William Golding

Term Paper Title	William Golding
# of Words	1989
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	7.96

William Golding

     The Nobel Prize for literature is one of the greatest awards a writer can be given.  The award’s greatness is not due to the cash prize they receive or the pretty plaque, but the prize is validity of being an exceptional writer.  Only ninety-eight people in the world have acclaimed themselves as being one of these great writers, one of them being Sir William Golding.  Born in England, Golding does not share the same rational writing techniques as other English writers. Instead Golding focuses on complexity, and the utter ignorance and evilness within all people.  A running theme in Golding's works is that man is savage at heart, always ultimately reverting back to an evil and primitive nature.
Sir William Gerald Golding was born in the village of St. Columb Minor in Cornwall, England on September 19th, 1911.  His father was a well-known schoolmaster with radical convictions in politics and strong faith in science.  Soon after the birth of William, his father moved their family to Wiltshire where he would teach at the Marlborough Grammar School.  Golding started writing at the age of seven and showed he to be an exceptional writer before reaching the age of thirteen.  A few of his favorite books as a child were Tarzan of the Apes, Coral Island, and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea which indicate him as having a great sense of adventure.  His parents both shared a scientific humanism, which Golding learned from them while also being very affluent in religion.
Following the wishes of his parents, Golding studied natural sciences at Brasenose College, Oxford, the prestigious university for all of England.  However, he eventually changed his major to English Literature after a year of attending the college.  With the new major he discovered a great interest in the Anglo-Saxon period.  The Anglo-Saxon period is also known as Old English which spans the time period of 449 AD to 1100 AD.  After attending college Golding joined the Royal Navy for England.  While in service he saw such horrific of cruelty and destruction that he began to question his original scientific humanism standpoint.
     After the war Golding taught at Bishop Wordsworth’s School in Salisbury, and worked there for nearly 10 years until he found success with Lord of the Flies.  Lord of the Flies was not his first novel he had wrote however, and neither was it his first published work.  Golding wrote a series of poems, which were included with the work of other authors such as W. H. Auden in a collection entitled Poems.  Golding had also written two novels, which were rejected by all publishing houses.  As of now these novels are still ‘lost.’  In an interview with James Keating in 1962 Golding remarked that he is glad that the works were never published as he realizes they were unsatisfactory due to the lack of depth and significance to human nature.
     In 1954 Golding published Lord of the Flies.  The book is now considered a classic and almost never saw the light of day.  Golding took the book to twenty-one separate publishing houses, all rejecting him until Faber & Faber finally accepted the novel.  The book was immediately acclaimed as a masterpiece with the help of E.M. Forster who chose it as the novel of the year.  Following the success of Lord of the Flies, Golding wrote three more novels: The Inheritors, Pincher Martin, and Free Fall.  All three of these books were initially well received, but many writers found them too confusing and complex.
     Golding’s writings were influenced greatly by Greek literature.  This is evident in all of his novels, especially the two novels that he has written of that time period.  He credits his work as a compilation of Euripids, Sophocles, Herodtus, Homer, and Aeschylus.
The cycle of man's rise to power, or righteousness, and his inevitable fall from grace is an important point that Golding, often-comparing man with characters from the Bible to give a more vivid picture of his own descent. Golding symbolizes this fall in different manners, ranging from the illustration of the mentality of a...

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