Lord of the Flies - Group Dynamics

Lord of the Flies William Golding the author of Lord of the Flies was born in Great Britain in 1911 and throughout almost his entire lifetime, he has lived and witnessed the true evil within all men. During his childhood the first World War beginning in 1914, and was followed many years later by the savagery of World War II. He has seen powerful dictators rise and fall; he has witnessed entire nations crumble, the massive slaughter of the Holocaust come and go, weapons of death destroy entire cities, and he has lived through a time when the world was divided in half and only a single spark was needed to set off what was needed for world destruction. It was during this time that Golding wrote the Lord of the Flies.

The title itself suggests true evil and destruction; in Hebrew it is translated as Ba'alzevuv and in Greek, Beelzebub -- a pungent and suggested word for the Devil. This book is not about a group of young boys desolated on an island.

It is about society; it is about about man, and it is about the true evil possessed within us all. Golding uses the property of setting in Lord of the Flies as the first hint of the evil within man and society.

The entire book is set upon a beautiful desolate island located probably somewhere in the Pacific near the first atomic bomb detonation. This land was pure and basic; it was a Garden of Eden, that is, until man arrived. Upon the boys' arrival (a plane crash), a scar was left on the island. It was a plane, an offspring of man's creation, that disturbed nature's beauty. Golding continuously showed how the setting was terrorized by man. Man was not even there for one week and they have already destroyed half of an island that nature took years to create, and these men were mere children. Just think what real men have done to the entire world during the course of history. Lands have been raped, forests destroyed,