Narrative Technique
Golding employs a third-person omniscient narrator in Lord of the Flies, meaning that the narrator
speaks in a voice separate from that of any of the characters and sometimes narrates what the
characters are thinking and feeling as well as what they're doing.We also spend
brief amounts of time inside the heads of littluns in order to show that the impulses ruling the main
characters are universal and innate.The narrator's point of
view is sometimes that of an objective observer of all of the boys, as in the scenes where they're all
meeting and interacting, but sometimes the narrator will follow the point of view of one boy by
himself.The narrator only gives us insights
into the thoughts of characters sparingly, however.Most often the narrator describes what the
characters are doing and how they're interacting as seen from the outside.