摘 要

威廉·戈尔丁的《蝇王》一部人物、场景、故事、意象等都深具反讽与象征意义的哲理性小说。在人物以及事物描写中所使用的反讽与象征手法对人性本质的揭示的起到了很大的桥接作用。故事围绕一群因想象中的第三次世界大战而困于荒岛上的孩子们所经历的的种种拉开帷幕。人性本质中对权力的欲望、对未知的恐惧，使原本天真无邪的孩子们在远离成人与社会规则的世界渐渐显现出恶的本性，最终，在这场坚持文明与堕落至野蛮的斗争中，邪恶压倒了正义，野蛮打败了文明。戈尔丁借孩子们由天真走向堕落这一过程来探讨“人性的恶”这一严肃主题，揭露成人世界的各种丑态。本文旨在分析小说在人物及事物描写中所使用的反讽和象征手法，进而探索人性本质，以此引发对人性的思考:在欲望和野蛮面前，人类文明为何显得如此脆弱，经不起考验？

关键词：《蝇王》；反讽手法；象征手法；人性

Abstract

Lord of the Flies of William Golding is a philosophical novel of which the characters, scenes, stories, and images are all of deep irony and symbolism. The irony and symbolism used in the description of characters and images play a bridging role in the revealing of the essence of human nature. It depicts the experiences of a group of children who are trapped on a deserted island because of the imaginary World War III. And the desire of power and the fear of the unknown inside human heart reveal the evil nature of these originally innocent children in such an imaginary world that is far away from adults and social rules, which leads to the consequence that evil outweighs justice and savage defeats civilization in the battle between sticking to civilization and stooping to savage. So this paper aims to analyze its irony and symbolism in the main characters Ralph, Piggy, Simon, and Jack and some representative images to explore the essence of human nature and then get the point on human nature: why human civilization seems so futile and fragile in front of desire and brutality?

Key words: Lord of the Flies; irony; symbolism; the human nature

Content

1 Introduction 1

1.1 William Golding and his works 1

1.2 Lord of the Flies 2

2 Theory of Irony 3

2.1 Irony 3

2.2 Irony in characters 4

2.3 Irony in event 6

3 Theory of Symbolism 7

3.1 Symbolism 7

3.2 Character images 7

3.3 Object images 10

4 Conclusion 13

References 14

Acknowledgements 15

An Analysis of the Artistic Features of

Lord of the Flies

1 Introduction

1.1 William Golding and his works

William Golding is a British novelist. He was born in an intellectual family in England in 1911, he began to write at the age of 7. Golding took after the open and rational disposition from his father who was a scholar and was obsessed with learning and exploring. He was absorbed in literature since childhood. In 1934, Golding published his first work Poems. Unfortunately, the second world war broke the peaceful life, subsequently Golding participated in the war in 1940, he experienced many memorable battles, he took part in the sinking of the German battleship Bismarck. Afterward took part in the invasion of Normandy on D-Day. After the war, Golding retired in 1945. And his view of humankind completely changed through the war. Later he began his novel creation, from Lord of the Flies(1954) to The Paper Man(1984), shows his conception that the essence of man is evil. Golding is the representative figure of realism literature in the 20th century, and he mainly expresses the theme of “darkness of human” which shows the concern on the future of the human race. Because of “the clear narrative techniques of realism as well as the diversity and universality of fictional story, which expounds human conditions of the current world”, Golding won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1983. Since then he published The Inheritors(1955), Pincer Martin(1956), Free Fall(1959), The Spire(1964), The Pyramid(1967), Darkness Invisible (1979), Rites of Passage(1980) and other works. Among them Rites of Passage was awarded Booker Prize. Additionally, he also wrote the script, essays and short stories, and published A Moving Target in 1982. He is called “fable grapher” in the west, and in his perspective, the world is absurd, horrible, painful and desperate. (陆明雪,2014) This is an unreasonable world. The laboring, indifferent and depressing atmosphere in his novel is exactly corresponding with such a world. In order to display the philosophic connotation in the novel better, and manifest the unreasonable world more profoundly, he is used to adopting the following artistic expression techniques: symbol, irony, absurd. Golding uses his unique meditation and calmness to excavate the origin of the mutual killing which has never stopped for thousands years among human races. He establishes a series of contradictions of humankind in his works: original good and evil, humanity and brutality, rationality and irrationality, civilization and savage and so on.

1.2 Lord of the Flies

Lord of the Flies is the first and the most famous full-length novel of Golding, it is an allegorical as well as a mythological novel. With the external form of the famous children novel The Coral Islands, this novel typically presents the concept of “evil of human nature” of Golding. Although the children are the protagonists of this story, Lord of the Flies actually is not a child literature in general, but a book written for adults, in which the children’s world shown in the stories is just a microcosm of the adults’ world. As Wang Xiaobo said, “This novel just puts the story in the background of the future era, which actually has the same essence with pure literature. He puts the story in an imaginary world just due to the time background currently can’t accurately express his writing intention.” The publishing process of Lord of the Flies was not smooth, it was refused by twenty-one publishers after Golding had finished it and was not published until 1954. What made people surprised, nevertheless, was that the book gained tremendous success as it came out and immediately became the bestseller in high school and college campuses, which was popular among young readers and enjoyed “the model of British contemporary literature” status, and even was put on the screen twice in 1963 and 1990. It shows the theme that once the constraints of civilization are relaxed, the primitive instincts of humankind will be thoroughly exposed. Due to the power of the evil nature of most people, the minority who insist on civilization become innocent victims. In the story, from the initial state that the children could work together, to the later division due to their fears of the “beast”, contradictions finally burst out between the two factions, one represents reason and civilization, and the other savagery and barbarism, which not only shows the vulnerability of civilization and reason as well as the difficulty of pursuing democracy and order, but also illustrates the truth that it is easy to get into despotism, while difficult to stride forward a democratic society. (缪昌义, 2004) Lord in this novel is the king of dirty affairs, and the synonym of the ugly personality. It is not merely a symbol of the ugly pig’s head, more representatively is the deepest darkness of human nature--the innate badness in the secrecy of one’s own heart which can not be avoided.

2 Theory of Irony

Golding’s Irony mainly occurs in the absurdity of reality. Golding creatively constructs the ironic plot structure with his original ironic tone, reveals and criticizes the irrationality of human side especially the evil of human nature, which complements with the foregoing symbolism. The main characters are innocent children who love to play naturally. Even when they go to catch the wild boar, having fun is one of the purposes. As children, they don’t have keen insight and reliable judgment, and can’t think rationally to find out the solution, therefore, they cannot fully understand what happens, as well as their behavior and intention. As a result, most of them become barbarians. (尹敏敏, 2013) However, the emergence of naval officers at the end of the novel changes the reading field of reader--we should analyze these children from the perspectives of adults from civilized society, which makes the overall structure of the novel change from a children novel to a book on the entire human race, which points to the evil of human nature directly. And this shift strengthens the ironic effect of the novel unprecedentedly, and highlights the fundamental aim of Golding’s ironic narration.

2.1 Irony

Irony means “saying this while indicating that”, sometimes even totally means the contrary. There were three meanings of irony in the classical period. The first one is pretending ignorant. The second one is the Socratic irony which the opposite betray his intentions unconsciously under the consultation and question. The third one is the Romanesque irony in which the literal meaning doesn’t tally with the real meaning or is contrary to it. In the half of the 19th century, German romanticism literature theory reformed the concept of irony, which was extended from the rhetoric concept to the literary creation principle. Germany literary theorist Frederick Schleiger acclaimed, as a creation principle, irony means “to realize the fact”: “the world is essentially of paradox theory, only an ambiguous attitude can seize the contradictory unity of the world” and “the purpose of throw fantasy into the high altitude is to throw them back to the ground of reality.” In the 20th century, the irony got further elucidation under new criticism. Brookes made a more detailed explanation of irony, he defined irony as “the obvious distortion of a statement by the context”. Context can make the meaning of a word reverse, this is irony. The most notable feature of irony is what it means doesn’t match what it refers, that is the actual connotation of a statement and its surface meaning contradicts with each other. And from the standpoint of poetics, as Rui Chi said, irony comes from “the equilibrium of antithing”, which means things that are usually conflicting, exclusive, or offset with each other combine as a state of balance in the poem. In conclusion, the poetic characteristic of irony still depends on the function of context to complete ultimately.

2.2 Irony in characters

A large part of the novel is related to hunting. It seems that the children are in the conquest of the beast, but in fact they are conquered by the beast, the beast takes possession of their minds, and takes the place of the human nature, makes them become the “beast” to kill each other. When people encounter something unknown and unfamiliar, the reaction would be different, which exactly reflects their inner world, that is, the essence of human soul and mind.

The central figure in this novel is Ralph who is rational and brave with the capability of charisma and leadership. He is conscientious, and exerts his right in a democratic way. As the owner of the conch, he has the highest power on the island, however, the power he possesses is so fragile that even couldn’t maintain a fire for survival. At the same time, there are also shadow and darkness in Ralph’s heart, on the one hand, he can’t stand the temptation of delicious wild pork and never dares to fight with jack directly, on the other hand, facing the so-called “beast”, he doesn’t hold a positive attitude, only denies its existence in a hollow voice. What’s more, he involuntarily participates in the persecution of Simon, and eventually he fails to grasp the situation to guide the children on the isolate island to light. He only has to watch Piggy being killed hopelessly, and himself is chased in a blind alley, and is almost killed. He tries his best to lead the children to light, but eventually loses the purity of human nature himself. (王叶娜, 2006) At the beginning, he is the rational and brave leader, afterward he loses his friends who have been following him all the time, and finally what he owns are only regrets and grieves, the life of Ralph’s in the island is full of irony.