Exploring The State Of Being And Human Nature

William Golding, the famous novelist in English literature of modern time, won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1983. His masterpiece Lord of the Flies brought him high prestige and reputation in western literary world. He has been named one of the most creative writers in that era. In Lord of the Flies, the author portrays a vivid picture of children's world by imagination. Many critics and scholars in western world analyzed the novel from the aspects of religion, theme of evil human nature, allegory after its publication. Whereas, domestic scholars began to interpret it after Golding won the Nobel Prize. In addition to the same themes discussed as the foreign critics, they also make study on archetypal, feminism, eco-criticism and Chinese traditional kind human nature and so on.This thesis is to interpret Lord of the Flies from existentialism to explore the existing state of people: the objective world and spiritual world of human being. Since existentialists declare that the world is absurd, man is in forlornness and anguish. Meanwhile, alienation is a very important part of existentialism, and it also can be used to describe the existing state of people."Existence precedes the essence"also used by existentialists to prove that human nature does not exist at first and it will be chosen after one comes into the world. Existentialism is not a perfect philosophy, so the author interprets the novel by some theories of this philosophy. This thesis consists of six parts: the introduction, literature review, the theoretical foundations, the main chapters and conclusion. The first chapter is a brief survey of William Golding's life and Lord of the Flies. In Chapter Two, the main content and studies of the novel are discussed. Chapter Three is about the theoretical foundations. Some main existentialists and their main theories used in the essay are given. Chapter Four and Five is the body of the essay, the existing state of people is discussed from these aspects: absurd, forlornness, anguish, alienation. The human nature or essence is explored again by using"Existence precedes the essence", which is different from the standpoints that man is born with the evil human nature or the kind human nature. The last part is the chapter in which conclusion and limitation are summarized.In brief, to explore the state of being and human nature from existentialism is the significance of interpreting this novel; meanwhile, it is essential to find out how to improve the situation of human survival.