Ballantyne's Coral Island, describing of a group of childred, who are evacuated from Britain because of a nuclear war. Their airplane crashes on an uninhabitated island, and all the adults are killed. The boys create their own society, which gradually degenerates from democratic, rational, and moral community to tyrannical, bloodthirsty, and evil. The older boys take control, a boy called Piggy is a target of picking. Leaders emerge, two of the older boys get killed and they begin to hunt another, just as a ship arrives. Golding's view is pessimistic: human nature is inherently violent, which reflects the mood of the post-war and post-Hitler years and comments the 19th century optimism of progress and education. The values that the boys have been raised by, are nothing compared to their desire to kill. The Lord of the Flies is Beelzebub, Prince of Devils, the source of evil outside oneself, and through his parable the author shows that man is a fallen being. - See: Daniel Defoe and Robinsonade, a story of a person marooned on a desert island.
Golding was knighted in 1988. He died in Perranarworthal on June 19, 1993. Golding's last novel, THE DOUBLE TONGUE, left in draft at his death, was published in 1995. The story was set in the ancient Greece, and depicted a Delphic oracle, who witnesses the rise of the Roman power, and retreat of the Hellenistic culture. For further reading: William Golding: a Critical Study by I. Gregor and M. Kinkead-Weekes (1967); The Novels of William Golding by H.S. Babb (1973); W. Golding: Lord of the Flies by J. Whitley (1970); William Golding by S. Medcalf (1975); William Golding: Some Critical Considerations, ed. by J.I. Biles and R.D. Evans (1978); William Golding: A Structural Reading of His Fiction by Philip Redpath (187); The Modern Allegories of William Goldman by L.KL. Dickson (1990); William Golding by Lawrence S. Friedman (1992); William Golding by Pralhad A. Kulkarni (1994); The Robinsonade Tradition in Robert Michael Ballantyne's the Coral Island and William Golding's the Lord of the Flies by Karin Siegl (1996); Readings on Lord of the Flies, ed. by Clarice Swisher (1997); Language and Style in the Inheritors by David L. Hoover (1998)
Selected works:
· POEMS, 1934
· LORD OF THE FLIES, 1954 - Kärpästen herra - film 1963, dir.