Postmodern literature is a type of literature that came to prominence after World War II.

Learn about how

postmodernism in literature rejects many literary conventions and embraces new ones in this lesson. Then, test your
knowledge with a quiz.
Postmodern Literature Defined
Postmodern literature is a form of literature which is marked, both stylistically and ideologically, by a reliance on
such literary conventions as fragmentation, paradox, unreliable narrators, often unrealistic and downright impossible
plots, games, parody, paranoia, dark humor and authorial self-reference. Postmodern authorstend to reject outright
meanings in their novels, stories and poems, and, instead, highlight and celebrate the possibility of multiple meanings,
or a complete lack of meaning, within a single literary work.
Postmodern literature also often rejects the boundaries between 'high' and 'low' forms of art and literature, as well as the
distinctions between different genres and forms of writing and storytelling. Here are some examples of stylistic
techniques that are often used in postmodern literature:
 Pastiche: The taking of various ideas from previous writings and literary styles and pasting them together to
make new styles.
 Intertextuality: The acknowledgment of previous literary works within another literary work.
 Metafiction: The act of writing about writing or making readers aware of the fictional nature of the very fiction
they're reading.
 Temporal Distortion: The use of non-linear timelines and narrative techniques in a story.
 Minimalism: The use of characters and events which are decidedly common and non-exceptional characters.
 Maximalism: Disorganized, lengthy, highly detailed writing.
 Magical Realism: The introduction of impossible or unrealistic events into a narrative that is otherwise realistic.
 Faction: The mixing of actual historical events with fictional events without clearly defining what is factual
and what is fictional.
 Reader Involvement: Often through direct address to the reader and the open acknowledgment of the fictional
nature of the events being described.
 Irony, playfulness, black humor
Postmodern authors were certainly not the first to use irony and humor in their writing, but for many postmodern
authors, these became the hallmarks of their style. Postmodern authors will often treat very serious subjects—
World War II, the Cold War, conspiracy theories—from a position of distance and disconnect, and will choose
to depict their histories ironically and humorously.

Many critics and scholars find it best to define postmodern literature against the popular literary style that came before
it: modernism. In many ways, postmodern literary styles and ideas serve to dispute, reverse, mock and reject the
principles of modernist literature.
For example, instead of following the standard modernist literary quest for meaning in a chaotic world, postmodern
literature tends to eschew, often playfully, the very possibility of meaning. The postmodern novel, story or poem is often
presented as a parody of the modernist literary quest for meaning. Thomas Pynchon's postmodern novel The Crying of
Lot 49 is a perfect example of this. In this novel, the protagonist's quest for knowledge and understanding results
ultimately in confusion and the lack of any sort of clear understanding of the events that transpired.
Postmodern Philosophy
Postmodern literature serves as a reaction to the supposed stylistic and ideological limitations of modernist literature
and the radical changes the world underwent after the end of World War II. While modernist literary writers often
depicted the world as fragmented, troubled and on the edge of disaster, which is best displayed in the stories and novels
of such modernist authors as Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Albert Camus, Virginia Woolf and
Thomas Mann, postmodern authors tend to depict the world as having already undergone countless disasters and being
beyond redemption or understanding.
For many postmodern writers, the various disasters that occurred in the last half of the 20th century left a number of
writers with a profound sense of paranoia. They also gave them an awareness of the possibility of utter disaster and
apocalypse on the horizon. The notion of locating precise meanings and reasons behind any event became seen as
impossible.
Postmodern literary writers have also been greatly influenced by various movements and ideas taken from postmodern
philosophy. Postmodern philosophy tends to conceptualize the world as being impossible to strictly define or
understand. Postmodern philosophy argues that knowledge and facts are always relative to particular situations and that
it's both futile and impossible to attempt to locate any precise meaning to any idea, concept or event.
Postmodern philosophy tends to renounce the possibility of 'grand narratives' and, instead, argues that all belief systems
and ideologies are developed for the express purpose of controlling others and maintaining particular political and social
systems. The postmodern philosophical perspective is pretty cynical and takes nothing that is presented at face value or
as being legitimate.
Similarly, at the core of many postmodern literary writer's imaginations is a belief that the world has already fallen apart
and that actual, singular meaning is impossible to locate (if it can be said to exist at all), and that literature, instead,
should serve to reveal the world's absurdities, countless paradoxes and ironies.
Examples of Postmodern Literature
Postmodern literary writers come from all across the world. Postmodern literature is not specific to writers from any
particular region or culture. There are thousands of writers and literary works from all around the world which are
considered postmodern by critics and scholars. Among the most famous and critically respected works of postmodern
literature include the following:
1. Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow
2. Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities
3. Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire
4. David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest
5. Don DeLillo's White Noise
Characteristics of Post-modernism:
1. Because of some similar characteristics of modernism and postmodernism, critics some time become confuse
to differentiate one from the other. It would be more helpful if we discuss the characteristics of post-modernism
in compare and contrast to modernism.
Like modernism, postmodernism also believes the view that there is no absolute truth and truth is relative.
Postmodernism asserts that truth is not mirrored in human understanding of it, but is rather constructed as the mind
tries to understand its own personal reality. So, facts and falsehood are interchangeable. For example, in classical
work such as King Oedipus there is only one truth that is “obey your fate”. In contrast to classical work in
postmodern work such as in Waiting for Godot, there is no such thing as absolute truth. All things are relative here.
Whereas Modernism places faith in the ideas, values, beliefs, culture, and norms of the West, Postmodernism rejects
Western values and beliefs as only a small part of the human experience and often rejects such ideas, beliefs, culture,
and norms.
Whereas Modernism attempts to reveal profound truths of experience and life, Postmodernism is suspicious of being
"profound" because such ideas are based on one particular Western value systems.

Born: September 19, 1911

Saint Columb, Cornwall, England
Died: June 19, 1993
Perranarworthal, Cornwall, England

English author
The winner of the 1983 Nobel Prize in Literature, William Golding is among the most popular and influential British
authors to have emerged in the second half of the twentieth century. Golding's reputation rests primarily upon his first
novel, Lord of the Flies (1954), which is consistently regarded as an effective and disturbing portrayal of the fragility
of civilization.
Childhood and college years
Golding was born in Saint Columb Minor in Cornwall, England, in 1911. His father, Alex, was a schoolmaster, while
his mother, Mildred, was active in the Women's Suffrage Movement (the movement for women's right to vote). As a
boy, his favorite authors included H. G. Wells (1866–1946), Jules Verne(1828–1905), and Edgar Rice
Burroughs (1875–1950). Since the age of seven, Golding had been writing stories, and at the age of twelve he attempted
to write a novel.
Golding remained an enthusiastic writer and, upon entering Brasenose College of Oxford University, abandoned his
plans to study science, preferring to read English literature. At twenty-two, a year before taking his degree in English,
Golding saw his first literary work published—a poetry collection simply titled Poems.
After graduating from Oxford in 1935, Golding continued the family tradition by becoming a schoolmaster in Salisbury,
Wiltshire. His teaching career was interrupted in 1940, however, with the outbreak of World War II (1939–
45). Lieutenant Golding served five years in the British Royal Navy and saw active duty in the North Atlantic,
commanding a rocket launching craft.
Lord of the Flies
Golding had enhanced his knowledge of Greek history and mythology by reading while at sea, and when he returned to
his post at Bishop Wordsworth's School in 1945, he began furthering his writing career. He wrote three novels, all of
which went unpublished. But his frustration would not last long, when, in 1954, Golding created The Lord of the
Flies. The novel was rejected by twenty-one publishers before Faber & Faber accepted the forty-three-year-old
schoolmaster's book.
Initially, the tale of a group of schoolboys stranded on an island during their escape from war received mixed reviews
and sold only modestly in its hardcover edition. But when the paperback edition was published in 1959, thus making
the book more accessible to students, the novel began to sell briskly. Teachers, aware of the student interest and
impressed by the strong theme and symbolism of the work, began assigning Lord of the Flies to their literature classes.
As the novel's reputation grew, critics reacted by drawing scholarly reviews out of what was previously dismissed as
just another adventure story.
The author's extremely productive output—five novels in ten years—and the high quality of his work established him
as one of the late twentieth-century's most distinguished writers. This view of Golding was cemented in 1965, when the
author was named a Commander of the British Empire.
Later works
After the success of Lord of the Flies, Golding enjoyed success with other novels, including Pincher
Martin (1957), Free Fall (1959), and The Pyramid (1967). The author's creative output then dropped drastically. He
produced no novels and only a handful of novellas (short novels), short stories, and other occasional pieces.
In 1979 Golding returned with the publi cation of Darkness Visible which received mixed reviews. The author faced his
harshest criticism to date with the publication of his 1984 novel The Paper Men, a drama about an aging, suc cessful
novelist's conflicts with his pushy, over-bearing biographer. Departing briefly from fic tion, Golding wrote a book
containing essays, reviews, and lectures. A Moving Target appeared in 1982, one year prior to the author's receipt of the
Nobel Prize in Literature.
William Golding died in England in 1993. A year after his death, The Double Tongue was released, published from a
manu script Golding completed before he died.
For More Information
Carey, John, ed. William Golding: The Man and His Books; a Tribute on His 75th Birthday. New York: Farrar, Straus,
Giroux, 1987.
Friedman, Lawrence S. William Golding. New York: Continuum, 1993.
Gindin, James. William Golding. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988.

2. In the novel "Lord of the Flies" by William Golding, the author shows us a group of marooned boys who have just
left an ordered world governed by rules and regulations. On the tropical island there will be no spoilsport rules to ruin
their fun and freedom - or so they think, because pretty soon they realize they need some. Grasping for wisdom and self-
preservation they invent rules for fresh water,a rota for buiding shelters and more hygeinic toilet facilities. They also try
to have a rule for democratic speech by using a conch shell to command listening and respect. They also decide they
need a fire to act as a beacon and people should take turns to help. Sadly, not many boys do try.
In the novel "Lord of the Flies" by William Golding, the author shows us a group of marooned boys who have just left
an ordered world governed by rules and regulations. On the tropical island there will be no spoilsport rules to ruin their
fun and freedom - or so they think, because pretty soon they realize they need some. Grasping for wisdom and self-
preservation they invent rules for fresh water,a rota for buiding shelters and more hygeinic toilet facilities. They also try
to have a rule for democratic speech by using a conch shell to command listening and respect. They also decide they
need a fire to act as a beacon and people should take turns to help. Sadly, not many boys do try.

3.
Psycologism
As a novelist, William Golding developed a unique style characterized by simplicity and economy of expression. He
deliberately refrained from excessive narration and consistent characterization.
His treatment of the novel has been called ‘anti-science’ since he equated scientific and technological progress with
dehumanization and traced the shortcomings of the modern society to the inherent negativity of human nature.
His first novel, Lord of the Flies was published in 1957. The work features a group of schoolboys abandoned in an
island and forced to survive without adult supervision. Initially the boys attempt to organize themselves on the lines of
their parent civilization.
Later, they transform to a more primitive societal pattern dominated by blood-thirst, cruelty, aggression and rituals. The
underlying theme of the work is ‘end of innocence’.
In many ways, the novel has a fable-orientation, conveying morals allegorically, the most fundamental being the
‘darkness of man’s heart’. The author’s psychological insights are brought to fore by concise depiction of perverted
behavior and degrading moral standards.
The four major characters, Jack, Ralph, Piggy and Simon, represent passion, will, reason and conscious respectively.
On the basis of this ‘human-self’ analysis, Golding explores the mutual interactions of various characters.
The revelations underline the basic antagonisms of human nature. The author firmly believes men must learn to live
with the chaos of existence without attempting to reshape it towards his means or ends.
While man cannot alter his nature, Golding feels, he can certainly be conscious of it. And it is this consciousness,
according to him, that contains the supreme achievement and delight of being a human being.
A study of the psychological insights in the Lord of the Flies clearly underlines the degeneration of virtuous characters
into diabolic. Golding’s reflections on the darkness in human nature emerge life-like in his analysis of the microcosm
of the unknown island.
The work characterizes Golding’s underlying theme ‘man produces evil as a bee produces honey’. In all his works the
author has relentlessly pursued the objective of making man face ‘the sad fact of his own cruelty and lust’ and has upheld
the conviction ‘man is a fallen being’.
The fact that man is gripped by original sin and is in an inherently perilous state justifies evil and its innate fusion with
human existence.
Lord of the Flies is the story of death and the presence of destructive element in the blood’s lust for blood. In Golding’s
own view, it is a story of the darkness in the heart of man.
For adolescents and young adults, who have only recently come in contact with their self-consciousness, it is a new,
intense, frightening and yet, fascinating encounter with darkness.
The four aspects of human-self, as portrayed by Golding in the novel, can be likened to a phenomenological description
of human nature.
Will as human self: Golding’s vehicle of truth is the end of innocence experienced by Ralph, a high-spirited, confident,
twelve-year old. Right from the beginning, Ralph is the only character who demonstrates his resolve for creating a
democratic society. Initially, he is exultant due to the new freedom.
At the end however, he longs for the tame and is bitterly at odds with others. Soon after being in the island, he finds the
leadership of the community thrust upon him. He is antagonistic to Jack and intellectually inferior to Piggy. He is the
quintessential symbol of democracy, torn between diverse forces. When he discovers a conch shell (a motif of authority)
and blows it, he succeeds in gathering all the others.
His leadership qualities are evident in his capacity to assemble others and organize meetings with confidence. Faced
with disobedience, he reacts strongly. ‘Choir! Stand still’, so his order is obeyed. Immediately after Ralph is elected he
organizes everything like; ‘the choir belongs to you of course… They could be your army’. Then he says, ‘listen
everybody, I’ve got to have time to think things out’.
The humanistic view of psychological behavior suggests that individuals are free to determine and choose their actions.
Man is left free for his will and destiny. In Ralph’s case he is free on will. Throughout, he displays his will for forming
a democratic society despite impediments like sacrificing his close friend Piggy.
Conceptually, will is defined as ‘the mental power by which a person can direct his thoughts and actions or influence
others’. Ralph is determined to achieve a civilized society. Civilization is a human creation, restricting the cosmic or
primitive in man by bounding it within moral awareness.
Till the end, Ralph runs to save his life without succumbing to the barbarians, underlining his will power. He is
symbolized by the author as the strong willed politician, exhibiting leadership qualities like selfless dedication, courage,
conviction, fortitude and integrity. He tries to make full use of all these faculties in bringing back control to civilized
society.
Ralph’s pristine status is individuation. He has a social identity, correct manners, morality and sense of justice. All these
are hallmarks of civilization imbibed in him. But because of his innocent state, he uses will to proceed with civilized
manners.
Eventually, Jack’s domination forces him to forego innocence. His loss of innocence is accompanied by the progressive
destruction of his distinct conscious due to degradation of reason. Golding clearly establishes that ‘will power’ would
be relevant only in civilized and not in primitive society.
Passion as human self: Passion is connected with the character of Jack. According to psychologists, ‘passion has got a
division of thought and feeling’. This dichotomy is important in analyzing passion. In Jack, passion is embodied in a
negative sense with Golding utilizing Jack for demonstrating the degeneration of civilization.
The term ‘doubling’ is commonly used in psychological behavior meaning split personalities for one person, or two
relative autonomous selves. Doubling is easily applicable to Jack. His mind houses a number of primitive ideas and he
can be called to possess savage traits. His features resemble those of a dictator, thirsty for power and hungry for
authority.
Jack’s passion for power is evident when he says; ‘I ought to be chief because I’m chapter chorister and head boy’. In
the Lord of the Flies, Golding takes recourse to an established literary method of examining human rights and polity
through psychological insights.
Nature in the tropics is sinister and threatening. The boys are led to the formation of a religion under Jack’s leadership
for largely personal selfish gains. Their theology is demonology and their god is devil. Jack has intuitive knowledge of
the vilest elements of nature and the ways of exploiting them. He is prevented from his attempt to gain power in civilized,
orderly society and takes recourse to the inherent traits of his nature i.e. dark means for gaining power.
As Freud points out in his theory of psychoanalysis, human behavior is determined by innate and immutable instincts
that are largely unconscious. This is heavily exemplified by Jack. In terms of psychoanalysis, Jack is a schizoid, an
irrational person suffering from delusions and withdrawing from normal social relationships. He is deluded by adult-
free society and controls the savages.
Passion centers on powerful emotions like drive, motivation, libido etc. The first two inspire him to leadership. Passion
also induces hostility in his unconscious mind and makes it a conscious motive.
In the beginning, Jack hunts pigs for sporting. He resents killing of pigs due to the enormity of the knife and it’s cutting
into living flesh. Kelly defines aggression as ‘the active elaboration of one’s perceptual field’. Aggression arises out of
the willingness to risk in order to find out ‘passion’ for embodiment of action.
Passion, the human-self of Jack, is embodied with aggression. His passion for power drives him to diabolism. He is
Golding’s quintessential metaphor for underlining darkness in human beings.
Rationality as human self: The name Piggy has an irony in it. He possesses both positive and negative attributes of a
weak intellectual. He rationalizes Simon’s death before his own and is the only one to rationalize all events. Together
with Ralph, he attempts to create an orderly society.
His rationality however, is ineffective in controlling the rest. His belief that science can explain everything makes him
unable to comprehend the reality of the beast. Faith in science or rationality, with a marked disbelief in the supernatural,
is typical of Piggy. He is fat and ugly with thin hair that never seems to grow and suffers from asthma and weak eyes
that are common affiliations of age.
His physical weaknesses and other characteristics are consistent with his ‘adult’ role in the novel. Though he is the clear
thinker, he can’t enforce his will like Ralph or Jack. The boys refuse to take him seriously due to his shabby appearance.
Piggy symbolizes the force of reason among the boys. His gradual loss of sight and eventual death highlight the
degeneration among the community. He is possessed with the strong urge to distinguish and order a manageable system
and finds himself in conflict with the power of darkness.
His wisdom could’ve been instrumental for achieving stability in the social order. But the leaders were reckless and
thoughtless, more interested in momentary splurges rather than the steady glow of reason. When a chance for rescue
goes abegging, the boys focus on hunting, a primitive activity reversing civilization, trampling Piggy’s intellectual
views.
Piggy remains indefatigably himself till his death using logic and reason.
Though physically weak, he doesn’t lack mental courage. Despite Golding’s faith in science and rationality, he is
sarcastic of Piggy for not accepting Simon’s view that evil is present in every man’s heart. With Piggy’s death, the
remaining not only get degenerated, but completely devoid of human control that comes from rational awareness.
Conscious as human self: Simon is an embodiment of vision and forethought. This is clearly brought out when he points
out that the beast that they all fear is not real and actually lies within themselves.
He fails in convincing others and is eventually clubbed to death. He suffers from epilepsy, is visited by the Lord of the
Flies, bears a touch of the mystic and is the voice of warning. He understands that evil can’t be exonerated by
pressurizing humans or by forcing them into primitive adaptations.
The most self-conscious in his group, he is incapable of speaking in public and prefers solitude. In his epileptic bouts,
he communicates with the Lord of the Flies and darkness. His self-knowledge imparts him the highest degree of
consciousness among the boys. He is also intimately familiar with the darkness in man and is temperamentally alert to
the limits imposable on a man’s ego.
Simon’s communications with the Lord of the Flies are manifestations of unconscious subsystems. This occurs when
the unconscious mind works unknowingly and without being monitored by the conscious.
A part of his intellectual urges are hived off to the sub-systems that are unconsciously monitored. He journeys to the
mountaintop and discovers the truth about the beast. His knowledge remains unknown to others since he is ritualistically
sacrificed. His death, symbolic of the destruction of the conscious, paves the way for depersonalization.
The masks that the boys learnt to paint and which, later, become their real countenances, move beyond the limits
imposed by civilization for restraining destructive impulses.
The lack of public knowledge regarding Simon’s world of wisdom is indicative of the prophet being termed lunatic and
ignored by the rest of the world. Golding seems inclined to convey that irrespective of the name given to evil, it exists
in man and is an integral part of human condition.
Through Simon’s conscious mind, the author stresses the difficulties faced by intuitive wisdom in gaining acceptance
in the material world. Simon’s prophesies, vision and search for the truth, personify the role of the conscious faculty as
human self.
Roger represents the sadist, the individual who enjoys hurting others. His evil motives are different from Jack's, who
pursues leadership and stature and enjoys the thrill of the hunt. Roger just likes to hurt people. He is described in
Chapter 1 as a boy "who kept to himself with avoidance and secrecy." His secret is that he is, in some ways, more evil
than even Jack. All his life, Roger has been conditioned to leash or mask his impulses. The "irresponsible authority" of
Jack's reign offers him the chance to unleash his innate cruelty. Initially, in a mean-spirited prank, Roger throws rocks
at the unsuspecting littlun, Henry, but he throws them so that they miss, surrounded as Henry is by "the protection of
parents and school and policeman and the law. Roger's arm was conditioned by . . . civilization." Once he joins Jack's
tribe, he has lost that conditioning and eventually kills Piggy with one boulder, which was not intended to miss.
Roger carves out a distinct niche in the tribe as the hangman, the torturer who plays a key role in all dictatorships, and
relishes the role of a killer. From his point of view on top of Castle Rock, "Ralph was a shock of hair and Piggy a bag
of fat" — not other human beings. Mentally dehumanizing those not in his group frees Roger from the restraints of
decency, an effect he feels as "a sense of delirious abandonment" when he releases the rock to kill Piggy.

Simon's role as an artistic, religious visionary is established not only by his hidden place of meditation but also by the
description of his eyes: "so bright they had deceived Ralphinto thinking him delightfully gay and wicked."
While Piggy has the glasses — one symbol of vision and truth — Simon has bright eyes, a symbol of another kind of
vision and truth.
Simon is different from the other boys not only due to his physical frailty, manifested in his fainting spells, but also in
his consistently expressed concern for the more vulnerable boys. Littluns follow him, and he picks choice fruit for
them from spots they can't reach, a saintly or Christ-like image. He stands up for Piggy and helps him get his glasses
back when Jack knocks them off his head, another allusion to Simon's visionary bent. In addition, he has a secret place
in the jungle, where he spends time alone.
Simon's loner tendencies make the other boys think he's odd, but, for the reader, Simon's credibility as a mystic is
established when he prophesies to Ralph "You'll get back to where you came from." Simon reaches an abstract
understanding of mankind's latent evil nature and unthinking urge to dominate as "mankind's essential illness." When
Simon tries to visualize what the beast might look like, "there arose before his inward sight the picture of a human at
once heroic and sick" — Golding's vision of humanity as flawed by inherent depravity. Golding gives this knowledge
to an outsider like Simon to reflect the place visionaries or mystics typically hold in society: on the fringes, little
understood by the majority, and often feared or disregarded. Like other mystics, Simon asks questions the other boys
cannot answer. His questions to them, "What's the dirtiest thing there is?" and "What else is there to do?" require both
abstract thought and courageous action to answer.
In contrast to Piggy and Ralph's equating adulthood with knowledge and higher understanding, Simon sees the darker
side of knowledge. For him, the staked sow's eyes are "dim with the infinite cynicism of adult life," a view of adults
not defined by the civilized politeness and capability the boys imagine. Yet Simon soldiers on in his quest to discover
the identity of the beast on the mountaintop because he sees the need for the boys to face their fears, to understand the
true identity of the false beast on the mountain, and to get on with the business of facing the beast within themselves.
By courageously seeking to confront the figure on the mountaintop, Simon fulfills his destiny of revelation. He doesn't
get to share his revelation with the other boys because they are not ready to accept or understand it. Instead he dies as
a result of being made the scapegoat for the boys' unshakeable fear. When Simon's body is carried off by the tide,
covered in the jellyfish-like phosphorescent creatures who have come in with the tide, Golding shifts the focus from
Simon's body's movements to the much larger progressions of the sun, moon, and earth because Simon represented a
knowledge as fundamental as the elements.
Piggy is the intellectual with poor eyesight, a weight problem, and asthma. He is the most physically vulnerable of
all the boys, despite his greater intelligence. Piggy represents the rational world. By frequently quoting his aunt, he
also provides the only female voice.
Piggy's intellect benefits the group only through Ralph; he acts as Ralph's advisor. He cannot be the leader himself
because he lacks leadership qualities and has no rapport with the other boys. Piggy also relies too heavily on the power
of social convention. He believes that holding the conch gives him the right to be heard. He believes that upholding
social conventions get results.
As the brainy representative of civilization, Piggy asserts that "Life . . . is scientific." Ever the pragmatist, Piggy
complains, "What good're your doing talking like that?" when Ralph brings up the highly charged issue of Simon's
death at their hands. Piggy tries to keep life scientific despite the incident, "searching for a formula" to explain the
death. He asserts that the assault on Simon was justifiable because Simon asked for it by inexplicably crawling out of
the forest into the ring.
Piggy is so intent on preserving some remnant of civilization on the island that he assumes improbably enough
that Jack's raiders have attacked Ralph's group so that they can get the conch when of course they have come for fire.
Even up to the moment of his death, Piggy's perspective does not shift in response to the reality of their situation. He
can't think as others think or value what they value. Because his eminently intellectual approach to life is modeled on
the attitudes and rules of the authoritative adult world, he thinks everyone should share his values and attitudes as a
matter of course. Speaking of the deaths of Simon and the littlun with the birthmark, he asks "What's grownups goin'
to think?" as if he is not so much mourning the boys' deaths as he is mourning the loss of values, ethics, discipline, and
decorum that caused those deaths.
Jack represents evil and violence, the dark side of human nature. A former choirmaster and "head boy" at his school,
he arrived on the island having experienced some success in exerting control over others by dominating the choir with
his militaristic attitude. He is eager to make rules and punish those who break them, although he consistently breaks
them himself when he needs to further his own interests. His main interest is hunting, an endeavor that begins with the
desire for meat and builds to the overwhelming urge to master and kill other living creatures. Hunting develops the
savagery that already ran close to his surface, making him "ape-like" as he prowls through the jungle. His domain is
the emotions, which rule and fuel his animal nature.
The conflict on the island begins with Jack attempting to dominate the group rather than working with Ralph to benefit
it. He frequently impugns the power of the conch, declaring that the conch rule does not matter on certain parts of the
island. Yet he uses the conch to his advantage when possible, such as when he calls his own assembly to impeach
Ralph. For him, the conch represents the rules and boundaries that have kept him from acting on the impulses to
dominate others. Their entire lives in the other world, the boys had been moderated by rules set by society against
physical aggression. On the island, however, that social conditioning fades rapidly from Jack's character. He quickly
loses interest in that world of politeness and boundaries, which is why he feels no compunction to keep the fire going
or attend to any of the other responsibilities for the betterment or survival of the group.
The dictator in Jack becomes dominant in his personality during the panic over the beast sighting on the mountain. In
trying to get Ralph impeached, he uses his rhetorical skills to twist Ralph's words. In defense, he offers to the group a
rationale that "He'd never have got us meat," asserting that hunting skills make for an effective leader. Jack assigns a
high value only to those who he finds useful or agreeable to his views and looks to silence those who do not please
him. Denouncing the rules of order, Jack declares, "We don't need the conch any more. We know who ought to say
things." He dictates to his hunters that they forget the beast and that they stop having nightmares.
As Jack strives to establish his leadership, he takes on the title of "chief" and reinforces the illusion of station and
power by using the other boys ceremoniously as standard bearers who raise their spears together and announce "The
Chief has spoken." This role is no game for him, though; by the night of Simon's death, Jack has clearly gone power-
mad, sitting at the pig roast on a large log "painted and garlanded . . . like an idol" while "[p]ower . . . chattered in his
ear like an ape." His tribe addresses him as "Chief," indicating a form of more primitive tribal leadership.
True to Piggy's assertion that "It's them that haven't no common sense that make trouble on this island," Jack takes an
entirely different direction from logic or common sense. Perhaps acting out of some guilt he is unable to acknowledge,
Jack becomes paranoid and begins feeding misinformation to his tribe, a typical practice of dictatorships to control the
collective thinking by controlling the information that is disseminated.
Given the thrill of "irresponsible authority" he's experienced on the island, Jack's return to civilization is conflicted.
When the naval officer asks who is in charge, Jack starts to step forward to challenge Ralph's claim of leadership but
is stopped perhaps by the recognition that now the old rules will be enforced.
Ralph represents leadership, the properly socialized and civilized young man. He is attractive, charismatic, and decently
intelligent. He demonstrates obvious common sense. Ralph is the one who conceives the meeting place, the fire, and the
huts. He synthesizes and applies Piggy's intellectualism, and he recognizes the false fears and superstitions as barriers
to their survival. He is a diplomat and a natural leader.
Ralph's capacity for leadership is evident from the very beginning (he is the only elected leader of the boys). During the
crisis caused by the sight of the dead paratrooper on the mountain, Ralph is able to proceed with both sense and caution.
He works vigilantly to keep the group's focus on the hope for rescue. When the time comes to investigate the castle
rock, Ralph takes the lead alone, despite his fear of the so-called beast. Even in this tense moment, politeness is his
default. When Simon mumbles that he doesn't believe in the beast, Ralph "answered him politely, as if agreeing about
the weather." British culture is famed for civilized reserve in emotional times. By the standards of the society he's left
behind, Ralph is a gentleman.
Having started with a schoolboy's romantic attitude toward anticipated "adventures" on the island, Ralph eventually
loses his excitement about their independence and longs for the comfort of the familiar. He indulges in images of home,
recollections of the peaceful life of cereal and cream and children's books he had once known. He fantasizes about
bathing and grooming. Ralph's earlier life had been civilized, and he brought to the island innocent expectations and
confidence until certain experiences informed his naiveté and destroyed his innocence. As he gains experience with the
assemblies, the forum for civilized discourse, he loses faith in them. "Don't we love meetings?" Ralph says bitterly,
frustrated that only a few of the boys actually follow through on their plans.
Over time, Ralph starts to lose his power of organized thought, such as when he struggles to develop an agenda for the
meeting but finds himself lost in an inarticulate maze of vague thoughts. Ralph's loss of verbal ability bodes ill for the
group because his authority lies in the platform, the symbol of collective governance and problem solving where verbal
communication is the primary tool. Ralph's mental workings are subject to the same decay as his clothing; both are
frayed by the rigors of the primitive life. Yet in response to the crisis of the lost rescue opportunity, Ralph demonstrates
his capacities as a conceptual thinker.
When "[w]ith a convulsion of the mind, Ralph discovered dirt and decay," he is symbolically discovering humankind's
dark side. At the same time, he has learned that intellect, reason, sensitivity, and empathy are the tools for holding the
evil at bay. Ralph's awareness is evident when, realizing the difficulty of this lifestyle in contrast to his initial impression
of its glamour, he "smiled jeeringly," as an adult might look back with cynicism on the ideals held as a youth.
Although he becomes worn down by the hardships and fears of primitive life and is gradually infected by the savagery
of the other boys, Ralph is the only character who identifies Simon's death as murder and has a realistic, unvarnished
view of his participation. He feels both loathing and excitement over the kill he witnessed. Once Ralph becomes prey,
he realizes that he is an outcast "Cos I had some sense" — not just common sense but a sense of his identity as a civilized
person, a sense of the particular morality that had governed the boys' culture back home.
When Ralph encounters the officer on the beach at the end of the book, he is not relieved at being rescued from a certain
grisly death but discomforted over "his filthy appearance," an indication that his civility had endured his ordeal. In
exchange for his innocence, he has gained an understanding of humankind's natural character, an understanding not
heretofore available to him: that evil is universally present in all people and requires a constant resistance by the intellect
that was Piggy, by the mysticism and spiritualism that was Simon, and by the hopes and dreams that are his.

Unflinching, beautiful
If you like your medicine with a spoonful of sugar, you'd better find another book. (Unless this is required reading, in
which case—we're sorry.) Golding takes a look at the worst, darkest side of human nature and reports back, with
exaggeration and poetical bits thrown in for good measure. But that doesn't mean it's all doom-and-gloom. In Simon's
death, for example, the tone is at first that of a silent observer noticing that "the crowd surged after it, poured down the
rock, leapt on to the beast, screamed, struck, bit, tore" (9.99). All those simple words like "rock," "beast," and "bit"
describe the murder without any flinching (that's what makes it "unflinching").
By the end of the chapter, though, the narrator has shifted into musing speculation:
Somewhere over the darkened curve of the world the sun and moon were pulling, and the film of water on the earth
planet was held, bulging slightly on one side while the solid core turned. The great wave of the tide moved farther along
the island and the water lifted. Softly, surrounded by a fringe of inquisitive bright creatures, itself a silver shape beneath
the steadfast constellations, Simon's dead body moved out toward the open sea. (9.105)
From the brutal killing of a boy to the surprisingly accurate description of the moon's effect on the tides—this is a
narrator who can do it all. He can even make a dead body floating out to sea sound beautiful.