The Ethical Void or the Parody of Western Modernity in Golding’s Lord of the Flies

Abstract

This paper examines the issue of ethics in Lord of the Flies (1954) by the English Postmodern writer, William Golding (1911-1993). The study is grounded on some ethical principles drawn from the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). It concludes that ethics is absent in the environment where Golding’s characters evolve. This absence of ethical references mainly results from western modernity that called into question all former references that provided moral ideals. As such, Lord of Flies enacts, with much irony, the ethical void in which western modernity introduced humanity.