Golding’s Message: Man Needs the Grace of God
William Golding’s Lord of the Flies exists for many as a commentary on the fragile nature of Western society and a warning to mankind: Man possesses an inherent evil and only through awareness of this evil can he gain some semblance of control; otherwise, he will continue to slowly destroy himself and the society in which he lives. “Golding writes with a vivid sense of paradox,” says Bernard Oldsey and Stanley Weintraub, “with the eyes of someone who has seen the Empire crumble and witnessed twentieth-century manifestations of Original Sin” (38). Thirty-eight years after the publication of Lord of the Flies, Golding’s vision remains accurate and his message requires attention now more than ever.
In the past, many have tried to downplay Golding’s religious leanings, noting that he does not attach himself to any particular religion; Golding himself, however, insists he is a fundamentally religious man: “If there is one faith I have, it is that there is a unity. And it seems to me — that man hasn’t seen this” (Kennard 177). Golding views this failure to “see” as causing man’s rejection of God which, in turn, predisposes him to infinite problems and failures: “God is the thing we turn away from into life, and therefore we hate and fear him and make a darkness of him” (Tiger 33). “We have diminished the world of God and man in a universe ablaze with all the glories that contradict that diminution” (Gindin 17). Expressing an “awareness of an external reality,” Golding clearly believes “man needs the grace of God” to begin approaching even a minute degree of goodness (Kennard 179). When Ralph finally realizes the limitations and inadequacies of his own abilities, he searches for “some hope, some power for good, some commonsense”; his desperate plea for a message or sign from the grownup world represents a belief in God, the “external reality” that will watch-over and ultimately save him (Golding, “Fable” 95).
The need for God is a message most do not want to hear — they never have — because it imposes restrictions on lifestyle and re-evaluation of ideals that do not want to be considered. Golding has always understood this:
“The fabulist is a moralist . . . . The moralist has made an unforgivable assumption; namely that he knows better than his reader . . . If the moral is terrible enough he will be regarded as inhuman; and if the edge of his parable cuts deeply enough, he will be crucified.” (85–86)
Both Golding and Lord of the Flies put forth a disturbing message to the youth of the early 1960’s, a message rejected outright. As late as 1960, says James Gindin, Golding was seen as “surly and reactionary” and “motivated by a sullen distaste for the contemporary” (2). Bernard F. Dick says,
“As original sin fell out of fashion, so did Golding . . . Lord of the Flies lost its popularity [as] . . . a generation arose that was unwilling to accept evil as inevitable and human nature as intrinsically flawed . . . The moral of the fable . . . contradicts their faith in social manipulation.” (145–46)
Two factors make it easy to reject the necessity of God: (1) There are no immediate consequences or effects; (2) Society as a whole supports and encourages a move away from religion. First, rejecting God and religion as an illogical concept easily solves problems of conscience and guilt. With no immediate consequence or punishment, only the threat of eternal damnation exists, and one can push this to the back of the mind and forget. Jack and his tribe demonstrate this as each step toward savagery and debauchery goes unanswered: without direct or immediate punishment, even the seemingly good choirboys fall to the temptation of evil.
Second, the larger part of society has no need for God or religion. As moral values plummet, it becomes easier to follow the majority than to oppose popular thought. Higher education institutions promote “superior knowledge” as a replacement for religion: knowledge, logic, and reason can explain what was previously misunderstood; religion, therefore, proves illogical and unneeded. Grappling with this position, Golding, through Piggy, shows that rationality can in no way combat moral decline and evil. “Piggy has blind spots,” says W. Meitcke. “He wants to believe that once you’re an adult, you no longer fear the dark and that life can always be explained. In the jungle he becomes weakened, civilization recedes, and with his death the law of the jungle prevails” (15).
Those who do resist, those who fight against moral decline and attempt to live by God’s law, are scorned, cast-out, and sometimes killed. Simon exemplifies Golding’s “anarchist”: a “dreamer and dissenter,” one different from the others from the beginning. He does not passively accept the idea of a beast and on his own uncovers the truth. As a result, Simon, the nonconformist, dies a violent death while trying to share his discovery. “Anyone who says that the beast is not in fact bestial or who suggests that it does not exist at all runs the risk of being liquidated as a subverter of the values by which the human enterprise is sustained” (Anderson 178). “The truth [Simon] brings,” says James Baker, “would set [the boys] free from the repetitious nightmare of history, but they are, by nature, incapable of perceiving that truth” (Kennard 184). Meitcke feels the Simons of the world are doomed to die because of what they know and their inability to communicate it; yet they are the “most noble of people” because of their willingness to try (14).
As moral values are discarded, decadence becomes enjoyable and considered “fun.” Our present society suffers from drug abuse, sexual permissiveness, a strong attraction to pornography, and a host of other ailments; in Golding’s society, fun involves killing pigs and, eventually, humans. “Obscenity can be delightful,” says critic S.J. Boyd, “That is a symptom of our essential illness” (21). Here, again, exists a place where dissenters do not belong. “We are going to have fun on this island,” says the Lord of the Flies to Simon. “Understand? We are going to have fun on this island! So don’t try it on, my poor misguided boy, or else — “ (Golding, Flies 133). William Mueller says, “History has made clear, as Lord of the Flies affirms, that the Simons are not wanted, that they do spoil what is quaintly called the ‘fun’ of the world, and that the antagonists will ‘do’ them” (250).
Another symptom of fading moral values is the need for immediate gratification. Sex, money, drugs, and alcohol mask frustration and pain when things do not go as planned; they attempt to replace the inner-peace that knowing God brings. Allowing the signal fire to die out to instead hunt a pig, Jack has, in effect, decided that “signaling another world . . . looks to the future for a doubtful salvation,” whereas eating roast pork provides “life-enhancing enjoyment now, the immediate reward of human effort” (Anderson 178). The failure to abide by established rules creates other problems as well: shelters do not get built, coconut shells lie empty of water, and the chosen lavatory remains unused. The boys no longer attempt to work together; doing what they want when they want relieves them of responsibility and satisfies immediate impulses.
The thirst for power and domination also plague a crumbling society. Desiring control from the beginning, Jack appeals to evil nature and uses manipulation to get what he wants. Promising meat, fun, games, and freedom, Jack does not have to work hard: easily enticed, the boys join his tribe most willingly. Present society does not differ: The pornography, illegal-drug, and television-advertising markets are only a few examples of how man’s evil nature can be successfully tapped to provide a manipulative, controlling few with enormous wealth. Appealing to human weakness and evil nature is, unfortunately, a highly profitable venture.
Our “anything goes” philosophy has obviously crippled society, and still people refuse to see or hear. They give-in to the temptation Simon so valiantly fought against: the urge to “go ahead and be like ordinary men and let the whole thing slide” (Keating 192). Only the construct of murder remains a universal taboo, but Golding shows that even a murderous potential can exist when things spin dangerously out of control:
“One of our faults is to believe that evil is somewhere else and inherent in another nation. My book was to say: you think that now the war is over and an evil thing destroyed, you are safe because you are naturally kind and decent. But I know why the thing rose in Germany. I know it could happen in any country. It could happen here.” (Golding, “Fable” 89)
Refusing to learn, humankind “prefers to destroy the objectification of his fears than to recognize the dark terrors and evil of himself” (Tiger 63). Golding once said that Ralph should have been weeping for Simon at the end of the novel, not Piggy (Kennard 183). Is this his way of saying that man will never come to see the truth? That despite his ordeal and loss of innocence, Ralph still does not see things as they truly are? Quite possibly. In his “Fable” essay, Golding states, “We stand today in the same general condition as we have always stood, under the sentence of death” (91). In the end, the rescuing naval officer fails to appreciate the boy’s trial and suffering; he, one who should surely know, has ignored the warnings and has failed to identify evil within man and the need for the grace of God. “The truth about man,” says David Anderson, “is not merely that he is savage and afraid, but that he refuses deliverance and murders the messengers of light” (160).
