William Golding: Uncovering Pure Evil
From the beginning, William Golding, the author of Lord of the Flies, saw evil in human beings. Golding noticed what people are capable of during World War II, and after writing the book he was overwhelmed with the pure madness of people. William Golding wrote Lord of the Flies after witnessing the verisimilitude evil of people during World War II during the postwar period, and his story turned him into a wicked man.
Even when he was a child, William Golding was not the nicest person. Bullying peers, Golding once said, “I enjoy hurting people” (“William Golding Biography”). Golding grew up following his father’s footsteps and became a school teacher (“Lord of the Flies”). This is when he started studying “sanity and logic” (“William Golding Biography”). Golding was very interested in the way humans behave, even though he was usually isolated from other people. People that knew Golding said that he “couldn’t be bothered with people and their pesky claim to exist” and that he was “not quite a gentleman” (Conrad).
Fighting in World War II, Golding got his inspiration for writing Lord of the Flies. During World War II, Golding observed how evil people really are--the main theme for Lord of the Flies. He “was unprepared for violence unleashed by the war” (“Lord of the Flies”). Golding said, “I began to see what people were capable of doing. Anyone who moved through those years without understanding that man produces evil as a bee produces honey, must have been blind or wrong in the head” (“William Golding Biography”). But even though he said he witnessed the evil of people, Golding also said, “he understood the Nazis, because he was ‘of that sort of nature’” (Conrad). The reason Golding wrote Lord of the Flies is to promulgate that every human being is essentially evil, including himself.
No one wanted to publish Lord of the Flies, but when it was finally published Golding regretted writing the book. “Golding considered the book ‘boring and crude,’ [and] its language ‘0-level stuff’” (Conrad). But his corrupt story even seemed to change him as a person. After publishing Lord of the Flies, Golding “lost faith in any kind of ‘sanity and logic’” (“Golding, William”). He would also refer to himself as a “monster” due to being traumatized by the story he created. He was tortured in his sleep by very bad nightmares and he even ended up assaulting a 15-year-old girl (Conrad). He was haunted by the fact that he uncovered the evil of people in his story.
William Golding was able to see how mad people really are during his life because of his experience in World War II. He even was capable of doing some of the evil things he talked about. An unknown author once said, “I have never met anybody who could do so much, was interested in so much, and who knew so much. He inhabited a world of sanity and logic and fascination” about William Golding (“Golding, William”). He was a man with a brilliant mind that was overcomed by the evil that is within every living person.
Works Cited
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