Lord of the Flies by William Golding and Great Expectations by Charles

Lord of the Flies by William Golding and Great Expectations by Charles Dickens `Lord of the Flies`, by William Golding was written in 1954 almost a century after Charles Dickens wrote `Great Expectations`, in 1860. Both of the novels are considered as being classics and have been made into films and the books while seeming completely different do have similarities although they are in different social, historical and cultural settings. The frameworks of the books are completely different, `Lord of the Flies` starts as a traditional boy's adventure story like `Coral Island`, by R.M. Ballantyne, however it is subverted to a dark, menacing story about how people behave when the constraints of society are removed. The island is a microcosm of society, and in the book we see examples of hierarchy, the social divide, human nature, and how the boys, with no adults, start to rely on their basic savage instincts. `Great Expectations` is mainly about the divides between the rich and the poor, a popular theme in the Victorian times as the industrial revolution had broadened and highlighted the divide, however both books do reflect on society, and the weakness of human nature. Both the books, while having a traditional framework, have an original element. Not many memoirs are as strange and varied as Pip's, and not many boy's adventure stories turn as dark and menacing as Golding's novel. In the opening chapters the settings of the books are contrasting, in `Lord of the Flies`, the boys are in tropical splendor, (the pool) "It was clear to the bottom and bright with the efflorescence of tropical weed and coral" (pg 17), while in `Great Expectations` the opening chapter is set in a graveyard, which is dank a... ...agwitch in his torn, coarse and disheveled state, "A fearful man, all in coarse grey, with a great iron on his leg. A man with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an old rag tied round his head. A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles, and torn by briars; who limped". From this the reader can see that, although the opening chapters of both novels seem completely unrelated, in fact when the reader looks more closely, many parallels can be seen. For example though the settings are very diverse, one being a wind swept moor, and the other being a tropical island, both are menacing. Although these books were written almost a century apart, and at first seem to be on different topics, many of the key features are the same, and many of the characters posses similar qualities.