How World Wars Influenced William Golding's Beliefs and Work

During the first half of the 20th century, war was a huge factor in the whole world, World War I and II was in effect. It killed millions: 25% of the people were unemployed, and people were losing their homes. Since people went through these horrible events, they were traumatized. So it would not be hard for someone to change their ways due to experiencing these devastating wars. William Golding, a famous author, was alive during these wars, which clearly affected him in his novel Lord of the Flies. The allegory in William Golding's Lord of the Flies reveals that he believes people can easily go from civility to savagery, meaning even the “innocent” can become evil. Golding hates war as it is evil and nothing good comes from it.

William Golding shows his beliefs on war in many ways throughout Lord of the Flies. He does not like war. He continues to show the cause and effects of war on the island, and the knowledge he has from his experience with World War I and World War II. Piggy and Simon, both good and civil characters, die because of the evil brought out in the characters during their “war”. Golding experiences desperation in his country, the United Kingdom. War brought his country destruction, such as bombings, attacks, death, and even rationing of food. William Golding uses Jack to show his views on war. Jack starts to only want to hunt, hunting is the main purpose of being on the island to him. He is representing Golding's thoughts on war show because Jack starts obsessing to hunt and kill pigs, so Golding represents the evil in people once they start to get a taste of taking a life, they mentally change which is what happens to Jack when he killed his first pig. This lead to destruction and even missing their chance to be saved. He takes the boys to go hunting meaning no one was watching the fire so it goes out, which ironically is when a boat had passed the island and the group lost all hope for survival. So all of this shows that the want for death and “war” have all negative impacts on people and the group was eventually ruined by Jack's actions, and they fully lose their chance of survival.

Golding believes in the process of civility to savagery. Golding had pulled through a lot in this book that people can easily go from a civil human being to a savage with the right influences. He shows how the group had order and laws on the island when they first arrived, to having fires and killing of others in a just short amount of time. Goldings play on trying to keep order on the island when having troubles like the beast, to show just how easily people can change. Order was brought through the conch, it symbolized order, and the conch is what keeps the group together. The boys decide that it whoever holds the conch speaks everyone agreed and this was a sign of civility and rational thinking. So as the conch breaks Ralph’s last hope for the restoration of civility goes with it. The whole group lost a part of themselves when they fatally beat Simon to death thinking that he was the beast. They all were caught up in their chant that they lost touch of who they truly were and even what their doing. Just by a song, it turned them into something terrible. This event may have been a representation of Goldings past in the navy. Golding had helped bring down the Bismarck, gan enemy ship, during World War I. So he felt like that was a side of him he would’ve never thought would come out but it did and he expressed the effect through this event in Lord of the flies.

Lastly Golding believes that even the “innocent” can become evil. Some of the ways he shows this is through the fact that he used children instead of adults. Children are seen as more innocent and sweet, not capable of killing another or even starting fires. His use of children shows that he believes everyone is capable of evil or savagery, you can become savage even at a young age. The character, Roger, represents a child “who kept to himself with avoidance and secrecy”. He came off to everyone as a quiet and civil character, but in reality he is just as bad as Jack. They both think it’s fun to hunt and kill things or fun to hurt people. Once Roger was exposed to Jack’s ways, he wanted to be just like him, or even worse. Another character was Maurice. Maurice was a good child when they had first arrived on the island. But like Roger his ways had changed because he just wanted to fit in. Even though he did know what he is doing is wrong, he didn’t stop his actions to be a better person, so he still turned into an uncivil character. His loss of civility was shown when he helped Jack kick over the littluns sandcastles as something to be fun and amusing.These were just a couple of characters out of the many that had lost their touch of innocence and civil ways because of a “leader” like Jack.

In conclusion, Golding's experience with World War I and II have affected him in such a way that he hates war and has evolved to believe that even the innocent can become evil. He shows this through characters and events throughout his book to prove the allegorical meaning.