Novel Study Guides: Lord of the Flies

William Golding's parents brought him up to be a scientist. But he always had an interest in reading and writing, and at Oxford University he shifted from the sciences to literature. Golding fought in World War II, and was involved in the D-Day landing at Normandy. His experience in the war greatly influenced his views of human nature. After the war, he began writing novels in addition to teaching. Lord of the Flies was Golding's first novel, published in 1954, and was a critically acclaimed bestseller in both England and the United States. Though Golding never again achieved the same commercial success, he continued to write and went on to publish many more novels, including The Scorpion God (1971), Darkness Visible (1979), and Fire Down Below(1989). He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1983 and died in 1993.

World War II influenced the themes and setting of Lord of the Flies. The war changed the way people in general and William Golding in particular viewed the world. World War I was for many years called the War to End All Wars. World War II proved that idea wrong and created a new sense that people are inherently warlike, power hungry, and savage. While the world war raging in Lord of the Flies is not World War II, it can be viewed as Golding's version of World War III. Only a few brief references to the war outside the boys' island appear in the novel, but references to an atom bomb blowing up an airport and the "Reds" make it clear that the war involves nuclear weapons and places capitalist allies including the British against the communist "Reds."

Lord of the Flies is a 1954 novel by Nobel Prize–winning British author William Golding. The book focuses on a group of British boys stranded on an uninhabited island and their disastrous attempt to govern themselves.

Lord of the Flies remains as provocative today as when it was first published in 1954, igniting passionate debate with its startling, brutal portrait of human nature. Though critically acclaimed, it was largely ignored upon its initial publication. Yet soon it became a cult favorite among both students and literary critics who compared it to J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye in its influence on modern thought and literature. 

Labeled a parable, an allegory, a myth, a morality tale, a parody, a political treatise, even a vision of the apocalypse, Lord of the Flies has established itself as a true classic.