Lord of THe Flies: Defects of Society Due to Nature of Individuals

            The venturesome novel, Lord of the Flies, is an enchanting,
audacious account that depicts the defects of society as the incorrigible nature
of individuals when they are immature and without an overlooking authority.   The
author of the novel, William Golding, was born in Britain, which accounts for
the English, cultured characters in the novel.   After studying science at Oxford
University for two years, he changed his emphasis as a major to English
literature.   When World War II broke out in 1939, Golding served in the Royal
Navy for five years.   The atrocities he witnessed changed his view about
mankind's essential nature.   He came to believe that there was a very dark and
evil side to man, which accounts for the savage nature of the children in the
novel.   He said, "The war was unlike any other fought in Europe.   It taught us
not fighting, politics, or the follies of nationalism, but about the given
nature of man."   After the war he returned to teaching and wrote his first novel,
Lord of the Flies, which was finally accepted for publication in 1954.   In 1983,
the novel received the Noble Prize and the statement, "[His] books are very
entertaining and exciting. . . . They have aroused an unusually great interest
in professional literary critics (who find) deep strata of ambiguity and
complication in Golding's work. . . ." (Noble Prize committee) Some conceived
the novel as bombastic and didactic.   Kenneth Rexroth stated in the Atlantic,
"Golding's novels are rigged.. . . The boys never come alive as real boys. . . .
" Other critics see him as the greatest English writer of our time.   In the
Critical Quarterly in 1960, C.B. Cox deemed Lord of the Flies as "probably the
most important novel to be published. . .   in the 1950's."
The setting of the novel takes place on an island in the Pacific Ocean.
The author never actually locates the island in the real world or states the
exact time