摘 要

1983年，威廉•戈尔丁因为《蝇王》这篇小说获得了诺贝尔文学奖。他经历了第二次世界大战并由此看到了二十世纪西方社会的黑暗。这种经历引发了他对于人性恶的思考。因此，人性恶和人类自我救赎成为了《蝇王》的主题。《蝇王》起源于于第二次世界大战，它表现出了现代人对生命意义的思考。《蝇王》的主要内容是写一群男孩因为飞机事故被困在一个岛上。起初，他们可以和谐相处，但是，因为人性的邪恶的扩张，他们互相残杀从而导致了一个悲伤的结局。

本论文主要分析了《蝇王》的三个后现代主义特征：拙劣的模仿、互文性、传统荒岛小说戏仿解构。从互文性来看，戈尔丁运用了互文性和圣经中原型来解读本文。在中，戈尔丁戏仿《珊瑚岛》中相同的角色名来命名《蝇王》的主人公，然而，他们的结局却是不同的，从而产生了强烈的讽刺感。通过对传统荒岛文学的解构，我们可以通过《蝇王》了解与荒岛文学更多相关的内容。这些表达方式给予了《蝇王》可以超越当时的审美体验的新要素。《蝇王》被视为后现代主义文学的萌芽。一方面，随着时间的推移，戈尔丁的非凡的叙事手法与后现代特征的寓言意义显现出了其重要性。另一方面，它对当代文坛也产生了深远的影响。

关键词: 威廉•戈尔丁；《蝇王》；拙劣的模仿；互文性；解构传统荒岛小说

Abstract

William Golding won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1983 because of Lord of the Flies. He experienced the World War and saw the darkness of the western society in twentieth centuries. This kind of experience made him think of the human nature. The consequence of his thinking is that evil in human nature and human salvation become the theme of Lord of the Flies. It has a lot of genres like theater of absurd, expression, stream of consciousness and so on. It existed in World War and it tells modern thinking on meanings of life. Lord of the Flies tells that a group of boys are trapped in an island because of the plane accident. At first, they can live harmoniously, however, because of the expansion of evil of human nature, they kill each other and get the bad ending.

This paper mainly tells three postmodern features in Lord of the Flies: parody, intertextuality and deconstruction of traditional desert island fiction. From intertextuality, the writer analyses it from intertextuality to archetype from the Bible. From parody, Golding parodies the same character name as name in The Coral Island, however, the characters’ endings are totally different, therefore, it creates a strong feeling of satire. Through the destruction of traditional desert island fictions, we can learn more about information which is related to desert island literature. At that time, these kind of expressions can give Lord of the Flies fresh ingredient which is better than aesthetic experience. Lord of the Flies can be regarded as germination of postmodern literature on this account. On one side, Golding’s special writing skills and the meanings of fables which have postmodern features show its great significance as time pass by. On the other side, it has profound influence on the contemporary literary world.

Key words: William Golding; Lord of the Flies; parody; intertextuality; traditional desert island fiction

Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Parody in Lord of the Flies 5

2.1 English Desert Island as an Intertext 5

2.2 Parody: Refutation and Reconstruction 5

3 Intertextuality in Lord of the Flies 8

3.1 Intertextuality 8

3.2 Archetype from the Bible 8

3.2.1 Archetype 8

3.2.2 Biblical Apocalypse as an Intertext 9

3.2.3 Archetypes in Lord of the Flies 9

4 Deconstruction of Traditional Desert Island Fictions 11

4.1Breakthrough in the Theme 11

4.2 Unique Plot 12

5 Conclusion 14

References 15

Acknowledgements 16

Postmodern Features in Lord of the Flies

1 Introduction

Golding was born on September 19, 1911, in Cornwall. Cornwall is located in the southwest corner of England. Meanwhile, Golding was born in an intellectual family. He started writing when he was only 7. His father was a scholar and obsessed with knowledge and exploration. What’s more, his father had great enthusiasm with politic and trusted science. His mother was a woman who advocated that woman should have rights to participate in social public events. Obviously, his family had a significant impact on Golding in various aspects. Golding had already read all kinds of children literature, including all fairy tales from ancient Greece to modern society. When he was reading, he collected words like collecting stamps or collecting birds’ eggs. When he was at the age of 12, he set about trying to write novels and planed to write a long novel which was about the history of trade union movement, however, this novel was unfinished. After he graduated from Marlboro middle school where his father studies, he was admitted to Oxford to study natural science according to his father’s order in 1930. Two years later, he finally found that science department was not what he really enjoys. Golding turned to study English literature. He learned the history of Anglo-Saxon with diligence. This kind of study experience influenced a lot on his works.

In 1935, Golding graduated from Oxford. In 1934, he published his maiden work which was named collection of poems. This work includes 29 short poems. These poems show his writing talent. When he graduated from the Oxford, he did social work for 4 years, including writing and acting. He also did extra, director and scriptwriter in a small theater. In 1939, he married Ann Brookfield and taught English and Philosophy in a mission school in southern England. However, World War II (1939~1945) destroyed his peaceful life. In 1940, Golding participated in the Royal Navy and he was on active service on a rocket craft for almost 5 years. As the commander of rocket craft, he experienced a lot of unforgettable wars. For example, he participated in the war which bombarded and sank the German battleship Bismarck. There is another example that he participated in the Normandy Invasion. When this war was over, Golding retired in 1945 and went back to school to teach English literature. Also, he insisted on writing in his spare time. The war dramatically changed his positive attitude toward human beings. Because of this, Golding decided to show the evil in human nature through his work to help man face his darkness in deep heart.

Golding is one of the representative persons of realism literature in the 20^th century. However, what the writer will talk about in this paper is postmodern literature. At this time, the writer will tell the difference between postmodern and postmodernism, modern and modernism. Postmodern is used to describe something or someone that is influenced by postmodernism. Postmodernism is a late twentieth century approach in art, architecture and literature that typically mixes styles, ideas and references to modern society, often in an ironic way. Modern means relating to the present time, for example, the present decade or present century. Modernism means a movement in the arts in the first half of the twentieth century that rejected traditional values, techniques and emphasized the importance of individual experience. William has his own unique idea about writing. He said that “Unless you even doubt what you do would not be done or you are sure that no one has tried before, otherwise, writing novel is meaningless. I think that writing two similar works is not desirable.” In Golding’s work, the deep thinking of evil in human nature and redemption of evil are shown clearly. Another theme in his work is death. Human’s fear is toward death. The characteristics in Golding’s work are different from modernism in 19^th century and romanticism. There are no fascinating plots, no change on man’s characteristics and lack of environment description. His novel is an allegorical novel. In his sight, the world is absurd, horrible, painful and hopeless. This is an unreasonable world. Dim and dreary atmosphere in his novel corresponds to this kind of world. He is accustomed to using several means of artistic expression to show the philosophical connotation in his novel. The first mean is symbol. For instance, in Lord of the Flies, Flies not only symbolize hideous pig’s head, but also symbolize the evil in human nature. The second is absurd. Absurd mainly refers to those the case where plots and human’s behavior are against common sense and reason. Absurd plays an important role in the work of Golding. His work often has scientific colors. In Lord of the Flies, the plots of war of atomic bomb are very absurd. All these come from the sentence: “The world is absurd”. The third is unique irony. The satire of Golding mainly comes from reveal of modern absurd. His main characters fight for justice and truth, however, the characters are always caught in unbearable dilemma. Last but not least is his narrative style. The feature of his narrative style is ordinary, simple, dignified and indifferent. Golding’s unique form of expression can show different kinds of painful feelings such as disasters strangeness, especially feelings of fear and powerlessness. Humanism is the key to Golding’s thought. There is also lots of binary opposition: absurd or reason, survival or death, corruption or rescue, guilty or innocence. This kind of theme always appears together. Golding uses this kind of rhetoric way for many times: he uses darkness to describe bright sunshine. There are many contradictions in his novels.

In 1983, Golding got the Nobel Prize because of the great achievement on Lord of the Flies. The main idea of Lord of the Flies is that at the outbreak of a nuclear war in the future, a group of British boys are evacuated out of this war. On their way home, their plane is shot down and the pilot is killed. These boys arrive at an island which is far away from human society. When they are in the process of waiting for rescue, they also decide to establish a society with intelligence and civilization. They choose Ralph as the chief, choosing Jack for haunting and taking care of the fire bridge and copy human society to make different kinds of rules. However, their effort fails at the end. As a result, the island quickly becomes dirty. Children wake up and complain seeing the beast. Jack leads the choir kids to haunting, ignores the fire bridge which is as distress signal. Because of this, the fire dies out. Growing conflict between Ralph and Jack divided children into two groups. The conflict between two groups cause the horrible result: Pighi who represents rationality and Simon who knows the truth of the beast are murdered and Ralph is isolated and hunted down. At the time that Ralph has nowhere to hide, a naval officer drops from the sky and saves his life. Ralph is very regret of evil and corruption in human nature.

What is postmodern literature? Postmodern literature is born after World War II. It is a product of western industrial society. Though postmodernism is intimately related to modernism, postmodern literature still has different and new culture and artistic ideological trends. Postmodern literature refers to the absorbed western modernism (including postmodernism) ideas and skills and it breaks with traditional ethical and moral rules through new values. It reflects enjoyment of life, materialistic and rationality of low-class people in modern life. This kind of literature prefers to the description of humanism and the pursuit of equality of personality. There are four characteristics of postmodern literature. The first one is complete anti-tradition. Postmodern literature is not only against the old tradition but also totally against that the new tradition which modern literature tried to establish. In terms of genre, postmodern literature deconstructs the traditional novel, fiction and even narration itself. Because of this, postmodern literature can be said as a kind of destructive literature, that is, a sense of anti-literature. The second one is the rejection of the so-called value. Postmodernists think that all traditional noble things and beliefs are transient things which are derived from the word and they can not be treated with good faith and solemn. They are reluctant to think seriously of major society, polity, morality and aesthetics. They ignore the concern over these problems and even ignore themselves. They are no longer trying to give meaning to the world. The third one is that postmodern literature advocates the so-called zero writing against modernism on the depth of myth, deep awareness, such as rejection of loneliness, a sense of anxiety and flat it. Last but not least, the postmodern literature intents to break up the line between literature and popular literature. The tendency to popular literature and sub literary appears apparently. Stylistically, the writers always use contradictions, alternate, incoherence and randomicity, extreme, short-circuit, anti-genre, inflation of discourse. These all make readers hard to understand. The main schools of literature of postmodern literature are: absurd theater, the new novel, black humor, the beat generation and magical realism. There are some writing skills, for example, irony, parody, intertextuality and destruction of traditional theme.

Above all, this paper aims to talk about postmodern features in Lord of the Flies. This paper will talk about irony, parody, intertextuality and destruction of traditional theme in Lord of the Flies. The first part will be introduction and the second part is three main chapters and the last part will be conclusion.

2 Parody in Lord of the Flies

2.1 English Desert Island as an Intertext

Parody is one of typical postmodern features in Lord of the Flies. Parody is a humorous piece of writing, drama or music that imitates the style of a well-known person or represents a familiar situation in an exaggerated way. Modernists use this kind of way to simulate the traditional works and to revolt a double effect of satire and irony in the end. Postmodernism can be understood as a wide-ranging way to parody.