context

• "things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; / mere anarchy is loosed upon the world" - the second coming, Yeats
• THE WILL TO POWER - Nietzsche
• Dante's Inferno - the Nine Circles of Hell
• Sigmund Freud's theory of the human mind

  id - the primitive and instinctive component of personality, cares only about themselves, and their wants and needs (JACK)

  ego - the realistic, decision-making component, relies on the superego for good sense and morality, and tries to meet the desire of the id in a way that is socially acceptable - a balance of good and bad (RALPH)

  superego - embodies selfless actions, stands by morality and judgements on right and wrong, and the ideals of civilisation taught by adults (PIGGY)
• CORAL ISLAND (R. M. Ballantyne) - lord of the flies is directly inspired by this book, however, in coral island, the children encounter evil, whereas in lord of the flies, evil is within them

  CORAL ISLAND at the start -> HEART OF DARKNESS (Joseph Conrad) at the end

  Aristotle's tragic reversal, fear and pity
• Golding's essay on Lord of the Flies - FABLE

  "the boys try to construct a civilisation on the island; but it breaks down in blood and terror because the boys are suffering from the terrible disease of being human"
• "man produces evil as a bee produces honey" - Fable, repeatedly, the boys are described to be buzzing
• the Garden of Eden

  story of Genesis - the island is pictured as a paradise at the start (edenic and idyllic), just as the garden of eden is, but adam and eve disrupted the peace by eating the forbidden fruit. just as the boys destroyed the island by killing animals and setting fire to it
• DEUS EX MACHINA - any situation where something unexpected is brought into the story, to resolve situations, the naval officer that rescues the boys at the end of the book is an example of this
• milgram experiment - measured the willingness of participants to obey an authority figure, who instructed them to perform acts conflicting with their personal conscience (electric shocking their student whenever they got an answer wrong)
• stanford prison experiment - some people were given the role of prison guards, some were given the role of prisoner, and people quickly adapted to the roles that they had been given
• THE ROAD - Cormac McCarthy - sustained motif of fire, as a symbol of hope and cooperation
• "he who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. and if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you" - Nietzsche, be careful when fighting evil, do not become evil yourself in the process
• Beelzebub - occasionally known as the lord of the flies, one of the seven deadly demons representing gluttony and envy