context
- personal experiences
- cold war paranioa
- public schools and boy’s behaviour
- coral island
personal experiences
- The novel was first published a decade after the end of the Second Word War
- Golding served in the Royal Navy during the war, including being involved in the Normandy landings on D-Day, and this first-hand experience of the violence humans are capable of stayed with him. The war also provided a very contemporary
example of the dangers of power and of a totalitarian government. - Golding was also a teacher, giving him a real insight into how children act and behave.
cold war paranoia
After the first use of atomic weapons in war at Hiroshima in 1945 it became a very real possibility that in the future the whole world could become engulfed in, and destroyed by, a single conflict. In 1949, the Soviet Union exploded its first A-bomb and the Cold War began. This was an ideological war in which anyone in the US or UKaccused of supporting Communism would be questioned. People became very paranoid as trials of suspected Communists, many of whom were very respected and influential people, became more and more common place.
coral island
Ballantyne’s popular adventure novel tells the story of three shipwrecked children, Ralph, Jack and Peterkin,
enjoying an idyllic and civilised life on a Pacific island. They have exciting adventures, act heroically and always
save the day. Golding references the book twice in his own novel but reverses the morality and tone of the
traditional adventure tale. Golding’s boys don’t encounter evil and overcome it, the evil within themselves is
revealed and consumes them
roger quotes
- “lets have a vote”
- “perhaps we’ll never be rescued”
- “you dont look half a mess”
- “we’ve got plenty of time”
piggy quotes
- “he was shorter than the fair boy and very fat”
- “acting like a crowd of kids”
- “what are we? humans? or animals?”
- “but if you’d stand out of the way he’d hurt (…) me”
- “put green branches on to make smoke”
- “you’ve been rude about his hunters”
jack quotes
- “his specs use them as burning glasses”
- “shut up fatty”
- “dance our dance! come on! dance!”
- “eat damn you”
- “the mask was a thing on its own”
- “kill the pig. cut her throat. bash her in”
ralph quotes
- “they’ll see our smoke”
- “that was simon… that was murder”
- “which is better law and rescue or hunting”
- ” ill give the conch to the next person to speak”
simon quotes
- ” i wanted to go to a place”
- ” maybe its only us”
jack
dictatorship
Ralph
democracy
