Past and the possibilities of the anthropo-scene: Activities and retaliations in golding’s Lord of the flies

This paper locates William Golding’s novel, Lord of the Flies, on the map of an organic dialogue of hostility between the anthropoid and the space that has ensured its continual being. The narrative as it situates this struggle for preserving the being in the tender yet ruthless efforts made by a group of school children stranded in a deserted island, devoid of temporality, occupied only by a nature that is dark and unknowable, reflects the innate propensity in man at every stage and circumstance of evolution, to colonise elements of the ecosystem in order to extract its vitality and sustain his own. Atavism seems to be at play when the children, mimicking their primitive adult counterparts, settle themselves conveniently where nature erstwhile reigned supreme, obliterating any concern for the environment. The children’s ironic emulation of the white masculine self, shows, from an ecofeminist point-of-view, the conventionalised victimisation of the (m)otherised nature. This expedition which starts off with the hunting of the sow and its mother and continues endlessly with the forest ablaze, interestingly employs male children only, and the better the show of masculine prowess, as the case stands, the more glorious seat granted. It is, therefore, no wonder that their naive object would be to erase feminine emotions to uphold masculine intellect and also that the absent female would find manifestation in a nature that is mysterious. The paper finally addresses the inevitable retaliations of nature ushering the reverse colonisation of the self where by is consumed man’s proud reason. Tracing the historical anxieties of the human need(s) against the ecosystem, it considers how the innocent children fall prey to and perpetuate a self-centered discourse of self- destruction in an invisible but palpable Anthropocene.