Comparative Study on the Theme of Death between Lord of the Flies and Mrs. Dalloway

The gap between Mrs. Dalloway (1925) by Virginia Woolf and Lord of the Flies (1954) by William Golding is about three decades. The background of the former deals in the first aftershock of devastating World War I whereas; the latter shows the apocalyptic situation of mankind after World War II. Both of the authors in these two novels are very much aware of the common catastrophe that is death. However, they treated the theme in complete different ways. Moreover, a many implicit issues impacted the characteristics of their individual treatment. Virginia Woolf is a quite radical figure in British literature as well as in world literature. She incorporated the instability and deconstructed view of gender in almost all her works and Mrs. Dalloway too (Samuelson, 58). On the other hand, William Golding loves to rip off the facade of ideology as he did in Lord of the Flies with the concepts of heroism and childhood.
Death is suicidal in Mrs. Dalloway and homicidal in Lord of the Flies. The two protagonists of Lord of the Flies Ralph and Jack first united for hunting down a pig. However, it will take a turn ahead in later part of the novel as the suppressed desire of gang rape within that bunch of kids. In Mrs. Dalloway, the character of Septimus Warren Smith was prone to suicide as he was deeply distressed by the shell shock of World War I and the death of his dear friend Evans. The theme of death in these novels has been delineated through the characters such as the deaths (read m…