NON-AFRICAN PROSE WILLIAM GOLDING: Lord of the Flies Give an account of the novel as a story of adventure.

Answer Details

On its surface, William Golding's Lord of the Flies has all the ingredients of a traditional boys' adventure story: a desert island, a group of schoolboys, no adults, hunting, exploration and survival. Golding deliberately borrows this popular form, only to darken it into a study of human savagery. Read as an account of adventure, the novel offers the following:

The exciting premise. A plane evacuating British schoolboys is shot down during a war, and the survivors find themselves alone on an uninhabited tropical island. The absence of grown-ups, the coral reef, the lagoon, the fruit and the wild pigs create the classic setting of island romance in the tradition of Coral Island, to which Golding openly alludes.

Exploration and organisation. The early chapters are full of genuine adventure. Ralph, Jack and Simon climb the mountain and thrill at discovering that "this is our island." They light a signal fire using Piggy's glasses, build shelters, and explore the beach, the jungle and "Castle Rock." The blowing of the conch to summon assemblies gives the adventure an orderly, almost heroic beginning.

Hunting and danger. Jack's hunters stalk and finally kill wild pigs, and the excitement of the hunt, the chants and the feasts, supplies the physical thrill expected of the genre. The mystery of the "beast" glimpsed on the mountain, later revealed as a dead parachutist, adds suspense and terror.

Rescue and pursuit. The story builds to a manhunt as Jack's tribe sets the island ablaze to smoke out Ralph, and it ends with the sudden arrival of a naval officer, a dramatic last-minute rescue typical of adventure fiction.

Adventure turned to allegory. Yet Golding subverts the form. The fire that should signal rescue becomes the fire that destroys; the hunt for pigs becomes the hunt for boys; Simon and Piggy are killed. The "adventure" exposes the darkness of the human heart. So while the novel can indeed be told as a gripping island adventure, its true achievement is to use that familiar excitement to deliver a grim moral warning.