey”. Golding acquired this belief while he was a soldier in the Second World War. From that point on, he became extremely pessimistic about human nature, calling it “the disease of being human”. This belief is shown very clearly, as he puts ‘innocent’ children on a deserted island, free of all corruption; free of an external threat, therefore with no need of an army; abundant in food and supplies, therefore with no need to steal. Therefore, what evil was left could only come from the inside and indeed, despite the boys’ mimicry of the social organization that they think would reflect the adult world realistically it turned into savagery and bloody violence. By leaving a group of English schoolboys to fend for themselves on a remote jungle island, Golding creates a kind of human nature laboratory in order to examine what happens when the constraints of civilization vanish and raw human nature takes over. In ‘Lord of the Flies’, Golding argues that human nature, free from the constraints of society, draws people away from reason toward savagery. However, it could be argued that there is a hidden, implicit meaning behind the novel, one which Marxist theory could help us understand.
The ‘treasure chest’ theory states that no one can know a book and its characters better than the author him/herself. This is because the reader arguably cannot take out of the ‘chest’ more than the author originally put in. This is a view, however, that even William Golding himself had come to reject eventually, stating that “I no longer believe that the author has a sort of patria potestas over his brainchildren. Once they are printed they have reached their majority and the author has no more authority over them, knows no more about
Bibliography: [ 1 ]. William Golding’s Nobel Prize for Literature acceptance speech, 1983 [ 2 ]