A comparative study of childhood in Golding's Lord of the Flies and Salinger's The Catcher In The Rye

A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF CHILDHOODIN GOLDING?S LORD OF THE FLIES ANDSALINGER?S THE CATCHER IN THE RYE(Master?s Thesis)Işıl BOZKURTABSTRACTThe present thesis represents a comparative approach to childhood in Lordof the Flies by William Golding and The Catcher in the Rye by Jerome DavidSalinger. Chapter 1, entitled The Child and Childhood in Literature, brings intodiscussion the general theoretical and critical considerations of the myth ofchildhood and child motif as a literary pattern in general and, in particular, theaspects of its literary reflection in Anglo-American literature. Chapter 2, entitledThe Dual Representation of Childhood in Golding and Salinger, focuses on boththe destruction and the continuation of the myth of childhood, discusses Lord of theFlies which reveals the darkness of man?s heart and the end of the myth ofchildhood, and The Catcher in the Rye which preserves the myth of the childhoodexperience.The myth of childhood has been established as an important literarytradition in Western literature in general and in English literature in particular.The beginning and the consolidation of the writers? interest in the experience ofchildhood are to be found in the Romantic and the Victorian period. The interestin this subject had an important continuation in the 20th century literature as well,where, after World War II, Salinger preserved the idea of the naivety and thepurity of childhood, whereas Golding attempted to destroy the myth of childhoodby showing that the experience of the childhood period would reveal the darknessof man?s heart, the end of human innocence. Thus, both writers develop in literaryterms a dual vision of the child and childhood experience.