Lord Of The Flies And English Desert Island Literature

William Golding·s first important work Lord of the Flies, which soon won greatpopularity after its publication in1954, has always been the focus of critics since then.Among so many explanations on the meaning of Lord of the Flies and so muchexploration on its artistic effect, one cannot ignore the fact that this novel hasinherited apparent features of desert island literature.Desert island literature has a long history in English literature, and it has somecommon characteristics in form and in content. But Lord of the Flies boasts severalbreakthroughs compared to former desert island literary works. With this recognition,the reader will have a clear understanding of the theme of Lord of the Flies and abetter appreciation of the work·s artistic effect.This thesis aims to probe into the theme and artistic achievements of Lord of theFlies from the perspective of desert island literature. It attempts to discuss this subjectin three chapters. The first chapter of the thesis is an introduction to desert islandliterature with a manifestation of the inheritance of Lord of the Flies from this literarytradition. The second chapter will focus on the two distinct artistic methods in thenovel: one is compound symbolism web consisting of symbolic characters andsymbolic objects; the other is parody of former desert island literary works. The thirdchapter is the analysis of the theme of the work, which is based on author·sbackground and accompanied by a comparison with that of the former desert islandworks.