Posted on 08/16/2009 9:35:46 AM PDT by JoeProBono
When William Golding, the author of the coming of age allegorical classic 'Lord of the Flies', died in 1993 little was known of his personal life. This has changed due to the resurfacing of an autobiography written by Golding for his wife in order to explain how his character developed.
John Carey, the literary critic and an emeritus professor of English literature at Oxford has gained access to the reclusive author's previously unseen archive which includes two autobiographical works, three unpublished novels and a journal spanning twenty years.
As released on the Times Online, amongst the revelations is an admittance to a teenage attempted rape. After Golding's first year at Oxford, he attempted to rape a fifteen year old girl who he had met at music lessons.
Soon they were “wrestling like enemies” as he “tried unhandily to rape her”. But she resisted and Golding, all those years later, wrote that “he had made such a bad hand at rape” before shaking her and shouting “I’m not going to hurt you”.
That might explain how he was able to imagine a group of supposedly civilised English schoolboys marooned on an island degenerating into a tribe of homicidal savages so easily in his novel.....
clearly he had an intimate relationship with the Lord of the Flies and wrote with authority.
Why does anyone care about Golding’s youthful misadventure?
Yipes! He was most definitely listening to that lord of the flies at that point.
“But he was only doing it in the name of art and literature, so he could have better experiences to write about in his books!!! No harm done!!”
/liberal fanwanking off
Misadventure? Attempting to rape a child (he was a college student who tried to rape a 15 year old) is a “misadventure”?
Who was trying to “discredit” Lord of The Flies? I was just pointing out that attempting to rape a 15 year-old is more than a misadventure? Seems to me, this more illustrates how he could envision the savagery that he so vividly portrays in the book.
Please help me understand how my post had anything at all to do with discrediting the book?
Sounds like Clinton. Wasn’t that why he left England?
What do you mean "more illustrates?" More than what?
Because of this “episode” in the author’s history, it gives a bit of insight into his mind... he obviously had a closer connection to savagery than mos knew.
Unless I am totally misreading your comments, you are not a fan of "Lord of the Flies." Therefore, you inflate the author's confession of a sexual misadventure in his youth into his owning a diseased mind necessary for his ability to describe violent behavior. This seems to me to be an attack on the book and the writer.
Where did I say diseased mind? Why do people keep putting words in my mouth (keyboard?)? I read Lord of the Flies several times as a student - the first time of my own free will, and again as a required assignment in an English class. I liked the book, though disturbing, at the time. As I have grown older, I fully recognize the depths of the story -
Nothing more. Don’t add words or assume meaning. Just what I said.
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