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Lord of the Flies (1954) is among the most intriguing and thought-provoking novels of the 20th century.Its author William Golding was fed up with WWII, the Cold War, and the threat of a nuclear war.

Lord of the Flies (1954) is among the most intriguing and thought-provoking novels of the 20th century. Its author William Golding was fed up with WWII, the Cold War, and the threat of a nuclear war. As a philosophy teacher, he was fascinated by human nature and sought to dig deep into its roots particularly, its "inevitability of violence." Despite being rejected by 21 publishers, it has deservedly become a celebrated novel and Golding's magnum opus. The novel revolves around a group of British boys (6-12 year-olds) whom during a raging war were left stranded alone on an uninhabited island, without adults, after a plane crash. The children try to manage and thrive, only for the novel to end in macabre savagery and gore. The title gets its name from Beelzebub, a demon of pride and war, both of which are prominent themes in the novel. Golding satirizes a classic genre of adventure stories in which young boys end up on an island after a shipwreck and somehow mange everything well in a civilized manner, while mocking indigenous people and showing their superiority a genre that clearly approves of colonialism. Most noticeably, Golding satirizes R. M. Ballantyne's The Coral Island, which gives a too optimistic outlook of the situation and endorses imperialism. To conclude, Lord of the Flies is a timeless novel due to its exploration of human nature, and it opens the door for wild imagination and thinking.