On The Subversion Of The Traditional Culture To The West Of The Lord Of The Flies

William Golding has a great influence on the British Literature in the 20th century and he won the Nobel Prize in 1983 because of Lord of the Flies. Although this novel has been suffering from various kinds of criticism, however, as a classic of 20th literature, no one doubts its outstanding position. This paper is dedicated to the study of how Lord of the Flies subverts western traditions in terms of cultural study while exploring Golding's aim and meaning in creating such a novel. The Christianity,the democracy and the science are the three western traditions that westerners have been proud of for such a long time. But in Lord of the Flies, the traditional religious culture represented by Christianity, the traditional political culture represented by democracy and the traditional scientific culture represented by worship in science are all subverted in sequence. The subversion of Christianity lies both in the denial of the Eden, and in the retreat of Children's belief from God to the beast, which is the persuading proof of the failure of Christianity on the island; the subversion of democracy embodies in the collapse of the democratic system and the disillusionment of the dream to set up an utopia; the subversion of science embodies in exposing the lie that science can be the savior to the world, and in pointing out the side-effects that high technology brought in. This paper aims to explore the admonitory significance of this novel by interpreting how the three traditions are subverted. The publishing time of Lord of the Flies is in the days when the whole western society is undergoing all kinds of crisis. By showing the subversion of western traditions in such an extreme way, Golding aims at exposing the westerners'doubts of the rationalism in the 20th century and exposing the cruel living conditions of the capitalist societies. The penetrating warning of Lord of the Flies firstly lies in the hope that the westerners can be aware of the spiritual crisis and of which the social problems come; secondly it lies in the expectation that the westerners can seek solutions from the tradition so as to extricate themselves from the crisis. By appreciating and interpreting Lord of the Flies, we Chinese can draw warnings and revelations in the construction of culture in the 21st century. We can inherit the best traditional Chinese culture while selecting the essence of western traditions to help Chinese people get rid of the present spiritual crisis and to encourage the construction of social civilization in a better way.