Historical Content

History
The lord of the flies was written and set during a time of great historical advancments. The novel was written and published in 1954, at time where the world was reeling from the political and social effects of WW2 and was on the cusp of the cold war. This was likely to affect Goldings writing style, because this was a time of fear, brutality, and evil. It is likely that Golding saw this in the world, and he believed that that was the core of human existence.

The Cold War
The Cold War was mostly started by the US using nuclear weapons on Japan. This was obviously in retaliation to pearl harbor, but it brought about the terrifying reality of nuclear warfare. These weapons had the ability devastate miles of land, and to massacre hundreds of thousands of people in an instant. The two nuclear powerhouses at this time were America and Russia. America had shown there ability to devastate with Atomic bombs, but Russia had hundreds of new warheads ready to kill. The Cold war is named as such because there  was no real conflict. The only conflict was political and scare threats, but known casualties are at zero.

Though no deaths occured the fear was very real, children practiced bomb saftey in school, air sirens went off very often, and Adults stocked up shelters that hadn't been used since WW2. It seemed to the world that Nuclear war was inevitable. There were several Close calls during the war, the largest of which was the Cuban Missle Crisis*, but disaster was averted. Now you might be wondering how this ties into the lord of the flies, but I'm about explain. You see during this time the boys were being evacuated because this novel is set near the end of WW2. That is why they got shot down, and it is why there is a battle over the island just before they found "the beast" The end of the book is around the end of WW2, and most likely the man with the boat is going back to his homeland when he finds Ralph and the others. So the book is a story about savagery, relating to a savage war. Golding shows how a seemingly great nation of sorts can quickly fall apart into a war of two sides, a war of two people who are the same though they don't know it all because of a few leaders decisions.