Lord of the Flies - Setting

        Setting, atmosphere, and mood all reflect the way people
think, act and feel. In novels, an accurate description of the
surroundings someines indicates what is going to happen in the novel,
or how the characters will act. In the novel Lord of the Flies, the
author, William Golding, pays alot of attention to decribing the
setting in great detail, and the setting reflects the actions of the
novel and/or the characters.

        The first way the setting reflects what will happen in the
novel in the first chapter. The author descibes the island in a way
that makes it seem heavenly, "a great platform of pink granite thrust
up.....the top was covered with a thin layer of soil and course grass
and shaded with young palm trees....the water. It was clear to the
bottom and bright with the efforescence of tropical weed and coral. A
school of tiny, glittering fish flicked hither and thither." (pg.12)  
It makes the reader believe that this island is going to be a
wonderful and heaven-like place to live, a feeling that will soon be
contradicted in upcoming chapters.

        The most obvious way that the setting reflected the actions
of the characters was in chapter nine. In this chapter, the boys
dance around a campfire and killed (who they thought was "the beast")
Simon. During the whole scene, there was thunder, lightning, rain,
and gusty wind. This creates and mysterious, depressing feeling, a
feeling that something bad will or has happened. Golding first
foreshadows that a bad event is about to happen by opening up the
chapter "Over the island the build-up of clouds continued."(pg. 145)
He adds to the foreshadowing later on by   descibing the start of the
storm, "There was a blink of bright light beyond the forest and
thunder exploded again so a littlun started to whine. Big drops of
rain fell among them making individual soungs when they struck."(pg.
151) Golding pays alot of attention to really descibing...