Lord-of-the-Flies本科毕业论文.doc

本 科 毕 业 论 文 题 目: Recession from Civilization to Savageryin Lord of the Flies姓 名: 聂 霞 学 号: 20070540020 系 别: 外 国 语 学 院 专 业: 英 语 年 级: 2007 级 1 班 指导教师: 王 琪 2011年4月ContentsAbstract2Introduction3I. Brief Introduction to Lord of the Flies and Its Background3A. Brief Introduction to the Story3B. Introduction to the Background4II. Manifestation of the Recession from Civilization to Savagery7A. The Conch Shell7B. The Fire8C. The Beast8III. Reasons for the Recession from Civilization to Savagery9A. The Terror in the Human Hearts9B. The Scramble for Leadership10IV. Revelation from Lord of the Flies10Conclusion13Notes14Bibliography15Acknowledgements16Abstract: William Goldings Lord of the Flies presents the dark side of human nature through the experiences of a group of children cast away on a desert island. Free from the rules that the adult society has formerly imposed on them, the boys struggled with the conflicting human instincts that exist within each of them-the instinct to work toward civilization and order and the instinct to descend into savagery and violence. In the end, the evil overwhelmed the good, savagery defeated civilization. This paper analyzes how good was defeated by evil and what caused the recession from civilization to savagery.Key Words: William Golding; Lord of the Flies; civilization; savagery摘要：威廉戈尔丁的小说蝇王通过描写一群孩子在一个荒岛上的经历展现了人性黑暗的一面。脱离了成人社会强加给他们的规则，这群孩子与存在于他们每个人心中相互冲突的本能斗争着努力维持文明和秩序的本能与堕落到野蛮和暴力的本能。最后，邪恶压倒了正义，野蛮打败了文明。这篇论文将分析正义是如何被打败的以及导致文明退化到野蛮的原因。关键词：威廉戈尔丁；蝇王；文明；野蛮Recession from Civilization to Savageryin Lord of the FliesIntroductionA group of children were cast away on a desert island, at first they could get along well with each other and their group was just like a social system which worked pretty well. However, because of the instinct to descend into savagery and violence gradually grew in some of them, the original civilization and reason were overwhelmed. Ralph and Jack represented two opposite sides, which became the main contradiction of this novel. Ralph symbolizes democracy and science while Jack, savagery and tyranny. When the two sides conflicted with each other, the former was defeated by the latter. The novel forced us to face the old topic-human nature and to think about the source of the evil of human nature.I. Brief Introduction to Lord of the Flies and Its BackgroundA. Brief Introduction to the StoryIn the nuclear war, a plane carried a group of boys from the south toward the evacuation of the United Kingdom. The aircraft was attacked, so it had to conduct to a forced landing on a deserted Pacific coral island. These children were temporarily absent from the civilized world. No aircraft, no adults, a lot of hard work. Human civilization was at stake. The conditions of the island were appalling, but to the lucky children who survived, a greater threat is the danger from themselves. In the absence of adults, the children began to live on the island. Ralph was a 12-year-old son of British naval commander, better educated, with elegant manners and optimistic self-confidence, believed they could be saved by the ship from the civilized world. He used the conch to organize the scattered children throughout the island and then was elected the plenary session leader. Children under the leadership of Ralph picked fruits and lit the fire to wait for help. At first the children on the isolated island lived in harmony and life was also enjoyable for them, but with the emergence of the beast the small islands peace was broken. The children were soon separated into two factions: one headed by Ralph who insisted that order should be established on the island as it is in the civilized society, such as the requirements of urine in the designated locations, raising ones hand when they want to speak at a meeting, a fire being always lit on the beach as a signal for help. The other was headed by the choir leader Jack, who scoffed at the practice of democracy and upheld the original evil of human nature as well as the instinct of destruction. Jack was pretentious and was very dissatisfied with Ralph, the elected leader. He was assigned to go hunting. After killing a wild boar, he inserted its head on the pickets and forced other children to follow the example of barbarians into colorful face painting. They surrounded the wild boar to have a carnival and totally forgot they were asked to keep the fire on, thus losing a valuable opportunity to be saved. Later, more and more children joined this group. Away from the norms of human civilization and its constraints, these children underwent an unprecedented release of their evil nature so that they gradually fell into the abyss of the evil. In order to win the leadership Jack attacked Ralphs shack. In the fierce fighting, Piggy, the best friend of Ralph died in the melee. Simon was killed by the indiscriminately sticks and Ralph himself was plunged into a tight encirclement. The boys killed each other, the entire harmony of this island turned into a terror. The group headed by Jack set a fire to burn this island in order to search Ralph, and then the whole island was soon burst into a blaze. Just at this critical moment, a British warship upon the ocean discovered this island and saved these boys. Ralph finally realized his desire of being rescued, but he was so sad for the fallen human nature of his companions that he started crying.B. Introduction to the Background Sir William Golding composed Lord of the Flies shortly after the end of WWII. At the time of the novels composition, Golding, who had published an anthology of poetry nearly two decades earlier, had been working for a number of years as a teacher and training as a scientist. Golding drew extensively on his scientific background for his first narrative work. The novels plot, in which a group of English boys stranded on a deserted island struggle to develop their own society, is a social and political thought-experiment using fiction. The story of their attempts at civilization and devolution into savagery and violence puts the relationship between human nature and society under a literary microscope. Goldings allusions to human evolution also reflect his scientific training. The characters discover fire, craft tools, and form political and social systems in a process that recalls theories of the development of early man, a topic of much interest among many peoples including the mid-century Western public. The culmination of the plot in war and murder suggests that Goldings overarching hypothesis about humanity is pessimistic, that is, there are anarchic and brutal instincts in human nature. Ordered democracy or some other regime is necessary to contain these instincts. As an allegory about human nature and society, Lord of the Flies draws upon Judeo-Christian mythology to elaborate on the novels sociological and political hypothesis. The title has two meanings, both charged with religious significance. The first is a reference to a line from King Lear, As flies to wanton boys, are we to gods.1 The second is a reference to the Hebrew name Baalzevuv, or in its Greek form Beelzebub, which translates to God of the Flies and is synonymous with Satan. For Golding however, the satanic forces that compel the shocking events on the island come from within the human psyche rather than from an external, supernatural realm as they do in Judeo-Christian mythology. Golding thus employs a religious reference to illustrate a Freudian concept: the Id, the amoral instinct that governs the individuals sense of sheer survival, is by nature evil in its amoral pursuit of its own goals.The Lord of the Flies, that is, the pigs head on a stick, directly challenges the most spiritually motivated character on the island, Simon, who functions as a prophet-martyr for the other boys. Published in 1954 early in the Cold War, Lord of the Flies is firmly rooted in the sociopolitical concerns of its era. The novel alludes to the Cold War conflict between liberal democracy and totalitarian communism. Ralph represents the liberal tradition, while Jack, before he succumbs to total anarchy, represents the kind of military dictatorship that, for mid-century America and Great Britain, characterized the communist system. It is also notable that Golding sets the novel in what appears to be a future human reality, one that is in crisis after atomic war. Goldings novel capitalizes on public paranoia surrounding the atom bomb which, due to the arms race of the Cold War, was at a high. Goldings negative depiction of Jack, who represents an anti-democratic political system, and his suggestion of the reality of atomic war, present the novel as a gesture of support for the Western position in the Cold War.In addition to science, mythology, and the sociopolitical context of the Cold War, Lord of the Flies was heavily influenced by previous works of speculative fiction. In particular, Goldings novel alludes to R. M. Ballantynes 1857 The Coral Island, which tells the story of three boys stranded on a desert island. Golding, who found Ballantynes interpretation of the situation naive and improbable, probably intended Lord of the Flies to be an indirect critique of The Coral Island. Golding preserves the names of two of Ballantynes characters, Ralph and Jack, to force the two texts into deeper comparison. While the boys of Coral Island spend their time having pleasant adventures, Goldings characters battle hunger, loneliness, and the deadly consequences of political conflict after they are deserted. The pessimistic character of Goldings story reflects the authors emphasis on the necessity of democratic civilization. Critics also have noted the relationship between Lord of the Flies and Joseph Conrads canonical 1902 Heart of Darkness, which follows a soldiers excursion into marginal African civilizations. Reflecting some biases, Heart of Darkness depicts these parts of Africa as places where social order is absent and anarchy rules, breeding death and disorder; the novel sees the same problem as an issue within the individual human soul.2Like Conrads work, Goldings novel emphasizes the brutal and violent human impulses that arise in the absence of political order. Lord of the Flies, with its dystopian and speculative characteristics, established Golding as a solid author with an interest in the science-fiction literary genre that was popular in the 1950s. The novel depicts ostensibly realistic characters, but the plot, which follows a small group of humans isolated within an alien landscape, employs or alludes to the conventions of popular science fiction novels of the time. Goldings subsequent works saw him moving even further into the science fiction genre. The Inheritors, heavily influenced by H. G. Wellss Outline of History, imagines life during the dawn of man and is considered a modern classic of speculative fiction. Lord of the Flies was not an instant success, selling fewer than 3,000 copies before going out of print in 1955. Shortly thereafter, however, the novel became a bestseller among American and British readers who, as the arms race intensified, likely saw in Goldings wartime dystopia a grim prediction of their own future. By the 1960s the novel was required reading for many high school and college courses, where it has remained to the present day. The enduring popularity of the novel inspired two film adaptations, one by Peter Brook in 1963, and the second by Harry Hook in 1990. Goldings original novel, however, remains the best-known version of the tale. In 2005, Time Magazine named the novel one of the 100 best English-language novels since 1923.A continuing controversy surrounding the political message of the novel and its view of human nature has led some readers to challenge its status as a book suitable for children. The American Library Association thus positioned Lord of the Flies at number 70 on its list of the 100 most challenged books of 1990-2000. Among literary critics of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, however, Lord of the Flies has been revisited less as an allegory of human evil than as a literary expression of Cold War ideology. This historicizing does not do justice to the novel. But in terms of reception history, contemporary critics are right to note that the novels position at the center of many English curricula across America and Great Britain during the Cold War illustrates how the pedagogy of literature has been used to bolster national identity and ideology.II. Manifestation of the Recession from Civilization to SavageryA. The Conch Shell With the early discovery of the conch came the first symbolic use of the shell, as it before all else symbolized the rise of civilization on the island. When the plane crashed and Ralph and Piggy find themselves on an island engulfed by vacuity they decided to stroll around the island in a quest to find others. In their short travels they came across a conch shell lying near a platform. Right away a symbolic characteristic was pointed out as Piggy warns Ralph as he went to pick up the shell:Careful! Youll break it-3 This comment made by Piggy, which appeared only to point out the delicacy of the conch, actually showed the fragility of civilization, and how one wrong move could shatter it. They decided to use the shells cacophony to summon any others who have been placed on the island by the plane crash. At this point in the story the conch shell brought together a group of diversity and assuaged their differences to create order. The conch shell, being discovered when the boys come to populate the island, also represented the creation of a key factor to its symbolic parallel or civilization, population. Later the boys decided that a persons right to speak at their meetings was contingent on their possession of the conch at that time. This furthers the conchs role in upholding civilization on the island as it helps to maintain order and peace. However, later the children were divided into two separate tribes. When the focus of the story is turned to the tribe without the conch they are referred to as savages, are always in a state of machination, and dont appear to have any order. This displays that where the conch is, civilization exists, and those who are without the conch live without civility. In the process of asking his glasses back with Ralph, Piggy was killed by Jacks tribe. The conch ended up shattered so that any signs of civilization that may have been left disappear at that moment. This suggests that civilization was defeated by savagery.B. The Fire In this story, the fire is the hope of being saved and also the symbol of civilization. Ralph repeatedly emphasized the importance of it, and required the other children to keep it on. However, the kids who were supposed to guard the fire were asked by Jack to go hunting a wild boar with him, thus leading to the fire out. Therefore they lost a chance of being saved by a ship passing by. It indicates that the fire of civilization was out. At that time Jacks tribe had already become savages, they were eating the boar and having savage dancing, while Ralph, who was supposed to blame Jack of causing the fire out, could not resist his appetite but ate the boar with them. We know Jack is a symbol of savagery and Ralph a symbol of civilization, so here was a compromise of civilization with savagery.The fire which should be used as a signal for being rescued was employed by Jack as a mere means of cooking food. From this we can see the function of civilization degenerate into the simplest way of just satisfying human appetite.C. The Beast The story of the beast” was first told by a boy with a birthmark, who saw something like a snake walking in the woods. Therefore the seeds of terror grew in the hearts of the children. Simon went to the woods alone after being separated from Ralph and came to his favorite wooded glade. Then he began to think about the meaning of life and what had happened on this island. Later just at this place, he witnessed the cruelty of the group of people headed by Jack. They killed a wild boar and inserted its head on the pickets as an oblation to the beast, and then ran away hastily.Facing the head of the wild boar which was covered with flies, Simon faintly heard a voice coming from the bottom of his heart, said:You knew, didnt you? Im part of you? Close, close, close! Im the reason why its no go? Why things are what they are?(Lord of the Flies, 80) Yes, the head of the wild boar was the lord of the flies, which symbolized evil and savagery. Simon gradually realized the truth that evil came from people themselves, from the darkest side of their heart. Climbing on the top of the hill where the children thought was the habitation of the beast, Simon saw the decayed body of a paratrooper dangling with the parachute which was hung on the rock in the wind. Although the beast was horrible, it was harmless. After realizing that, Simon was anxious to inform everybody of the truth. From the top of the hill he could see the kids doing something around the fire. Jack and other boys were eating the pork by the fire. Later, they began to have a carnival with singing and dancing. Simon stumbled out of the woods and ran toward them, only to be surrounded by this group of people and be regarded as the beast. With extreme terror and craziness, they screamed and shouted:Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood! Do him in!(Lord of the Flies, 85) They killed Simon by their teeth, their hands as wel