Golding's Tone Case

Golding’s Tone

In the Lord of the Flies by William Golding, the language style of writing is very different than what most books contain today. It is not exactly technical sounding but it is not casual either. Because the author is English, especially being from the time frame of the 1950’s this could affect his language in the fact that Britain has always had the stereo type of being very proper which he does mention in the book through Piggy’s character. He chose words like trembling, gorging and penetrating which are longer and descriptive making the tone ominous and slightly demonic. So far in the story the scenes he has created are incredibly vivid due to his use of imagery, he describes the shade the boys are sitting in as green which is not normally how one might picture shade but it is still strangely accurate. For the most part he has left only small clues as to the details of things that are obvious making the reader fill in the blanks, so of course the human imagination takes everything to the extreme creating sharper details. For instance Golding does not say that other boys started to emerge on the beach once Ralph blew the conch, he says that “signs of life were now visible on the beach.” I’ve noticed that the author uses both long, sometimes run on sentences when describing the scene but other times he uses short abrupt ones like on page 17 on the first line, “More and more of them came.” It makes it somewhat difficult to tell if it is negative or positive that more of them came. While reading some of the more gruesome parts you do not flinch like you might expect to because he uses simple words that still describe the fright. Overall William Golding’s tone is very dark, not meaning that it is all doom and gloom but he plays into the most sinister, cruel and portentous sides of human nature especially using all children as characters.