Lord of the Flies The fragment presents the scene in which Ralph is hunted William Golding (1911-1993) William

William Gerald Golding was born in the village

by his former friends. They behave like complete savages now, being even Saint Columb Minor in Cornwall, England, as the son of a suffragette and of a
referred to as such by him. They beat drums and cry ululations and hunt him schoolmaster who had radical political convictions and who strongly believed in
as if he were a beast. Ralph’s thoughts are rendered in free indirect style, science. He was educated at the Marlborough Grammar School, where his father
everything being presented as it appears to him. At the beginning, he has the taught, and later at Brasenose College, Oxford, where he studied natural sciences
power to still think of his pursuers and to reason, but towards the end of the and English literature. He preferred the latter, although his parents would have liked
fragment his terror reaches a climax. He “becomes fear”, his legs seem to no him to become a scientist. Golding’s first book, a collection of Poems, appeared in
longer belong to him, while those that hunt him are no longer represented as 1934, a year before he received his B.A. His first novel was Lord of the Flies
human beings, but as “the cry that pursued him”. Lord of the Flies can be (1954). His other works include: • novels: The Inheritors (1955), Pincher Martin
read as a novel of initiation as well, but unlike others of the kind, it (1965), The Spire (1964), The Pyramid (1967), Darkness Visible (1979), Rites of
concentrates not on a single character, but on a whole group. However, of all Passage (1980) and its two sequels Close Quarters (1987) and Fire Down Below
the boys, it is only Ralph who undergoes the process, the others remaining (1989), The Paper Men (1984); • theater and radio plays: The Brass Butterfly
unchanged. It is worth mentioning here that the boys who seem to be already (1958), Break My Heart (radio play, 1962) • essays, included in the volumes: The
initiated, i.e. those who have knowledge superior to the others, namely Piggy Hot Gates (1965), A Moving Target (1982).
and Simon, pay this knowledge with their lives. Piggy is the one that serves
as a mentor to Ralph, giving him advice and suggestions, though he is in
some respects inferior to him and they have about the same age. Among the
symbols in the book we should mention first of all the characters: Ralph and
Piggy represent order and democracy, Jack stands for savagery and anarchy,
Roger (a younger, very cruel supporter of Jack’s) is a symbol of evil, while,
in opposition to him, Simon stands for pure goodness, being the Christ
figure. The island is a microcosm representing the world, Piggy’s glasses
and the conch stand for social order, the beast is the dark side of human
nature, the evil within everyone, while Lord of the Flies is the devil. Lord of
the Flies can also be given a psychological interpretation, in which the three
main characters, Ralph, Jack and Piggy correspond to the three levels of the
human psyche: the ego (the consciousness), the id (the instincts) and the
superego (cultural values, rules of conduct, ideals). On another level, the
four main characters represent the four cosmic elements and the four
humours: Ralph can be associated with fire, energy, discipline, reason, Piggy
with earth, intelligence and perseverance, Simon with air, devotion, courage,
generosity, and Jack with water, blood, evil, death

Salman Rushdie (1947 - ) Salman Rushdie was born in Bombay (now Mumbai) on June 19,
1947, almost two months before India gained her independence from Britain. His parents were
devout Muslims, and Salman grew up a believer in the Islamic faith. After the partition of India
and Pakistan, many of his relatives moved to Pakistan, but his parents chose to remain in
Bombay, where Salman could receive a British education. The Rushdies were wealthy (the head
of the family was a Cambridge-educated businessman), and Salman had a privileged childhood,
spent unaware of the misery near his home, in the fascinating imaginary world of his favourite
book Arabian Nights. He was the only son and the oldest of the four children. Consequently, he
was treated like a little prince, which spoiled him, but at the same time made him believe that he
had a special role to play in the world. At 14, his childhood dreams were contradicted by the
harsher reality. He went to England to attend Rugby School and had to deal with being
considered an inferior both by his colleagues and by his teachers. He started writing to let his
emotions go and even started considering writing as a profession. In 1968 Rushdie graduated
with a Master of Arts in history with honors, and again returned to his family’s home in Karachi.
There he worked for two years at a television station, feeling frustrated by censorship.
Consequently, he returned to London in 1970. Here, he worked as a copywriter for an
advertising agency and married the British Clarissa Luard, thus becoming a British subject. His
first book, Grimus, appeared in 1975, but was unsuccessful. It was only his second one,
Midnight’s Children (1981), that gave him the critical acclaim and money necessary to devote
himself full time to writing. But none of his works caused such controversy as his fourth novel
The Satanic Verses (1988).
The Satanic Verses The Satanic Verses “offers its readers a further phantasmagoria, but now
one with an international and multicultural dimension in which time and destiny, good and evil,
the secular and the religious, the material and the spiritual are dangerously and inventively
interfused.” (Sanders 2004: 659) The novel opens spectacularly with Gibreel Farishta and
Saladin Chamcha, two Indian actors, falling to earth after their Air India jumbo jet explodes
above the English Channel. They fall in the channel. By his real name Ismail Najmuddin,
Gibreel is a successful actor, who had a mysterious illness from which he began recovering on
the day when he lost his faith. Every time when he falls asleep, he dreams that he is the
archangel, and the dream continues from where it stopped, which makes him afraid to sleep.
Salahuddin Chamchawala (Saladin Chamcha) has a gift for accents and loves London, wanting
to become an Englishman and no longer feeling at home in Bombay. The two actors are found
by Rosa Diamond and become protagonists in the fight between Good and Evil. Gibreel
gradually transforms into an angel, a halo appearing from time to time around him. Saladin, on
the other hand, becomes the devil, with a pair of horns growing on his head, and hooves. He
starts resembling a goat. In spite of the appearances, however, Gibreel does not represent the
Good and Saladin does not represent the Evil. On the contrary, the situation is reversed: Gibreel
looks for facile loveaffairs, while Saladin, an Anglo-Indian, tries hard to find a precise identity.
In the contemporary London, full of racial problems, corrupt police workers and terrorists,
Gibreel has strange dreams and hallucinations. His dreams revolve around several characters.
One of them is Mahound from Jahilia, the city built entirely of sand. Mahound states that there is
only one god and that he is his messenger. He has dialogues with archangel Gibreel, but also
with Satan, without realizing it. Thus, it is not known whether the verses that he puts down and
communicates to everybody are dictated to him by God or by Satan. Another dream centers on
Mirza Saeed Akhtar, who, in his turn, dreams that he had caused the end of the world because of
his passionate desire for Ayesha, a young orphan whom he had taken to his home. Actually, in
Urdu Gibreel Farishta means Gabriel Angel, which makes him the archangel whom Islamic
tradition regards as “bringing down” the Qur’an from God to Muhammad.
 1984 In the centre of the novel 1984 we find Winston Smith (Winston from
Winston Churchill, Smith – the most common English last name). Orwell writes
from Winston’s perspective (though not in the first person), a device which
enables him to convey to the reader the necessary information about this society,
while simultaneously creating an atmosphere of claustrophobia and oppression.
The main character is 39 and works for the Ministry of Truth in London, Oceania.
The Ministry of Truth (based on the wartime Ministry of Information) controls the
information, the mass entertainment, education and the arts. The other ministries
in the country are: the Ministry of Peace, which deals with the war, the Ministry
of Love which is concerned with observing the law and maintaining order, and the
Ministry of Plenty which handles the economic affairs. In Newspeak, the official
language of Oceania, they are called Minitrue, Minipax, Miniluv and Miniplenty.
The names ironically show how much truth, peace, love and plenty they actually
provide. The country is governed by INGSOC (coming from English Socialism)
and the totalitarian leader is known as Big Brother. Nobody actually knows who
Big Brother is or where he is but everywhere there are portraits of his with the
inscription “Big Brother is watching you.” In all houses there are telescreens, a
sort of TV sets which people watch, but also from which they are watched. The
party has three slogans: War Is Peace, Freedom Is Slavery, Ignorance Is Strength.
There are three superpowers in the world: Eurasia, resulted from the conquest of
the entire Europe by Russia, Oceania, resulted from the conquest of the British
Empire by the United States, and Eastasia. They are entangled in an eternal war
(for labour force and territories) where alliances shift every few years. Oceania is
currently at war with Eurasia and allied with Eastasia. Although there are no
records kept to contradict the given current state, Winston knows that four years
ago the alliance was reversed; still, the present situation is always officially
represented as though it has always been like this. When the enemy changes to
Eastasia, the whole history has to be changed. Newspapers, books, cartoons, even
films and photographs are continually re-edited so as to conform with the current
state of political and economic affairs, and to make it appear as though the Party
has always been correct in its predictions or consistent in its alliances. Any and all
prior editions are destroyed, no matter how many revisions are made. This is
Winston’s job, but he reflects that in many cases, what he is doing is not really
forgery, because the original statistics or “facts” are also made up to begin with.
However, he is terrified by the thought that by so thoroughly controlling history
and information, the Party might actually be creating a new truth. He reflects that
the past has been destroyed because it only exists in his own memory. Winston is
even uncertain that the year is 1984. There are no solid truths except for what the
Party dictates as acceptable.
Ian McEwan (1948 - ) Ian McEwan was born on June 21, 1948 in Aldershot,
Hampshire, England. He spent much of his childhood in the Far East, Germany and
North Africa where his father, an officer in the army, was posted. He studied English
Literature at the University of Sussex, receiving a BA degree in 1970. He did his MA
studies in English Literature at the University of East Anglia, where he took a creative
writing course taught by the novelists Malcolm Bradbury and Angus Wilson. He has
written: • short stories included in volumes as: First Love, Last Rites (1975), In Between
the Sheets (1978); • novels: The Cement Garden (1978), The Comfort of Strangers
(1981), The Child in Time (1987), The Innocent (1990), Black Dogs (1992), Amsterdam
(1998), Atonement (2001), Saturday (2005); • three television plays published as The
Imitation Game (Jack Flea’s Birthday Celebration; Solid Geometry; The Imitation Game
1981); • a children’s book The Daydreamer (1994); • a libretto for an oratorio set to
music by Michael Berkeley - Or Shall We Die? (1983); • a film script: The Ploughman’s
Lunch (1985); • a film adaptation of Timothy Mo’s novel Sour Sweet (1988). But he is
primarily a novelist and short story writer. McEwan is a Fellow of the Royal Society of
Literature, of the Royal Society of Arts, and of the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences. He was awarded a CBE in 2000. He lives in London.
George Orwell (1903-1950) George Orwell was born on June 25, 1903 in Motihari, India, as the
second child of a civil servant and of the daughter of a tea-merchant. Their status was later
described by the writer as “lower-upper middle class”, i.e. they were able to live quite comfortably
in India, but they did not have the material situation that would have been enjoyed by their class in
England. The real name of the writer was Eric Arthur Blair. In 1904, his mother took him and his
older sister to England where they could be brought up in a more traditional Christian
environment. After the publication of his first book, Orwell’s life became more stable. He taught,
worked in a bookshop, and continued to write. His first fictional work, Burmese Days, appeared in
1934, being followed by the novels A Clergyman’s Daughter (1935, inspired from his teaching
experiences) and Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936, inspired from his experience with the
bookshop). In 1936, Orwell was asked by the Left Book Club to write an account of life in the
mining areas of northern England. The account appeared in 1937 under the title The Road to
Wigan Pier. In the same year he got married and fought for socialism during the Spanish Civil
War, but was wounded and had to return to England in 1938. His experiences in the war were the
source of Homage to Catalonia (1938) and of the essay Looking Back on the Spanish War (1943).
Orwell liked W. Shakespeare, J. Swift, H. Fielding, Ch. Dickens, J. Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, H.
Melville, M. Twain, but was mostly influenced by Somerset Maugham. Orwell is best known for
his novels Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, with which he inaugurated the political novel.
The former is an allegory of the corruption of the socialist ideals of the Russian Revolution by
Stalinism, and was banned in the Soviet Union and its satellites until after the revolutions of the
late 1980’s. The latter is Orwell’s prophetic vision of the results of totalitarianism. Both are
powerful dystopian novels.
The Child in Time The novel has as a starting point the loss of a child, Kate, the 3-year old
daughter of the main character, Stephen Lewis. She disappeared two years before the present of
the narrative, while she was with her father at the supermarket. Though he had been looking
elsewhere for just a few seconds, and all the people in the supermarket looked for the little girl,
she could not be found. McEwan records every single detail that Stephen perceives on this
occasion, however unimportant it might seem at first sight, presenting minutely his feelings and
reactions. He then concentrates on the effect that the disappearance of the little girl had on her
parents and on their marriage. In the immediately following period, Stephen started a door-to-
door search for Kate, while his wife Julie, a violin teacher at Guildhall and member of a quartet,
could not find within herself or elsewhere the power to cope with the tragic loss. She spent all
her time at home, motionless in an armchair. At the beginning they did share their feelings, now
of hope, then of despair, with each other. But gradually, their sorrows separated. Silence became
dominant, until they could not bear each other’s presence any more. Consequently, Julie retired
to a monastery in Chilterns that rented rooms to people with problems, leaving behind a note and
her armchair empty. After six months, she returned home, but could not resist there more than
several weeks. There followed a break up. She bought a place out of London and moved there.
They occasionally write to each other. Stephen’s own life after this becomes unbearable without
drink. He spends it at home, in utter misery, with the bottle of scotch at his side, watching the
Olympic Games, reading magazines, pretending to be writing when friends invite him to dinner
or lunch, but unable to do anything. All the time he thinks mostly of his daughter, remembering
her and trying in vain to find any even slight resemblance between her and every little girl he
sees on the street, hoping against hope to find her by chance if he was not able to do so in an
organized search. Besides the various situations connected to childhood, the book also surprises
other problems: the beggars, authorized by the government and subjected to various laws, the
discussions during the sessions of the subcommittee, the Olympic Games, or the situation of the
Prime Minister, incapable of obtaining a minute of privacy in order to talk with his good friend
Charles Darke. While these social and political aspects anchor the book in the reality of the
1980’s, its preoccupation with various aspects connected to childhood render it universal and
atemporal meaning.