William Golding has taken exception to the neohumanists and the prophets of despair. He rejects their view of mankind: "I believe that man suffers from an appalling ignorance of his own nature. I produce my own view, in the belief that it may be something like the truth." His novels are exceptions to the socio-realistic novels of his contemporaries, and Golding himself has characterized them as "myths." His goal is always the nature of man, and this can be examined as well under prototypical conditions as in the contemporary environment. Current affairs are merely a gauge by which to measure the basic human condition. While examining man's ferocity and brutality, he distinguishes himself from many of his contemporaries by showing this to be a universal condition, not merely the result of immediate social conditions. His first two novels, Lord of the Flies and The Inheritors, are studies in human nature, exposing the kinds of violence that man uses against his fellow man. It is understandable why these first novels have been said to comprise Golding's "primitive period."
Lord of the Flies presents a world removed from normal adult and civilized forces. The boys at first gradually and then quickly recede into a world of primordial violence. It is important to understand that Golding describes the human condition as one of aggression and hostility, in which the stronger rise up against and destroy the weaker. Piggy, the spokesman for rationality and intelligence, is ineffectual in a world governed by force and violence. Sam and Eric are the ordinary people who eventually succumb to the influence of the stronger. The boys, like modern man, are ignorant of their own nature; as Golding has said, "I think, quite simply, that they don't understand what beasts there are in the human psyche which have to be curbed." The appearance of the captain of the cruiser at the end reasserts the issue of man's inclination to violence. Golding has summarized the theme as "an attempt to trace the defects of society back to the defects of human nature." (p. 29)
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