The Pursuit And Escape Of “Freedom”

Lord of the Flies by Golding which has a strong practical significance and profound implication in 1954 has received widespread attention, because it represents the thought of civilization and humanity caused by that disaster. The critics mostly focus on understanding the “evil” reflected by the work. However, the understanding of “freedom”can not be ignored when humanity is mentioned, because freedom is an important factor included in humanity. Golding sees the defect in humanity and mental confusion, fear and panic through during the pursuit of freedom through hardship and experience of the World War Ⅱ. The thesis starts with acknowledgement of evil of humanity and analyzes view of freedom hidden in Lord of the Flies by the yearning for, pursuit, fear, escape and outlet of freedom.There are three chapters besides introduction and conclusion. The first two chapters analyze and interpret Lord of the Flies from the perspective of freedom according to the style and idea of the book. The last chapter concludes and extracts the view of freedom of Golding.The first chapter is the yearning for and pursuit of Lord of the Flies. It mainly analyzes the free and open background set by the author and the instinctive maximum pursuit of children based on the background. And it further points out the freedom which can not be placed anywhere. It means to point out that blind pursuit of absolute freedom must put people in unconfined vacuum state which will cause the lost, fear and terror mentality and puts people in mental wasteland. This kind of psychological crisis is the fundamental cause of the disaster.The second chapter is the fear and escape of freedom. It mainly analyzes the reaction of the children’s escape of absolute freedom to avoid the feeling of loneliness and terror from the two aspects of pursuit and dependence of power and yield to beasts. It further explores the wanton violent action caused by the reaction. During the process, the evil humanity is aroused infinitely. Children lose themselves and are reduced to beasts in loss and madness which cause a destructive consequence.The third chapter is the outlet of freedom. It points out the idea of freedom paradox to find out the crucial reason for the question and sort out the freedom view implied by Golding. It concludes the following ideas and focuses on exploring the idea that the healthy freedom Golding thinks is to create a perfect order, popularize the education of knowledge and kindness and focus on conscious behavior of the individual.