Golding is a prolific writer. After Lord of the Flies, his novels include The Heir (1955), Kneading Martin (1956), Free Fall (1960) and Church steeple (1964). The Ceremony of Crossing the Border (1980)-This book won the most prestigious Booker McConnell Award in Britain, Sailing Festival (1980), Paper Man (1984) and Close Orientation (1984). Among them, Sailing Festival won the Booker mcnair Book Award. In addition, he has written plays, essays and short stories, and published the collection of literary criticism "The Goal of the Activity" in 1982.
Golding is known as the "fable writer" in the west. He used realistic narrative method to write fables and myths, inherited the western ethical tradition, and took "the darkness of human mind" as the theme, showing the writer's concern for the future of mankind. Because his novel "has clear realistic narrative skills and the diversity and universality of fictional stories, it expounds the human condition in today's world", and won 1983 Nobel Prize in Literature.
[Edit this paragraph] Introduction to the work
The story of Lord of the Flies is actually very simple. Future wars will destroy the peace of mankind. A group of children crashed while flying over the ocean and were trapped on a desert island. At first, Qi Xin, the children, worked together to cope with the difficulties that followed. However, due to the fear of "wild animals", the children gradually split into two factions, one representing rationality and civilization, the other representing wildness and primitiveness, and finally the contradiction between the two factions broke out.
Lord of the flies comes from Hebrew, and its original word is "Baalzebub" (it should be like this, it is said that this word comes from Arabic). In English, "Lord of the flies" is the king of feces and ugliness (or the king of dirt), and in the Bible, "Baal" is regarded as "the head of all evil". Lord of the flies in the novel not only symbolizes the ugly pig head, but also represents the deepest dark side of human nature, which is an inevitable evil.
Golding is a typical writer affected by war. He participated in the naval battle and the Normandy landing, and witnessed the cruelty of the war and all kinds of persecution and contempt for human nature. After the war, the hearts of this generation of writers are inevitably filled with disappointment and depression. It is impossible to ask them to be gentle and kind, and it is impossible to write works such as picnics in the afternoon or feelings between men and women. What fills their hearts is the distortion of human nature in the morbid world, and how civilized society steps into degeneration and destruction under the change of original sin human nature. At the same time, they are decadent because they can't find a solution to this huge problem, and finally they can't find a point of relaxation. They can only round the ending of the work with the death or disappearance of the characters in the work.
Lord of the flies is a work that pays great attention to psychological description. In the linear narrative process of the whole twelve chapters, we mainly evaluate and implement various problems encountered in the life of a desert island from the perspective of rationalism with a rational attitude (incomplete). Ralph is the protagonist of rationalism, and the whole book is also his concept and perspective. Ralph is the son of a naval officer 12 years old. He has a good education and a gentle personality. He always believed that only when the ship of civilized society came to rescue them could they get a way out from civilized society. So in his life on a desert island, he not only established the authority of "conch", but also established a team led by older children, thus solving the problems of accommodation, food and help. He always misses the smoke signal for help. Although his reason was finally conquered by nature at some point, he finally shed tears in pain, which also represents that he is the only one who still has reason in the process of human nature transformation.
On the contrary, Jack, who represents the wildness, is the leader of the glee club and has the leadership ability. Although he believes in Christ, he is full of natural forces. From the beginning, he attached great importance to the authority of "Conch" in an attempt to become the supreme position with strength. His animal nature is also fully manifested in the hunting of wild boar. He adapted the lyrics of the hymn to "Kill the beast, cut its throat and let it bleed". It showed shocking power. Finally, when the wild faction defeated the rational faction, he took Ralph as prey and searched frantically. And I'm going to kill friends my age who have fought side by side.
The vassals of these two factions are Piggy and Roger. Piglet is a fat boy with asthma. He wears glasses and is often teased. But Ralph charmed the pig with his rational personality, so the pig became Ralph's closest person. He always emphasized the authority of "Conch" and Ralph's idea of asking for help. But he was indeed a pure theorist, and finally died tragically on the cliff because of the "conch". Relatively speaking, Roger has less space, but his fierce and cruel character and behavior are unforgettable, and his accomplice-like character makes people shudder. It's hard to imagine that he is just a little boy the same age as piggy, but he pushes down the boulder hard and makes piggy fall off the cliff.
Simon is the key person who caused the climax of the event. He is a little weak and has epilepsy. But he is sensitive in thinking and always looks at problems from a philosophical point of view. Only when he first put forward "maybe, maybe". . . The beast is on us. "Although it attracted the unanimous opposition and ridicule of the children, his thoughts just cut into the theme of the incident. Also, when he saw the hanging pig head, he vaguely saw what he said to himself in Lord of the Flies. He seemed to be a prophetic figure. It's just that the prophet has always been the object of abandonment, and the king of flies also strongly hinted that he died unexpectedly because of his prophecy.
It must be pointed out here that Ralph and Jack are the characters in the representative works of a famous British children's writer. On the contrary, in children's literature, they are best friends, and Qi Xin worked together to share joys and sorrows and overcome many difficulties. It is a manifestation of human goodness. Golding should satirize the hypocrisy of "good" in this morbid world, so as to write the true direction of "evil", that is, "beast", that is, the dark side of human nature, that is, Lord of the flies.
Golding used many montage techniques in the psychological shaping of characters. From Ralph sweating on the beach, to his thoughts jumping to the cool and happy farm life in England in summer, from Jack's obsession with conch to his violent action when hunting wild boar. Golding's excellent description of psychological aspects makes the characters more three-dimensional and unforgettable.
In the whole category of desert island literature, from: to is a narrative process of the whole human mind. The former desert island literature emphasized the initiative of human beings, who took pleasure in fighting against nature and realized their own value while defeating nature and themselves. However, since the 20th century, due to the rapid evolution of wars, the widespread use of long-range weapons and the powerful destructiveness of weapons of mass destruction, Xi 'an writers have been unable to find a harmonious and calm solution. So they fled to a desert island and thought about the bad habits and sins of human beings alone. However, they couldn't find a way out, so they had to make the desert island the total source of burying everything. Although the whole desert island is a sea of fire at the end of the story, if there is no adult who symbolizes civilization at the end, the children may not survive.
The author emphasizes several symbols of civilized society. For example, older children should wear clothes and shelter anyway, and go to a designated water source that cannot be polluted when going to the toilet. Even the youngest child remembers his home address and telephone number. However, when the animal nature completely conquered people's reason, these children also became barbarians who could not even remember their own names.
Since the children (including Ralph) accidentally killed Simon on a stormy night, the essence of Lord of the Flies has been clearly presented to readers. Although Piggy explained the reason, Ralph wept bitterly for his mistake. Human nature is evil. When Lord of the Flies came, all rationality seemed to be defeated by hatred and sin. No matter what kind of intention the author represents, or a self-comforting method that he can't find a solution and can only be rescued. However, as long as readers seriously consider the essence and source of Lord of the Flies and apply the social value and life concept derived from it to their own philosophical thinking, then Golding, a thin novel, has achieved its original purpose.
Enlightenment from Lord of the Flies
"Lord of the flies" is the king of flies, which comes from Hebrew Baalzebub. In the Bible, "Baal" is regarded as "the head of all evil". In English, "Lord of the flies" is the king of filth and synonymous with ugly soul.
In this work, Golding, with his unique meditation and calmness, excavated the root of human cannibalism that has never stopped for thousands of years. This is a modern fable that reveals the evil of human nature. The story sets up a series of contradictions and conflicts, such as human nature is good and evil, human nature and beast, reason and irrationality, civilization and barbarism. The result of the conflict convincingly shows the fragility of civilization and reason and the difficulty in pursuing democracy and legal order, and explains the reason why human beings tend to be autocratic and difficult to rush to a democratic society. Why does human civilization seem so stupid and fragile in the face of desire and barbarism? This is the idea of Lord of the Flies.
one
The story takes place in the distant future. In a nuclear war, a plane carrying a group of boys flew from England to the south to evacuate. Because of this attack, the plane was forced to land on an uninhabited coral island in the Pacific Ocean. These children are temporarily divorced from the civilized world. The plane is gone, the adults are gone, and the civilized world that human beings have worked so hard to build is in jeopardy. The environment on the island is very bad, posing a threat to the lucky children, but-
The biggest danger actually comes from these naive children themselves.
Without adults, the children began to live on the island. Ralph, 12 years old, is the son of the British navy commander. He is elegant, optimistic and confident, and he is overjoyed to get rid of the control of adults. He blew the horn, organized the children scattered all over the island and was elected as the leader at the plenary meeting. Led by Ralph, the children set up tents, picked wild fruits, lit bonfires and waited for help. At first, the children lived in harmony on the island, but with the appearance of the "beast", the peace and harmony on the island were broken, and the children were quickly divided into two groups: one group, represented by Ralph, insisted on establishing a civilized social order on the island, such as requiring defecation at designated places, raising hands at meetings in case of emergency, and always lighting a fire on the beach as a distress signal. The other school is represented by Jack, the head of the choir, who sneers at these civilized and democratic practices and advocates the evil in human nature and the instinct of destruction. Jack is pretentious and is very dissatisfied with Ralph's election as leader. He was assigned to hunt, so he stuck the hunted boar's head on a pointed stake, and forced other children to imitate barbarians and paint their faces colorful, and reveled around the boar's head full of flies, but let the bonfire of life-saving go out, thus losing the precious opportunity to be saved. What is terrible is that the later, the more popular the latter tendency is, and more children join this group of people. After being far away from the constraints of human civilization and its norms, the evil of human nature has been released as never before, making them step into the abyss of "evil" gradually. In order to seize the leadership position, Jack led people to attack Ralph's residence. In the fierce struggle, Ralph's best friend piggy fell off the cliff and died in the melee. Simon was killed by a club, and Ralph himself was trapped. The boys killed each other and the whole island fell into terror. These boys finally completely destroyed everything here, and the whole island burned in a raging fire. In an emergency, a British warship found the fire on the island and arrived in time, and Ralph survived.
Ralph finally realized his wish to be saved, but he felt extremely sad and kept crying for the loss of humanity of his companions. ...
two
Ralph is the protagonist in the book, rational and brave, with appeal and leadership. He urged to save a small fire in order to be saved, and the conch in his hand became a symbol of democracy. But the power he has is very fragile, so fragile that it is difficult to maintain the fire of survival. Ralph also has shadows and darkness in his heart. On a stormy night, he involuntarily participated in the persecution of Simon. Moreover, he finally failed to grasp the situation, led the group on this isolated island to the light, and watched the pig being killed, and he was chased to nowhere and almost died. Glasses representing science and conch representing democracy were also broken in the struggle. In this way, civilization is easily conquered by barbarism, rationality is overwhelmed by irrationality, and democracy based on social rationality is so powerless in the face of tyranny and violence.
Piglet is a fat man with glasses. He comes from humble origins and has severe asthma. He loves thinking, and this image reminds us of intellectuals. His glasses are the only thing that is materially useful to others, because they can gather light to make a fire, but people still just regard him as the object of ridicule, even Ralph. Fire enabled them to send distress signals to distant places, which soon became the focus of children's struggle, but it also led to their division. Piglet finally died because of wearing glasses, and when he died, he held a conch in his hand, indicating that he believed in the power of democracy until his death. In Piglet, we see the fate of intellectuals in an authoritarian society in miniature: they have no power but believe in the existence of human nature more than anyone else, dare to despise authority, and have self-esteem but inferiority. They are often easily strangled by authoritarianism and have no ability to protect themselves.
Simon plays the role of humanistic intellectual, with extraordinary insight and upright personality, and dares to explore the truth. Other children live in groups, but he likes to be alone and thinks hard. In Golding's works, Simon is like a Christian prophet. He often talks to Lord of the Flies like an idiot, and also talks to his initial impulse. His conscious understanding finally gave him a lofty moral conscience, which is incomparable to other children. He is familiar with the darkness of human hearts, and at the same time he realizes that fear of his companions is actually an instinctive resistance, a resistance to the evil and death hidden in their hearts. He realized that the so-called beast is only man himself, which of course is not understood by everyone. In order to prove his judgment, in a bad weather, he went to the depths of the jungle alone to explore the truth. There is a conscious dialogue between him and Lord of the Flies in the book, which analyzes the darkness of human nature and predicts the tragic fate of the prophet. In fact, there are countless visionaries like Simon in the crowd, and in history, most of them have a tragic ending.
The last protagonist is Jack, who is the opposite of the first three, representing the evil, beast and irrationality of human nature. He used to be the leader of the church choir. He has a strong desire for power and has been fighting for the leadership of this island. When Ralph was established as the leader of the island, although he was dissatisfied, he could not deprive Ralph of his "legal" power for a while. The sequela of power, which is not clearly defined, was initially covered by the freshness of getting rid of the adult world, but when the children had an argument about watching the bonfire and hunting, the contradiction between Jack and Ralph suddenly intensified. Jack thinks that you can eat meat when hunting, and when everyone can only be vegetarian, eating meat represents some kind of privilege. This privilege becomes a kind of power at this particular time, but Ralph can't show his power at all. The hope of being saved, which he pursued, became more and more slim with the passage of time. In contrast, the temptation to eat meat and live a well-off life is obviously greater for other children.
Once Jack realized the strength he had, he quickly got rid of Ralph's control and decided his own development path. In the absence of adults, children are like weeds, and Jack is the craziest one. Under the threat of the "beast", he succeeded in plundering the leadership and exercising autocratic rule. The instinctive despot finally overwhelmed the rational democrat. After unconsciously killing Simon and Piggy, Jack lost the last trace of humanity and burned the whole island to kill Ralph.
three
"Beast" is the main symbolic image in Lord of the Flies, which represents the evil in children's hearts. The "beast" first appeared in the dream of a child with a snake-like birthmark. Obviously, children are very afraid to face this sensitive problem. Ralph, as a leader, didn't take a positive attitude towards this, just emphasized that "there are no wild animals here" and refused to discuss this topic. As a result, snakes have become taboo on the island. It is this "ostrich" mentality that led to their great tragedy in the future.
Percival, a little boy, said in the fifth chapter "All Animals Come from Water" that "All Animals Come from the Sea", which is a subconscious reflection of wild animals in people's hearts. After the news came out, except Simon, who was observant, other children didn't realize the seriousness of the problem. Simon, who first realized the "original sin" of mankind, was besieged and reviled by children. They don't want to face up to the "shadow" in their hearts, and they don't want to try to avoid it, so unconsciously, the mistakes are getting bigger and bigger and the crisis is approaching step by step.
Chapter six, "A signal floated down from the adult world. Although all the children were asleep at that time, no one noticed ... a person shook his limbs and fell rapidly." The body that fell on the top of the mountain became the "beast" that children were afraid of. This corpse not only restricted them geographically, but also threatened them psychologically, causing them to fall into their own trap. Only Simon thinks it's a little suspicious. "No matter how Simon imagines the beast, he always has such a picture in his heart: a heroic man with a morbid face."
The evil side of the child's heart is rapidly expanding in the absence of constraints. They hunt wild boar in droves, and even play hunting games with people disguised as "beasts". "Kill him! Kill him! " The children screamed, jumped wildly and struggled desperately, louder and louder, as if some ceremony were being held. Even Ralph can't help but "wring a handful of brown meat that is defenseless at the moment, and the desire to wring it dominates everything."
At this time, the "shadow" of their lowest personality and the most animal nature was vented through this ceremony. The "prey" satisfied their bloodthirsty desire, and they all became "barbarians". Since then, these children have never thought about whether they can be saved. They put all their energy into hunting and are keen on "killing wild boar, cutting its throat and bleeding". This is partly due to the need of survival and partly due to the bloodthirsty animal instinct, which is satisfied from bloody hunting activities.
Simon, bent on finding out the truth, went into the forest and wanted to know what had happened. On the way back, he met a pig's head stuck on a stake by Jack and others, covered with blackfly. This is Lord of the flies. This book describes it like this:
"Suddenly, the pig began to talk to Jack.
What are you doing here alone? Aren't you afraid of me? '
Simon was trembling.
Nobody will help you, only me. I am a wild animal. '
Simon struggled to move his mouth and reluctantly admitted this:
The pig head on the stake. '
Don't think that wild animals can be caught and killed! Pig head said. For a while, there was a funny laugh in the forest and other vague places.
You know quite well, don't you? I am a part of you. Come here! Come here! Am I the reason why things haven't progressed? Why did things come to this? '
Laughter trembled again ... "
In this conversation, King Fly also predicted Simon's unfortunate ending: "Jack, Roger, Morris, Robert, Bill, Piggy and Ralph will kill you."
Here, Simon clearly found that the real "beast" is in the depths of people's hearts and is the appearance of people's original evil and original sin. When he learned that the "beast" on the top of the mountain was actually the body of the pilot, he insisted on going down the mountain to tell everyone the truth. But no one listened to him. He was killed like a wild animal dancing wildly. Everyone, including Ralph, took part in that crazy action. .
Simon's murder is the inevitable result of the vicious development of "shadow" in children's minds, which marks the destruction of children's moral conscience. In their view, snakes, monsters in the water, monsters in the air and even the wild boar they are chasing are all "wild animals". They even turned their evil eyes to Simon and regarded him as a beast, so they killed Simon without scruple and conscience. The depravity of human nature and the loss of independent personality have made these children suffer the deepest blow, and the prediction of "the beast" has been proved.
Because evil is only regarded as something that happens to others or the outside world, it is a "sacred" mission and a fight for "justice". The inner evil quickly evolved into violent action, and a tragic struggle took place among a group of teenagers. Once the violence spreads, it can't be suppressed, and the whole absurd process can't be completed until there is enough blood flow. Soon, the pig also became a "sacrifice" on the altar of the square, and the same fate almost befell Ralph. If not rescued in time, his head will be stuck on a stake like a wild boar.
In a short time, what should have been a "paradise" became a "hell", but it was the children themselves who caused the disaster.
It can be seen that it doesn't really matter what the "beast" who plays that important role in the book is, it just symbolizes the instinctive fear and evil of human beings.
four
1983, william golding won the Nobel Prize in Literature. The Swedish Academy of Literature claims that this is "because his novels illustrate the human condition in today's world with clear realistic narrative art and various myths with universal significance." This sentence accurately interprets the artistic features of Lord of the Flies, that is, the ingenious combination of realistic description and symbolic system. The novel typically shows people's thinking about human nature brought by the post-war disaster, aiming at calling for facing up to "the sad fact of human cruelty and greed" and curing "people's amazing ignorance of their own nature", so as to establish enough awareness of preventing evil human nature.
Golding showed us the epitome of human social disasters. As for the cause of the disaster, he attributed it to the evil of human nature, which led to human misfortune. "Beast" is a symbol of human evil. It is precisely because people can never face up to their sins that tragedies happen again and again. Taking the "innocent" child as the protagonist in people's impression may reveal the most easily concealed and profound side of human nature more deeply. The modern democratic consciousness cultivated by boys in civilized society has experienced a rapid decline in this small island in a short time, and its root lies in the fall of human nature, the disintegration of rational judgment and moral conscience.
Socrates said that "knowing yourself" is still an enlightening wisdom. In the history of human development, human beings' understanding of their own evil is indeed extremely unclear. The most profound thing for a person to know himself is to know his own humanity. As the philosopher Li Ming said, "People who know themselves are nothing more than the human nature of confidants, and those who overcome themselves are nothing more than overcoming the weaknesses of their human nature and suppressing the potential evil thoughts in their human nature."
Ancient western philosophers, especially religious prophets, are vivid representatives of evil human nature. They believe that people are born guilty and need to repent and atone all their lives. Only by believing in God can they be saved, that is, the theory of original sin. The ancient sages in China advocated the idea that human nature is good. Mencius said, "There is nothing wrong with people and water." Wang Yinglin in Song Dynasty summarized it as: "At the beginning of life, human nature is good." People in China and Westerners hold completely opposite views on whether human nature is good or evil. This huge difference in cultural traditions has profoundly affected the completely different development paths and destinies of Chinese and Western cultures for a long time.
How should we know human nature? Philosophers tell us that human nature integrates the following three attributes in an inseparable sense. Namely:
1. the first layer of human nature: biological, partial evil;
2. The second layer of human nature: sociality, both good and evil;
3. The third layer of human nature: spirituality and kindness.
Human nature is inseparable and powerful, and the purpose is to know human nature more accurately. But these three attributes are not the average of 3 13 1, otherwise it is still difficult to distinguish good from evil. Li Ming, a scholar in China, used a hypothetical axiom in his philosophical work "The Double Helix of Human Nature", that is, the older a thing is, the greater its inertia, and the less likely it is to change, and this inertia is directly proportional to the time it has appeared so far. Li Mingyong deduces with a complex mathematical model and draws the conclusion that:
90% of human nature is evil, and only 10% is good!
This is a general estimate of the tendency of good and evil in human nature, and this conclusion can be further proved if we use the method of historical comparison for reasoning. In other words, western scholars' understanding of human nature is basically in line with real human nature, so their understanding of goodness is correspondingly true and effective. China's ancient sages' understanding of human nature is basically wrong, which is inconsistent with the real human nature. Therefore, their view of goodness is wishful thinking, false, invalid and "self-deception". Ancient philosophers in China took the lead in "knowing themselves", so China culture has been in a state of contradiction for more than two thousand years, and can't get out of this strange "situation".
The evil at the biological level of human beings is mainly manifested in the evil in the subconscious. At this level, anyone has a tendency to beggar his neighbor and harm others, that is to say, anyone is born with the potential or tendency to do evil. In social life, as long as people lack external pressure, this potential possibility will become obvious possibility, thus producing real evil consciousness and even evil behavior. This is what we often call "original sin". People's social evil is mainly manifested in the evil of consciousness and the evil of behavior, such as fraud, rape, theft, robbery, murder and so on. Lord of the flies is the best interpretation of human evil. Ralph is in an evil environment, and he gradually realizes that the evil in human heart is threatening and devouring human nature. He and his companions are in a dilemma. Jack and his children keep doing evil, just like animals, but in the end, these animals destroy and devour everyone, dehumanize the children and interact with them. The primitive impulse of human heart has developed infinitely under the guise of sleek and gorgeous, and it has been recognized by more and more people, but what is left for people is only fear, hostility and hatred, and life has evolved into a lawless power struggle. This has changed from evil at the biological level to evil at the social level.
In ancient China, even today, it was never popular to say that human nature was evil or selfish. Yang Zhu said: "Every man for himself, the devil takes the hindmost", which was right, but this view was reviled in 2000 and will never become the dominant thought. Mozi talked about "universal love", while Mencius denounced it as "fatherless", "incurable" and "beast". People in China like to lie, say beautiful words, save face and speak confidently. In fact, it started as early as the Confucius and Mencius era. Imagine what would happen if we preached "self-denial and self-respect", "abstinence" and "even a wise man sometimes nods" in a society composed of people with primitive evils. Only the wicked are in power, while the good suffer indignities and even fear for their lives. As the poet Kosuke Kitajima said, "meanness is the passport of the despicable, and nobility is the epitaph of the noble", which expresses the basic characteristics of China culture. For two thousand years, saints have been praised by China people, but the culture they created is just a fig leaf for rulers to do whatever they want. Until now, some people advocate "new Confucianism" and want their children to continue to "read the Bible". It's really hopeless to hit the south wall and not look back.