The motif of robinsonades in 'Lord of the flies': A comparison of 'Robinson Crusoe' and 'Lord of the flies'

Julia Diedrich

feb. 2012 · GRIN Verlag

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Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2,7, Ernst Moritz Arndt University of Greifswald, course: Analysing Novels , language: English, abstract: The following term paper will be a comparison of Daniel Defoe ́s Robinson Crusoe, which we discussed in class, and William Golding ́s Lord of the flies. For most literary scholars the latter definitely is a robinsonade, which is a general term used for narrations and novels written and published after Defoe ́s Robinson Crusoe. For others it is not seen as such, and some just see parts of this genre in the novel. Even if the opinions differ, it is obvious that there is a certain nearness to the robinsonades. Some aspects of the novel might make it difficult to arrange it into this genre. Conspicuous is that the different contributions are not drawn upon the same basics. The question that arises is: What is a robinsonade? This question is answered in different ways by the critics, so that this seems to be the real problem. There are considerations to this topic, which strongly lean on Daniel Defoe ́s novel “Robinson Crusoe” , and which see the structure and aspects of this work not as a basis but as a guideline. Next to this there are other theories, which have a more unattached usage of this topic. They both have in common that there is no general consensus about a definition or a hold onto special criteria. In the first part of my term paper I want to give a brief overview of the character of the robinsonade, the features of the genre, and I will present some examples I have chosen from the ocean of robinsonades that already exist. I will not refer to Defoe ́s “Robinson Crusoe” in this part as much as I would like to, because this would blast my term paper. In the second part I will analyse Golding ́s “Lord of the flies” in the respect of the worked out criteria, to find out whether it is a robinsonade or not. For this I will also have a deeper look in Defoe ́s novel, so it will be a comparison of the novels “Lord of the flies” and “Robinson Crusoe”.