GOLDING'S BIOGRAPHY
1911 - 1993
William Golding was born in the village of St. Columb Minor in Cornwall. His father was a schoolmaster who was very found of science. Golding started writing when he was seven, but following the wished of his parents he studied natural sciences. Two years later he began to study English literature and philosophy at Brasenose College, Oxford. His first book was a collection of poems written in 1934 . In 1939 he moved to Salisbury to teach English at Bishop Wordsworth's School.
Among the Golding's favorite authors in his childhood are: Edgar Rice Burroughs (Tarzan of the Apes), Robert Ballantyne (Coral Island), and Jules Verne (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea). All these books reflect the ideas of the society before the Second world war because they portray man as a basically good creature who struggles to avoid the evils of society. But all this was before the Second world War when society in general thought that human beings were good in essence, after the war this optimistic point of view changed . William Golding shows this idea in his book Lord of The Flies because at the end it turns out to be a parody of the kind of books(with the optimistic view of man´s essence)that Golding read in his childhood and that had been a model for him.
The island setting for Lord of the Flies and the names Ralph, Jack, and Simon were taken from Coral Island. This is a proof that he conciously makes references to Robert Ballantyne´s novel in order to bear comparison before the two works, to shock the reader with the new realistic "version". By doing this he´s questioning the value of Ballantynes novel , making a parody of it or at least showing that society is no longer the same, as if he was saying: " man´s nature is not what we considered it to be". This change in his philosophy may be a result of his experience at war( WWII) in which he took active part as a member of the Royal Navy. . Contrary to what he had always thought he started to believe that Human beings were cruel in nature. He was in antisubmarine and antiaircraft operations, and became the commander of a rocket ship, seeing action at D-Day, among other battles.
Because of the atrocities he witnessed, Golding came to believe that there was a very dark and evil side to man. "The war," he said, "was unlike any other fought in Europe. It taught us not fighting, politics or the follies of nationalism, but about the given nature of man.". From this moment all his works will deal with the dark side of human nature. After the war Golding returned to teaching in a boys' school, may be from this experience as a teacher he got to know the nature of children that is so well depicted in Lord of The Flies . His novel Lord of The Flies was turned down by twenty-one publishes, until it finally appeared in 1954. But it was in the 60´s when it became subject of the critics study. The book became immediate success in Britain and bestseller among American readers in the late 1950s. The Author and the book has been controversial and still are because there are differing opinions about the quality of the novel and the talent of the author. Golding continued to write in spite of the controversy over his work. The criticism encoraged him to continue writing. After the success and the controversial criticism that Lord of the flies brought him other novels followed: The Inheritors (1955) , Pincher Martin (1956), , and Free Fall (1959) .
Golding resigned in 1961 from teaching and devoted himself entirely to writing. His works from the historical novel THE SPERE (1964) devoloped then in two directions: the metaphysical with the theme of the fall from childlike innocence into guilt, and the social without mythical substructure. When he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983 the author was not widely known though his book had been translated into many languages . In 1988 he was knighted. Golding passed away in 1993.
© Copyright 1999 by Enna Villarroya Martínez
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Creada: 08/10/2000 Última Actualización: 08/10/2000