Foreshadowing in Lord of the Flies

Foreshadowing is a device often used in literature to hint at major events of a piece of writing, or the climax. William Golding masterfully uses this technique in his novel many times to grab the reader?s attention, and add depth. Lord of the Flies, his 1954 work about a group of boys stranded on an island, where bedlam is ever present, has foreshadowing to the myriad of crises that occur. This foreshadowing hints at how …

…foreshadowed them all. For without foreshadowing, these events would jump out at the reader, and have no anchor to the book. The famous literary technique helps root the crises in the novel, and the instances of truculence, expiration, and social collapse are given depth and meaning, and provoke definite thought in the reader. Espousing innocence lost and utopia degeneration, Golding left us a concrete exemplar of how art imitates life with Lord of the Flies.