Voyage and Return story

The notion I’m going to deal with is Travel, initiation stories, exile. First I will define the terms of the notion. In the travel literature, the outlines are woolly and changing. It claims to be informative and entertaining and is situated at the frontier between life experiences and fiction. It constitute a main genre in the English literature thanks to the revival of the travel writing during the 1980s.

Voyage and returns stories take place in this notion. In this type of story, the main character changes his own world to an other world. He goes from innocence to maturity thanks to the different experiences he goes through. Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, in 1718, is the “paradigm of all desert island story” because it was first story ever written about that type of literature. All the others Voyage and Return stories followed the same pattern.

I will show how these 2 texts illustrate the Voyage and Return story by the changes which happen in a character when he is confronted to himself, alone in an unknown world.

The two texts come from The Lord of the Flies, a novel written by William Golding in 1954. A plane carrying a group of British schoolboys has crashed into a desert island, no adult has survived. The children manage by themselves to survive.

In the first extract, a meeting takes place between the boys. They discuss about the beast they saw and they wonder if it was a ghost. In fact, they saw a dead man in a parachute falls and the fear of the unknown make them see a beast. The meeting turn into a quarrel between Ralph and Jack for the chief’s place. Ralph is the leader, he wants the rules to be respected, he is in favour of law and order. On the contrary, Jack uses crud words, rebels against the chief and the rules, seems to be violent, ready to fight. Ralph insists to stick to the rules, he doesn’t want them to become savages, he wants to recreate his previous life but he understands that the the world he had known with law and order is slipping away. The conch, which symbolises civilisation and the right to speak, is flouted by Jack. This text can be summarised by the question “Who cares ?”. As answer, the boys have two opposite approaches, Ralph wants to respect the rules while Jack wants to break them and lead a savage life. This text shows the different changes which occur in two characters in the same extreme situation.

The second extract takes place at the end of the story, when the young boys are rescued by a British officer. The officer came ashore on the island and meets a group of filthy and under-fed boys. Their clothes are in rags and tatters. Their skin seems to be burnt by the sun or by the fire. We don’t know exactly how many time boys have stayed alone on the island but these elements shows that they’ve soent a long time there. The officer is surprised not to see any adult and doesn’t take them seriously. For him, boys are just playing at war but two children are dead and he realises it is not a game. The officer is very abrupt with the children, him which represents the world of adults, law, order and civilisation denigrates them. He doesn’t understand how well educated boys can become savage children without any rules.

The narrator seems to insist on the fact that to have laws and rules is an obligation if you want to be considered as a man. Man is a predator when his life is at stake. When he has

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