On Application Of Parody In William Golding's The Pyramid

William Golding is an outstanding English novelist after World Warâ…¡, noted for representation of the dark sides of human beings. Most readers are familiar with his Lord of the Flies, while his sixth novel The Pyramid attracts little attention. As a matter of fact, The Pyramid can be regarded as a breakthrough compared with his earlier novels. The novel was written in 1967 when the post-modernism was prevailing, and Golding adopts the postmodernist writing technique-"parody" to satirize the society of his time bitterly.The present study investigates Golding's use of parody in the novel from three perspectives:the structure of Egyptian pyramid, characters and theme of love to interpret the richness of the theme of the novel.The thesis consists of the introduction, the body and the conclusion.The introductory part offers a survey of the background and evaluation of the novel, with the originality and structure of the thesis included.In the first chapter, Golding's parody of Egyptian pyramid is discussed. Through the imitation of the structure of Egyptian pyramid and deformation of its functions, Golding bitterly satirizes different classes of English society of his time.The second chapter explores Golding's parody of characters in Dickens'novel Great Expectations. The characters in the two novels bear resemblance to each other, while The Pyramid ends with a much more stronger tragic color, which indicates Golding's world outlook is different from that of Dickens'.The last chapter makes an analysis of Golding's parody of love. On the surface, Golding seems to explore the theme of love; on the contrary, Golding shows us a world without love.Like his earlier novels, Golding in The Pyramid, focuses on the morality of human beings and social problems. The difference lies in the fact that Golding stresses that it is the immorality of human beings who exert great impacts on or corrupt the society in his earlier novels, while in The Pyramid, Golding converts the relationship of the cause and effect, that is, he lays emphasis on the fact that it is society that corrupts human moral conception. By doing this, Golding succeeds in developing a new theme.