Author Biography

William Golding, the author of Lord of the Flies, was born in Saint Columb Minor, Cornwall, England. He attended school at Marlborough Grammar School and later at Brasenose College, Oxford. At the age of 24, he began teaching English and philosophy in Salisbury. In the year of 1940 he briefly left teaching to join the Royal Navy. He published his first novel, Lord of the Flies, in 1954.

Background
Golding's first book, Lord of the Flies, was published after being rejected 21 times. He has fifteen other books published. In 1983, Golding was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was 73 years old at the time. In 1990, a movie of Lord of the Flies was published, bringing attention back to the book. Golding passed away in 1993.

Other Work Written by William Golding

 * The Inheritors  (novel) 1955
 * Pincher Martin  (novel) 1956
 * The Brass Butterfly  (play) 1958
 * Free Fall  (novel) 1959
 * The Spire  (novel) 1964
 * The Hot Gates  (essays) 1965
 * The Pyramid  (novel) 1967
 * The Scorpion God  (three short novels) 1971
 * Darkness Visible  (novel) 1979
 * Rites of Passage  (novel) 1980
 * A Moving Target  (essays and autobiographical pieces) 1982
 * The Paper Men  (novel) 1984
 * An Egyptian Journal  1985
 * Close Quarters  (novel) 1987
 * Fire Down Below  (novel) 1989

Why Lord of the Flies is Significant Today
The novel Lord of the Flies  is essnetially an allegory of the evil within humans beings. It is a social commentrasy, which claims that hatred and malcontent can be inside anyone. As opposed to Swiss philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau's opinion that all humans are born good and pure, Golding believes the opposite. He thinks that all babies and young children are born evil, and that it falls to society to beat it out of their minds. This is a quadry that is still pondered today. Who's philosophy is right? Lord of the Flies offers a good arguement for Golding, depicting the wild and animalistic Jack, and what evil can do when unchecked. Ralph, Piggy, and Simon tried to suppress the "beast" in them all, but ultimately failed. The fact that english classes around the world still analyze this 60 year old book is a testament to the impact it made upon our moral standpoints and ways of thinking.