Background of the Study

commit to user 1 CHAPTER I

A. Background of the Study

Human psychology and its nature has always been an interesting discussion. And literary works, on its development, has indeed achieved trustworthy status as the reflection of the real world. Despite its category as fictional work, the elements of literary works and its making process are always derived from the real happenings around the work or the author. Characterization, especially, is often influenced by the author’s idea which certainly experience phases and under certain psychological circumstances. William Gerald Golding, a British novelist who won a Nobel Prize in 1983, was born on September 19 th , 1911, in Cornwall, England. He spent his childhood within a gloomy environment in his house which is located next to a graveyard. He was not particularly good student in mathematic but his interest in language was formidable. Thus, he spent two years two years in Brasenose College, Oxford University in the natural sciences discipline before deciding to switch into English. There, he published his first book entitled a volume of poems before earning his bachelor degree. After graduating from his college, Golding started his career as a social worker while continued writing literary works and act in plays for London theatre. He then trained to be a teacher and worked as English and philosophy teacher at Bishop Wordsworths School in Salisbury. But he had to leave this profession during the outbreak of the World War II to serve the commit to user 2 Royal Navy. When the war was over, he resumed his profession as a teacher and a writer. Though he made many works and published many essays and reviews at that moment, none of his novel was accepted by the publisher until he finished his novel which entitled; The Lord of The Flies. The Lord of the Flies , which was first published in 1954, was Golding’s first success after his return from the World War II. The novel was published both in England and in the United States of America and achieved success and become a common addition to the schools reading list. Golding’s The Lord of the Flies achieves both success and severe criticism due to its idea and the method of its presentation. With the setting of a deserted island where neither laws nor rules exist, Lord of the Flies begins the novel by characterizing children 6 – 12 years old as its actors. Those children are English schoolboys who survived a plane crash which was destroyed on an air assault during the war. From the sociological background post World War II, the English educational institutions, at that time, were having strict and discipline rules applied in their daily activities. This is the background frame of the of the characters’ personality which will contradict the setting where the plot progresses without any force of civilization that the used to have. The reason why the researcher chooses the Lord of the Flies as his subject is that; the characterization of the lost boys has the same range with the Freudian commit to user 3 dynamic personality development phase as the Latent phase. This is the phase where people’s Id, part of Freudian personality structure which control behavior based on biological demands, is repressed or seems to be asleep, and does not experience much significant developments. On the other hand, this is the phase where the demand of norms, values, ethics, rules, and many other civilization means are intensely required since this is when ego and superego experience massive development. In other words, it is the phase when people learn and adapt with a broader social life values. In the place where psychological maturity and health are required to create the lowest level of civilization, the innocence of the boys allegorically reflect pure humanity into whatever it might become without guidance or limitation from a civilization. In other statement, it provides the possibility to portray the nature of human and how would it develop in a different variable, or can likely to be called abnormal circumstance; in wilderness. The way the novel presented is also often criticized as an allegory to the real world in the writer’s idea. Allegory itself means fictional literary narrative or artistic expression that conveys a symbolic meaning parallel to but distinct from, and more important than, the literal meaning. Microsoft ® Encarta ® Reference Library 2005. © 1993-2004 Microsoft Corporation. This allegorical phenomenon, which is closely related to psychological experiences and basic nature of human characteristics, is most likely traceable with psychoanalysis in order to justify the idea and message that the writer wants to deliver. commit to user 4

B. Scope of Study