As such, the novel is about a group of teenager boys stranded on a deserted island who fight for dominance. In writing the book, he connected these experiences with his childhood experiences with bullying. Through his experience in the navy (1940-1945), he experienced the incredible cruelty and barbarity lying within man. In 1954, William Golding wrote his novel The Lord of the Flies. Anyone who moved through those years without understanding that man produces evil as a bee produces honey, must have been blind or wrong in the head.” This experience in war would be instrumental in his writing years later. Through his World War II experiences, he learned what “people were capable of doing. William was even placed in command of a rocket-launching craft. During World War II, he fought enemy battleships at the Sinking of the Bismarck, and crucial in warding off enemy submarines and planes. Golding was not without a sense of duty, however, and joined the Royal Navy to fight in World War II. However, he eventually opted for his father’s path and started teaching English and philosophy at Bishop Wordsworth’s School in Salisbury. After that, William worked in community houses and even the theater for a brief period of time.

Then in 1935, he graduated from Oxford with a Bachelor of Arts in English. While he was still at college, a volume of Golding's poems was published as part of Macmillan's Contemporary Poets series. Yet, he ended up choosing to study English literature in h is junior year of college, which followed his true interests. He had been brought up to become a scientist, and spent two years studying science like his father wanted. Later on, William would explain his childhood self as a bad behaved child, even saying, “I enjoyed hurting people.” After secondary school, he attended Brasenose College at Oxford University in 1930.

His first dab at writing was at the age of twelve, also the age when he first started bullying people. Under his parents, William Golding’s early education started at the school his father ran (Marlborough Grammar School).

His mother was an active suffragette who took a stand for the women’s right to vote. His father worked as a schoolmaster and was an ardent advocate of rationalism. William Golding was born in Cornwall, England in 1911.

Lord of the Flies by William Golding