The Lord of the Flies is an attempt to trace the defects of society back to the defects of human nature. Golding himself tells us that the horrors of the Second World War were crucial in producing the moral landscape of the novel. (Reilly140-141) Morally wounded by the extreme barbarity and sadism that the Second World War disclosed in the heart of supposedly civilized Man, Golding chose to project his spiritual uneasiness into a picture of children's hatred and deadly combats. (Talon 297) Lord of the Flies exemplifies the cultural catastrophe of the current times in which it was written.
To realize his purpose Golding patterned his book after a nineteenth century work on a related theme, R. M. Ballantyne's The Coral Island, whose three characters have the same names as some of the protagonists in Lord of the Flies. In this way, he thought, he could show that little had changed though much had changed in that century. (Spitz 22) He removed them from civil society and isolated them on a remote island. It was a beautiful paradise with an abundance of food, water, and the materials for shelter. He kept them below the age of overt sex. The island can be seen as a kind of Eden, uncorrupted and Eveless. The actions of the children negate any assumption about childhood innocence. (Rosenfield 93) He also excluded the concept of private property and the struggle for survival neither work nor was robbery essential for existence. There were no classes, no divisions, and no inequalities. The only significant sign of difference is age. (Spitz 22-23).
All ingredients were there for a calm, peaceful, and contented life. It was a state of nature inhabited by free and equal individuals. If anything were to go wrong, as it tragically did, it could only come from within; the only enemy of man was himself. (Spitz 22-23) Golding set out to discover whether there is that in man which makes him do what he does.
