摘 要

《蝇王》是威廉·戈尔丁写的一部小说，讲述了在战争中一架飞机被击落，机上的一群英国男孩被弃于一座热带荒岛上的故事。杰克是小说的反英雄人物，他是年龄稍大一点的孩子，是岛上猎手们的头领，随着小说情节的深入发展，他变得越来越狂妄、野蛮、残忍。本文主要研究了在热带荒岛生存过程中杰克的自我迷失，从失去童心和人性的表现中以及造成这种迷失的原因的角度剖析了杰克的自我迷失，全面揭露了杰克的自我迷失表现出的野蛮、暴力与对权力的渴望。

关键词： 杰克的自我迷失；威廉·戈尔丁； 《蝇王》

Contents

1. Introduction.......................................................................................1

2. Demonstration...................................................................................3

2.1 Loss of innocence............................................................................3

2.1.1 His makeup as a hunter................................................................3

2.1.2 His decoration of the stake...........................................................5

2.2 Loss of human nature......................................................................6

2.2.1 His killing of the fellows..............................................................7

2.2.2 Opposing Ralph............................................................................9

2.3 Reasons for the loss of self............................................................10

2.3.1 External factors...........................................................................10

2.3.2 Internal factors............................................................................12

1. Conclusion .......................................................................................13

Notes....................................................................................................14

Bibliography........................................................................................15  

The Study on Jack's Loss of Self in Lord of the Flies

1. Introduction

William Golding (1911-1993), a winner of Nobel Prize in Literature in 1983 for his first novel, Lord of the Flies. Swedish Academy gave comments on it that “for his

novels which, with the perspicuity of realistic narrative art and the diversity and universality of myth, illuminate the human condition in the world of today”¹. He is a renowned and distinguished British novelist after World War II. He was born in 1911, in an intellectual family in Cornwall, England. His father was a teacher and his mother was a suffragette, so his family background influenced him a lot. He joined the British Royal Navy in command of a rocket ship in 1940 when England entered WWII and experienced WWII personally as well. After he retired in 1945, he went back to teach and began writing novels. After releasing Lord of the Flies, he retired from teaching and devoted himself fully to writing, so he had a further understanding on human and humanity. He also won the Booker Prize in Fiction in 1980. William Golding died in 1993, one of the most respected and acclaimed writers in England.

Lord of the Flies, published in 1954, the first novel and the greatest success of William Golding, it is difficult to find other literary works superior to Golding’s after World War II, which is fiction and tells the story of a group of English boys, between the ages of six and twelve, trapped on a tropical island after their plane is brought down during a war. It has been a hot topic in the academic research of literary works ever since its publication.

Lord of the Flies has been studied for a long time and there are abundant achievements. It has been interpreted in diverse meanings. Wayland Young, the first person, pointed out the religious symbols(Young,1957). Frank Kermode analyzed that “sin” was through the subject of Golding’s novels(Kermode,1965). Many earlier comments were on the primary step of summarization and tough analysis of its theme of the evil in human nature, characters and symbols. John Peter made further research on Lord of the Flies and proposed “fable theory”(Peter,1970). He said the novel looked like a “fable”, which warned people. Recent years, many researchers have researched from feminism, psychoanalysis, and parody, etc. Domestic researchers began to pay attention to Golding and his novel when Golding was granted Novel Prize in 1983. Such as Fu xiaona’s The Anxiety about the Darkness of Man’s Heart(付晓娜, 1998). Cheng Jing’s Analysis on Evil by Nature Based on Lord of the Flies(程静, 2000)_. Wang Ji’s New Reflection on the Feminist Criticism of Lord of the Flies(王继, 2007). In the past few years, most researchers focus on the theme, symbolism, psychoanalysis, archetypal criticism, feminism, deconstructionism and ecologism. However, studies on Jack are still few and far between.

This thesis focuses on the antagonist, Jack, a strong-willed, egomaniacal boy, about his loss of self and demonstrates the representation of losing himself and the explanation of reasons. Self belongs to the category of consciousness and represents reason and wit. It is a personality forming by parents’ training and dealing with the outside world after the birth of a person. It faces up to reality and conforms to principles of reality and social needs and acts according to the common sense and logic. It is the aim of sticking to id and it avoids the conflicts between the id and external world. It can depress the impulse and desire and change ways into social recognition. Therefore, it controls and governs id and superego and mediates with the outside world in order to meet the long-term needs of the personality(Freud,1949)_. Once one doesn’t stick to the principles learned from society and gets out of control of the impulse and desire. Then he loses himself. On the one hand, Jack can’t control the impulse of killing, so his loss in killing leads to killing more animals, which demonstrates his loss of innocence. On the other hand, Jack can’t control the desire for power, so his loss in power results in opposing and killing his fellows, which demonstrates his loss of human nature.

This thesis consists of three parts. The first part is the introduction, which is the brief introduction of the author and the book, the literature review including the research of home and abroad. Then second part discusses the loss of self of Jack. The first point discusses the loss of innocence of Jack mainly from his cruel behaviors of makeup of a hunter and his decoration of the stake, that is, hunting and killing animals excessively. The second point centers on the loss of human nature of Jack, which is a higher process about his cruel behaviors of hunting and killing his fellows. The third part quests about the reasons for the loss of self of Jack from the external and internal.

2.Demonstration