REFERENCE

THE CRITICS

ON IRONY

Irony breaks out between contrasted scenes somewhat distant
from one another, and even as far apart as the beginning and
the end of the story. For instance, when we first catch sight of
Ralph, he is neat, handsome and laughing.... When we last see
him he is dirty, in rags and sobbing. He had looked forward to
a fine clean game and has lived a sordid, terrible drama. He
had anticipated an episode as good as a dream and he has been
through a nightmare. Henri Talon, "Irony in Lord of the Flies"

ON GOLDING'S IRONIC USE OF BALLANTYNE'S CORAL ISLAND

In Coral Island, three English boys called Ralph, Jack and
Peterkin are shipwrecked on a tropical island, meet pirates and
cannibals, and conquer all adversities with English fortitude...
good is defined as being English and Christian and jolly, and...
evil is unchristian, savage and adult.... Golding regards Coral
Island morality as unrealistic, and therefore not truly moral,
and he has used it ironically in his own novel, as a foil for his
version of man's moral nature. Samuel Hynes, William Golding

ON INNOCENCE AND EXPERIENCE

Lord of the Flies becomes a tale of the emergence to the
conscious level of modern man's carnivorous nature and the
catastrophe that must accompany this emergence.... Sanford Sternlicht, "Song of Innocence and Songs of
Experience in Lord of the Flies and The Inheritors"

Simon insists on climbing the mountain to find out what it (the
beast) is. Against the boys' derision he says, and against the
warning of the Lord of the Flies he repeats, "What else is there
to do?" His intransigence in climbing the mountain, his
insistence on understanding, is a metaphor for what the book
itself does. The book dares to name the beast, the evil in man's
heart, as the beast. Stephen Medcalf, William Golding

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