The twentieth century will be best remembered perhaps for its two world wars and the degree of social movements and moral dilemma which they brought in their wake. Increasing knowledge on various fronts- psychological, economical, philosophical, anthropological etc- led only to an increase in moral unease and strengthening of the notion that religion and ethical systems are relative rather than absolute. Thinking men stared questioning the belief in the essential rightness of western ways of behaviour. It was in such an atmosphere of intellectual ferment that William Golding stared writing. War experience gave him a chance of observing the melee of humanity at close quarters. The brutalities of war drove home to him the savagery, cruelty and lust inherent in man's nature. With this Golding firmly came to believe that man is tainted with evil. This very philosophical drift was to become the basis of his fiction