Hela Laadhari 1

Generic Features of William Goldings Lord of the Flies and Readers Expectations

Interpretations and understanding of the text are heavily affected by the genre(s) the reader

(or critic) detects or chooses to read within its frame. It is a kind of pre-setting device, which

predisposes the reader to approach a text in a particular way (Black 37). Daniel Chandler

asserts that ...the assignment of a text to a genre influences how the text is read. Genre

constrains the possible ways in which a text is interpreted, guiding readers of a text toward a

preferred reading (which is normally in accordance with the dominant ideology) (8,

emphasis original). The readers identification of specific generic features in the text will also

bring into his/her mind other works associated with that genre. Previously stored responses

act like a guide according to which assumptions and expectations of the new are built. Jauss

links all these elements in the following statement:

[A literary work] awakens memories of that which was already read, brings the reader

to a specific emotional attitude, and with its beginning arouses expectation for the

middle and end, which can be maintained intact or altered, reoriented, or even

fulfilled ironically in the course of the reading according to specific rules of the genre

or type of the text. (Toward an Aesthetic of Reception 23)

Readers expectations are not always met in the work. However, this does not block text

understanding: The framework of the genre can be seen as offering default expectation

which acts as a starting point for interpretation rather than a straitjacket (Chandler 8). The

literary work usually contains the traits of more than one genre. The following part examines

different generic conventions in LF and how the readers expectations are affected.
 Hela Laadhari 2

The work contains features of Adventure novel convention. Adventure novel removes adults

from the world of the novel; sets the actions in another time and place; establishes a strong

relationship between the hero and another character and they all struggle to survive the

dangers they face (Olsen 91-95). The protagonist is expected to have natural leadership

ability, combined with intuitive skills at interpreting danger and discovering solutions

(Saricks 18). Adventure hero can be divided into two kinds: Superhero and one of us figure

with flaws probably shared with the audience (Cawelti 40). The ending is generally happy or

at least it satisfies the reader: Good triumphs over evil, missions are accomplished and the

hero and his group are safe.

LF sets the actions on a different time (future) and place (an island in the Pacific). But

violation, though not visible, starts from chapter one onward. Ralph and Piggy are made

quasi-friends. Ralph tries to ignore him even before knowing his nickname that he reveals

to the group. In fact, he never asks him about his real name. He does not defend him when the

group pinch his glasses in the second chapter or when Jack hits him in the forth. Ironically, it

is only at the end that Ralph weeps for the death of his friend who is supposed not to die.

The boys regression to savagery, the murders of Simon and Piggy, the burning of the island

and the attempt to kill Ralph, make the ending bitter even though the naval officer (whose

world is burnt by a nuclear war) rescues them. It is worth mentioning that ...adventure is

about killing, conquering, dominating other people and countries or about building up

hierarchies and empire of power (Green, Seven Types of Adventure Tale: An Etiology of a

Major Genre, 28, my emphasis). The subversion here is that violence (which seems to be

unconsciously accepted if it is directed toward the others) is now directed toward the boys

themselves because they feel the otherness of each other. This is explicitly mentioned when

the twins are captured by Jacks tribe. Since they are not part of the tribe yet, the tribe feels

the otherness of Samneric (Golding, LF,179). The only outsider left is Ralph whom they
 Hela Laadhari 3

chase. He survives, not as a result of his planning, but by chance. Though he is one of us

figure, he does not make good decisions. For instance, he gave Jack too much power by

keeping the whole choir (most of the big boys ) under his supervision in chapter one. He eats

meat with the boys in chapter four after losing their opportunity to be saved because of

hunting (he should have refused their meat to show how wrong they were). Going to the

mountain at night to see the beast (the parachutists dead body) has devastating consequences

(shrinking of the group and heightened fear which led them to savagery).

To celebrate adventure, says Martin Green, was to celebrate empire, and vice versa

(Dream of Adventure, Deeds of Empire 37). Therefore, the violation of Adventure

conventions expected can be seen as a criticism of the empire (which was already fading at

Goldings time). He asserts that ...Novels like / Lord of the Flies attacks our complacent

expansiveness (Seven Types of Adventure Tale: An Etiology of a Major Genre 25-26). The

sense of the boys domination is expressed when they explore the island: This belongs to us

(Golding, LF, 29). The narrator emphasises this by saying: they savoured the right of

domination (29). As the narrative moves forward, one sees how they destroy their land.

The beginning of the novel establishes the readers expectation of a typical Desert Island

novel (which is a subgenre of Adventure novel). Golding regards Coral Island morality as

unrealistic, says Samuel Hynes and therefore not truly moral, and he used it ironically in

his own novel, as a foil for his own version of mans moral nature in a way that one might

say that Lord of the Flies is a refutation of Coral Island (7-8). The text explicitly mentions

R. M. Ballantynes Desert Island novel Coral Island twice: In the second chapter when the

boys expect to have fun on the island and on the last page when the naval officer comes

(Golding, LF, 35, 202). By means of a plane crash, the boys are casted on a deserted tropical

island and are supposed to use their knowledge, values and available resources to establish

order and civilization- which they do in the beginning. After all, were not savages. Were
 Hela Laadhari 4

English, says Jack, and the English are best at everything (42). They form a small

government with Ralph as the chief, Jack as head of the hunters/army and the little boys as

the subjects. They all put laws. The island is their state since it is roughly boat-shaped (the

boat is a common metaphor for the state) (29). They use Piggys glasses to light the fire

which becomes a signal and they take a simple conch and turn it into a calling device that

symbolises order. They hunted pigs, the meat of which becomes valuable because, unlike

fruits, only the big boys (the hunters) can gain through their labour and experience. Desert

Island stories are also referred to as a Robinson Crusoe novel or a Robinsonade (because it is

modelled after Daniel Defoes Robinson Crusoe). The ...[Robinsonade] story was thought to

demonstrate the way an entrepreneur created value- out of inert raw materials and the

mindless labour he employed (Green, Seven Types of Adventure Tale, 60, emphasis

original). When reading ...the Robinson story made each reader feel the excitement and

nobility of work or putting something to use, especially something that had hitherto had no

use (60).

Apparently, the only thing left for the reader is to anticipate the arrival of the savages and

pirates who do not appear yet. Golding subverts the images of civilised British boys, innocent

children and blood thirsty savages by mixing them all producing savage British boys. In this

way the readers (and perhaps the boys themselves) get their savages but in an odd way. The

pirates also are expected to come to the island. Surprisingly, the only ship that noticed the

boys fire was British. The navy officer seems to replace the pirate. The image of the pirates

ship which is similar to the navys ship is present in Ballantynes Coral Island (in the

beginning of chapter twenty-two). When taken by the pirates Ralph Rover, was surprised by

the neatness of the ships deck and sails: The standing and running rigging was in the most

perfect order and the sails white as snow. In short, everything, from the single narrow red

stripe on her low black hull to the trucks on her tapering masts, evinced an amount of care
 Hela Laadhari 5

and strict discipline that would have done credit to a ship of the Royal Navy (Ballantyne

160).

While the Coral Island is associated with fun (for the reader, the boys in Golding LF and the

naval officer), it is turned upside down in Goldings novel. In the beginning of Ballantynes

work, Ralph Rover addresses the readers saying If there is any boy or man who loves to be

melancholy and morose, and who cannot enter with kindly sympathy into the regions of fun,

let me seriously advise him to shut my book and put it away. It is not meant for him(2). Fun

becomes dangerous in LF because it is mixed with fear. Goldings boys are afraid of many

things on the island among which are ghosts (except rational Piggy). Ballantynes boys were

different in their reaction: when they hear a strange sound at night they have this

conversation:

Very strange said Peterkin, quite gravely. "Do you believe in ghosts, Ralph?"

No, I answered, I do not. Nevertheless I must confess that strange, unaccountable

sounds, such as we have just heard, make me feel a little uneasy.

What say you to it, Jack?

I neither believe in ghosts nor feel uneasy, he replied. "I never saw a ghost

myself... (Ballantyne 57)

After this, they continue their activities unhindered. It seems that Golding considers this as

unrealistic since boys cast alone on an island would be frightened. He shows the reader what

fear can make when combined with the loss of controlling authority and protection (such as

school, parents or teacher). The reader does not have to know Ballantynes Coral Island to

understand LF. If the reader knows Coral Island, his or her perspective and understanding

will be enriched.
 Hela Laadhari 6

By setting the novel in the future, it can be considered as a science fiction that provides the

reader with the hypothesis: what would happen-if situation (Hynes 7). Golding used a real

historical event related to WWII. In Sept. 1st , 1939, the British government started to

evacuate between 1 and 1.5 million people primarily children, pregnant women, the blind

and others (Olsen 167). He imagined what will happen to them if they were isolated from

the world which will be destroyed by a nuclear war. He used the genre as a way by which

contemporary issues are approached and analysed (Hamdan Ideas in Science Fiction).

Golding has used the science-fiction convention of setting his actions in the future, thus

substituting the eventually probable for the immediate actual in a way that will protect his

fable from literalistic judgement of details or of credibility (Hynes 6). Kenneth Marsalek

states that the use of science-fiction has many advantages such as broaden[ing] our

perspective, preparing us for the future as a future-shock prevention literature and

warning by exposing us to potential horrors such as nuclear and environmental catastrophes

(39). He adds that Readers of science fiction are exposed to the dilemmas of new

technologies and revised social norms and their moral implications long before they become

reality (39). However, Adam Roberts sees that SF [Science- Fiction] uses the trappings of

fantasy to explore again age-old issues; or, to be put in another way, the chief mode of

science fiction is not prophecy, but nostalgia (33, emphasis original). This holds true if one

considers nostalgia to the Empire and Adam and Eve lives before the Fall. One also marks

the boys nostalgia to their own old lives in the adult world, before the nuclear bombing.

Ralph at the end of the novel remembers the joy and glamour of the first day of exploring the

island. Roberts also asserts that Science- Fiction is about the encounter with the Other and

with difference (26). He points to the main difficulty of the encounter with difference: the

difficulty of representing the Other without losing touch with the familiar and without

falling into stereotypes (26). The boys have an encounter with their Other selves on the
 Hela Laadhari 7

island. Despite the fact that almost all of the critics agree that LF is an adventure novel or a

desert island novel that parodies the Coral Island, they assigned the work to other genres and

modes as well such as science-fiction, fable, parable, allegory and symbolic novel. In this

way they imply that the work means more than it tells.

Hynes states that Golding himself has called his books both myth and fables, but he sees

that ...neither of them is quite satisfactory, because both imply a degree of abstraction and

element of the legendary that Goldings novels simply do not have (4). The fable is a story

with a moral lesson which is usually explicit at the end. The moral acts like a summarising

statement. It is intended to teach a lesson and instruct the reader. The plot is usually

superficial with no or little descriptions (Goldings novel is full of detailed descriptions). The

main characters are talking animals with human traits. The title usually consists of the names

of the main characters. They are flat characters (LF characters are round and develop

throughout the novel). The actions of the fable should swiftly lead to the moral at the end.

Each character has a symbolic value and may represent one feature of human nature. The

writer will have more freedom at pointing to human nature without referring to real persons.

To assign LF to Fable convention is an implicit assumption that the writer has deliberately

written the whole narrative in order to convey a lesson. Golding says in his essay Fable:

The fabulist is a moralist. He cannot make a story without a human lesson tucked away in it

(Golding, The Hot Gates and Other Occasional Pieces, 85).

John Peter was among the first critics to classify Goldings works (LF, The inheritors and

Christopher Martin) as fables in his essay The Fables of William Golding. Bernard F. Dick

says that this essay is The first important critical essay on Golding in America (and one

which [Golding] especially likes), notable for its distinction between fable and fiction

(Dick 113). Peter sees that fables, unlike fiction, always give the impression that they were

preceded by the conclusion which its function to draw (Peter 577) He draws the readers
 Hela Laadhari 8

attention to the fact that Goldings use of Coral Island twice is meant to represent the world

of adults in terms of small boys (582). In one of the boys meetings, Simon says what I

mean... maybe its only us in relation to the beast. (Golding, LF, 89). Peter sees this as one

of many other elements that mark the novels over-explicitness:

This over- explicitness is my main criticism of what is in many ways a real distinction, and

for two reasons it appears to be a serious one. In the first place the fault is precisely that

which any fable is likely to incur: the incomplete translation of its thesis into its story so that

much remains external and extrinsic, the tellers assertion rather than the tales enactment

before our eyes. In the second place, the fault is a persistent one, and cannot be discounted or

ignored. It appears in expository annotations. (Peter 585)

He also dislikes the final statement as it imposes serious, though not decisive limitation on a

fiery and disturbing story and that he comments too badly on the issues he has raised)

(585). Despite the many faults he revealed in LF, he sees that Golding ha[s] done more for

the modern British novel than any of the recent novelists who have emerged. More, it may

be, than all of them (592). LF is also a parable. A story with a moral is considered as a fable

or a parable. If Lord of the Flies is one of the main characters then it is a fable. If the head is

disregarded and the main characters are purely human, it is a parable.

Many critics agree that the novel is also an allegory. However, they differed on the nature of

this allegory which can be seen as an allegory of good and evil, of war, or even of human

psychology (Ralph as the Ego, Piggy as Super Ego and Jack or the beast as the Id). In terms

of the allegorys meaning, the meaning of the book depends on the meaning of the beast

(Hynes 12). However, Samuel Hynes considers the novel not as an allegory but as a symbolic

novel. He explains the difference by saying that: In considering the meaning of Lord of the

Flies, one cannot therefore stop at an examination of charactermeaning must emerge from
 Hela Laadhari 9

character in action (12). The difference is that when one wants to understand the allegorical

novel one takes into consideration the character itself and looks for its meaning, while for the

symbolic novel one takes into consideration the action of the character rather than the

character alone. Allegory as an extended metaphor cannot be separated from symbolism.

Allegory is a set of symbols working together. Symbolism consists of many objects

(symbols) each of which can be seen in isolation from the other as long as the reader

understands their meaning in the narrative. Allegorical figures have a stronger interconnected

relationship and they cannot be understood in isolation.

 Hela Laadhari 10

Works Cited List

Primary Source:

Golding, William. Lord of the Flies. Ed. E. L. Epstein. New York: The Barkley Publishing,

1954. Print.

Secondary Sources:

Ballantyne, Robert Michael. The Coral Island: A Tale of the Pacific Ocean. Berman:

Salzwasser-Verlag, 2010. Print.

Black, Elisabeth. Pragmatic Stylistics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh U P, 2006. Print.

Cawelti, John G. Adventure, Mystery, and Romance: Formula Stories as Art and Popular

Culture. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1976. 39-40. Print.

Chandler, Daniel. An Introduction to Genre Theory. 1997. Web PDF. 5 Dec. 2013.

<http://faculty.washington.edu/farkas/HCDE510-

Fall2012/Chandler_genre_theoryDFAnn.pdf >

Golding, William. The Hot Gates and Other Occasional Pieces. New York: Harcourt, Brace

& World, 1966. 85. Print.

Green, Martin. Dream of Adventure, Deeds of Empire. New York: Basic, 1979. Print.

---. Seven Types of Adventure Tale: An Etiology of a Major Genre.Pennsylvania:

Pennsylvania State U, 1991. Print.

Hamdan, Shahizah Ismail, Ravichandran Vengadasamy, Noraini Md Yusof, and Ruzy Suliza

Hashim. "Ideas in Science Fiction: Probing Contemporary Contexts through Science

Fiction Texts." Asian Social Science 8.4 (2012): 153-158. Print.

 Hela Laadhari 11

Hynes, Samuel. William Golding. 2nded. New York: Columbia U P, 1968. Print. Columbia

Essays on Modern Writers 2. Seri.2.

Jauss, Hans Robert. Toward an Aesthetic of Reception. Tran. Timothy Bathi. Ed. Paul de

Man. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1982. Print.

Marsalek, Kenneth. "Humanism, Science Fiction, and Fairy Tales." Free Inquiry 15.3

(Summer 1995): 39-42. Print.

Olsen, Kirstin. Understanding Lord of the Flies: A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and

Historical Documents. Westport: Greenwood, 2000. Print. Literature in Context Seri.

Roberts, Adam. Science Fiction. London: Routlegde-Tylor and Francis, 2000. Print.

Saricks, Joyce G. The Readers Advisory Guide to Genre Fiction. 2nd ed. N.p: American

Library Association, 2009. 15-34. Print.American Library Association Readers

Advisory Seri.