Nightmare Beast, War And The Children In William Goldings

In the Nightmare Beast, War and the Children in William Goldings Lord of the Flies from Academic Search Complete, Joyanta Dangar describes how wartime trauma induces nightmares into the minds of the young boys. To begin with, Dangar explains the nature of the beast in the novel itself. She underscores that the beast in an externalization of the inner darkness that exists within all human beings. The beast is believed to have originated since the boys lack a comforting mother figure to make the terrors of the unknown vanish from existence. Without this sort of figure, the beast develops and takes shape from the vague archaic fears of the young impressionable boys deserted on the island. The appearance of the beast set the stage for many instances of pure terror highlighted throughout the novel that almost leads to pure chaos and total destruction. …show more content…
While even though war is only implied to be going on within the novel its self it plays a humongous role in overall developing the novels story line. War is not just the mere occasion of the novel, but is moreover an offstage antagonist within the story and helps underscore the boy’s behavior. William Golding himself fought and lived through World War II and afterward described the noble effect war had on him, even going as far as to say it was a turning point for him and opened his eyes to humanities true nature. It was for these reasons he decided to play off war the way he did throughout the noble and set war as the background of the boys