The Existential Crisis and the Redemption in the Lord of the Flies开题报告

1. 研究目的与意义

Lord of the Flies is a well-known novel written by William Golding who won the Nobel Price in 1983. Suffering from the pain of wars, most of people including Golding at that time were always in the mental state of horror and frailty. William Golding thought it would be extremely dangerous for contemporaries if some people follow the Nazis to show brutality. Therefore, Golding sharply revealed the darkness of human nature in this novel, bur the other implicit theme redemption seems to be ignored by readers.

In this novel, Golding aims at promoting the goodness and morality of human society and encouraging people to pursue redemption. From the perspective of existentialism, this paper attempts to provide a way to read the novel by analyzing the theme of redemption in the Lord of the Flies. Existentialism is one of the leading western schools in the contemporary philosophy, which places the human as the core and respects the individuality and freedom. Existentialism emerged after the World War I, and its main ideas include that existence precedes essence, the absurd, freedom of choice, the relationship between individuals. In the Lord of the Flies, some characters, objects, plots and background obviously reflect the thoughts of existentialism.

2. 研究内容和预期目标

In terms of existentialism, this paper helps readers to understand the novel by analyzing the theme of redemption in the Lord of the Flies, providing people with confidence in obtaining the spirit of peace and happiness.

The first part will give a brief introduction of William Golding and Lord of the Flies including the basic information and literature review abroad and at home. Then the paper will introduce the philosophical ideas of existentialism, especially for Sartre#8217;s views, concerning three aspects: 1. the absurdity of the world. 2. the individual#8217; free choices. 3. choice of responsibility. The next two chapters are the main body of this paper, analyzing the theme of redemption of the book in detail from above three angles. Finally, this paper will reveal the revelation of the book.

3. 国内外研究现状

as far as existentialism is concerned, it is one of the leading western schools in the contemporary philosophy. nowadays, the papers by many scholars divide into two categories that one is the study of the theory itself, the other is to analyze something like literary works, educational thought, studying of marxism and so on.

in terms of redemption, there are some papers considering it as their key words. they discussed carefully from different viewpoints. for example, in the article named power, space and other-an interpretation of heterotopia in lord of the flies, the writer analyzes the organization of utopia from quite a new viewpoint about how to show utopia metaphorical function and salvation. some scholars read the novel from the theme, and redemption is one of the inevitable topics. some papers pay attention to the perspective of religion and dig out the meaning of religious salvation. certain writers analyze the theme of redemption from the view of island literature.

overseas, there are many papers to analyze the novel the lord of the flies, giving us a more extensive mind to understand the connotation.

4. 计划与进度安排

chapter 1 introduction

1.1 brief introduction to william golding and lord of the flies

1.1.1 william golding

5. 参考文献

al-saidi,a,a,h, (2012). savagery and the heart of darkness in william golding#8217;s lord of the flies. cscanada, 4(1), 129-134. doi: 10.3968/j.sll.1923156320120401.2009.

golding, w. (1997). lord of the flies. new york, ny: riverhead books.

fang yanbin. (2010). interpretation of lord of the flies from the perspective of christian culture(unpublished master#8217;s thesis). central south university, hunan, china.