The information here is from my research on Golding and his work and also includes my own notes.

Transcription

1 'Men of a Smaller Growth: A Psychological Analysis of William Golding'_ Lord of the Flies' Claire Rosenfield Ralph Maltese The information here is from my research on Golding and his work and also includes my own notes. Psychological Analysis Taboo according to Freud is a "very primitive prohibition imposed from without(by an authority)and directed against the strongest desires of man. In this new society it replaces the authority of the parents. Now every kill becomes a sexual act, is a metaphor for childhood sexuality." Lord of the Flies - -name applied to the biblical demon Beelzebub, and later used in Goethe/a Faust, Part 1, to describe Mephistopheles. It also applies to the Lord of Filth and Dung...human excrement in the Freudian sense - -Simon asks what is the filthiest thing? The boys wind up worshiping the foulest part of ourselves. "Simon's descent into the mouth - -metaphorically - -it suggests the ritual quest in which the hero is swallowed by a serpent or dragon or beast whose be is the underworld, undergoes a symbolic death in order to gain the elixir to revitalize his stricken society, and returns with his knowledge to the timed world as -a redeemer." 1 / 10

2 "According to Huizinga's theory of play, war is a game, a contest for prestige which, like the games of primitives or of classical athletes, may be fatal." The ultimate irrationality is war...the children not only return to a primitive and infantile morality but they also degenerate into adults. They prove that, indeed, 'children are but men of -a smaller growth." The adult world is not much better. Ralph calls for a sign from the adult world and a dead parachutist plummets into their midst. The adult who does show up to rescue them is naive and engaged in the same man hunt as the children. As Golding says, 'And who...will rescue the adult and his cruiser?" "Psychology of the individual contributes the configurations for the development of religion." "Having populated the outside world with demons and spirits which are projections of their instinctual nature, these children - -and primitive men-must then unconsciously evolve new forms of worship and laws, which manifest themselves in taboos, the oldest form of social repression." 'War has its rules - -modern war tends to obscure its ritualistic and its ennobling character. It, too, has its spatial and temporal limitations, as the new rash of "limited' wars makes very clear." In Joseph Campbell's view- modern man has changed because he now focuses on himself as mystery, rather than the universe or environment. Golding believes in individual progress - -But focusing on individual brings with it a selfishness, a lack of community. 2 / 10

3 Now effective is a system which defines morality and proscribes immorality? See Clockwork Orange. Perhaps the best we can have is system which protects us from ourselves - -not an idealistic system but one which protect.. the individual. Human condition is irrational. Violence on island reflects microcosm - -violence is the macrocosm-man and his universe as a cruel and irrational chaos. "Lord of Dung", Jack's choir is black robed. Jack is evil. Jack s red hair, etc. is described in devilish terms. Revelation or cognition of a world external to self is symptomatic of order; failure to recognize such a world becomes symptomatic of moral decay. Conch---real object; accepted in the light of reason and dedicated to social control. Lord of the Flies - -object endowed with mystical qualities, embodying hallucination and-fear and dedicated to social extinction. "The way to become human is to learn the lineaments of God in all of the wonderful modulations of the +ace of man." Joseph Campbell--"The Hero With a Thousand Face=." Man himself now is the crucial mystery. Fire and water are symbolic. 3 / 10

4 "The children in Lord of the Flies organize by perceiving objects, becoming aware of them, naming them (the primal act of naming is a continuous by-product of humanity in Golding's work)." Ralph Freedman. "Golding deliberately makes us forget that these are only young children. Their drama and conflict typify the inevitable overthrow of all attempts to impose a permanent civilisation on the instincts of man. The surprising twist of events at the end of the novel is a highly original device to force upon us a new viewpoint. The crazy, sadistic chase to kill Ralph is suddenly revealed to be the work of a semi-circle of little boys, their bodies streaked with coloured clay. but the irony is also directed at the naval officer, who comes to rescue them. His trim cruiser, the submachine gun, his white drill, epaulettes, revolver and row of gilt buttons, are only more sophisticated substitutes for the war-paint and sticks of Jack and his followers. He too is chasing men in order to kill, and the dirty children mock the absurd civilised attempt to hide the power of evil. And so when Ralph weeps for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the death of his true, wise friend, Piggy, he weeps for all the human race." C.B. Cox "Lord of the Flies" nflof2 William Golding Samuel Hynes Mr. Maltese He uses two conventions-1)science fiction setting his story in the future 2)desert island motif what happens if I put a group of people in this situation? 4 / 10

5 Golding s generation read a popular book, Coral Island, a novel about a group of British boys on an island inhabited by cannibals. Not only do the boys in Coral Island survive with their British dignity, but they manage to convert the cannibals to Christianity. Golding, learning of the concentration camps in World War II, actually frames the question, If British boys were abandoned on an island, would they behave as they did in Coral Island? Lord of the Flies is his answer. "Freudians have found in the novel a conscious dramatization of psychological theory: 'denied the sustaining and repressing authority of parents, church and state, the children form a new culture the development of which reflects that of genuine primitive society, evolving its gods and demons (its myths), its rituals and taboos (its social norms). The political-minded have been able to read it as "the modern political nightmare," in which rational democracy is destroyed by irrational authoritarianism. ( I hope,' said V.S. Pritchett, 'this book is being read in Germany'). The social-minded have found in it a social allegory, in which life, without civilized restraints, becomes nasty, brutish, and short. And the religious have simply said, in a complacent tone, 'Original Sin, of course." Ralph--tries to establish and preserve an orderly, rational society. Jack--hides behind the paint--turns the boys into anonymous murderers; the high priest of Beelzebub, the Lord of the Flies. Piggy - -scientific -minded rationalist Simon- -the embodiment of moral understanding. 5 / 10

6 "The beast symbolizes the source of evil in human life. Either it is something terrifying and external, which cannot be understood but must simply be lived with (this is Jack's version), or it is a part of man's nature, "only us," in which case it may be understood, and perhaps controlled by reason and rule. Simon understands that man must seek out the meaning of evil ("what else is there to do?"). By seeking, he comes to know it, "harmless and horrible." Thus far the moral point seems orthodox enough, but when he tries to tell his understanding to others they take him for the beast and destroy him in terror. Another common idea, though a more somber one - -men fear the bearers of truth, and will destroy them. This has both political and psychological implications. A demented but partly secure society" (read: Nazi Germany, or any authoritarian nation) will resist and attempt to destroy anyone who offers to substitute reason and responsible individual action for the irresponsible, unreasoning, secure action of the mass. And in psychological terms, the members of a "demented society" May create an irrational, external evil, and in its name commit deeds that as rational men they could not tolerate (the history of modern persecutions offers examples enough); such a society has to destroy the man who says, "The evil is in yourselves." Like many ethical leaders from Christ to Gandhi to Martin Luther King, like Simon, we tend to kill our truth givers. Simon is killed as he returns with the true knowledge of the beast.my notes. There is no sign in the novel that Simon s sainthood has touched any soul but his own. The novel tells us a good deal about evil, but about its salvation it is silent. The meaning of the book depends on the meaning of the beast. 6 / 10

7 Notice how quickly hunting for food becomes killing. Notes continue below scroll down. Conversations with William Golding n/lfbiles+ Lord of the Flies William Golding Conversations with William Golding Jack 1 Biles Mr. Maltese Golding wrote Lord of the Flies after World War 11. He realized every one of us could be Nazis. Nazi Germany was a boil which burst in "That was the same kind of inflamed spot we all suffer from, and so I took English boys and said, "Look. This could be you. (Discuss with 7 / 10

8 the class the "Nazi thing." Leadership. The Stanley Millgram experiment. On Piggy - -Piggy is a scientist. He is a technocrat. Golding says that Ralph not Golding) thinks that Piggy is wise. "Piggy is short-sighted. He is rationalist He's naive, short-sighted, and rationalist, like most scientists. Golding is a moralist. He surely shows his complete ignorance of the situation, when he talks about acting like a crowd of kids, just when they are acting like a crowd of grown ups. And he is the one who wants his auntie there and thinks that people would meet and discuss and the rest of it. He s an innocent; he's a complete innocent. He is like scientists, who really think they're getting somewhere in real, genuine, human terms. They are getting more complicated--and, personally, I find it fascinating, the whole thing. I am quite sure, if I had cancer, they probably would do better for me than they would have ten years ago. It is fine, but it's naive. It doesn't even touch the human problem. Piggy never gets anywhere rear coping with anything on that island at all. He dismisses the beast, he dismisses the beastie, he says there aren't such things as ghosts, not understanding that the whole of society is riddled with ghosts. It may be their parents" ghosts, but it's still 'ghosts. They're riddled with them. Piggy understands society less than almost anyone there at all. He's a scientist." "Th6re are degrees of rightness, aren't there? There is the furthest degree that nobody on the island goes, which is to go up the mountain and see what there is at the top. That is Simon, who is understood by nobody, naturally enough. There is Ralph, who has some idea of law and order, and there is Piggy, who realizes that what they need more than anything else is rescue, and second to that, shelter which, after all, Ralph does realize, too. Piggy has a certain basic technological ability in that he sees roughly what can't be done, what is impossible. He doesn't see what's possible there, much. Ng, I would say Piggy ought to wear a white coat - -one of these long white lab coats - -and ramble round the island, probably writing papers about this, that, or the other, and ending up at Los Alamos. If I gave him more than that, then I'm glad to see it's one of those cases where Falstaff got out of the situation of being a medieval vice. 8 / 10

9 On Huxley his personae are not characters, but merely mouthpieces for ideas. Definition of a symbol(biles) - -the image means what it is and the symbol means what it is and something else I saw that humanity had been fighting against itself in a kind of endless war." "Lord of the Flies was an attempt to trace the defects of society back to the defects of the individual." The only kind of real progress is the progress of the individual towards some kind of - -1 would describe it as ethical-integration and his consequent effect upon people who are near himself." Golding Freudian interpretation My notes: 9 / 10

10 Golding, in an interview, denied he intended these Freudian references, but this is a prime example of a book is not written until it is read. The novel is no longer the author s. Jack represents the Id, the base instinct, the drive, (including sexual drive reread the killing of the sow). We need the Id to survive, but the id is antithetical to civilization. Piggy is the Superego, the idealist who thinks he knows where he wants to go, but his view of the immediate reality is fuzzy. Piggy yells at the other children, You re behaving like a bunch of kids! Ralph is the Ego. He knows that they have to be rescued, but he is also attracted to the hunting. The Ego is part of the constant struggle to balance the id and the superego. 10 / 10