The Allegorical Study of William Golding's Lord of the Flies and Its Significance

In the words of Jesus in St. Mathew, 18:4, “The greatest in the kingdom of heaven is the one who humbled himself and becomes like this child,” childhood is presented as a state of innocent goodness, a state which may be regarded as the kingdom of heaven on earth. As adults, fallen from this happy state, we may hanker after a return to it and the possibility of such a conversion is held out to us by Jesus in the Biblical passage, St. Mathew, 18:3, “I assure you that unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” There is room for optimism about human nature of our Universe, for the speaker is the Creator and loving ruler of the Universe who came down to earth to suffer and die so that we might be redeemed or rescued from our wickedness and restored to the original purity and happiness as we see in children and remember as our experiences of childhood. But we live in a cruel world which can only be governed by malevolent demons whose delight is to torture us. If we wish to see an image of these dark gods or devils we need to look no further than children or our childhood, need only examine the ghastly and ferocious play of children, where we see how little devils torture and kill insects for fun, playing God with flies. From within and without we are beset by evil-in our human. The nature there is a terrifying propensity towards wanton cruelty which is evident even in children. There are number of occasions in the Bible which highlights that every inclination of man’s heart is evil from childhood. David confesses before the Lord in Psalm, 51:5, “I have been evil from the day I was born; from the time I was conceived I have been sinful.” Keywords: kingdom, humbled, conversion, nature, children.