The ministry of higher and secondary special education of uzbekistan

2.2 English Literature in the Second Half of the 20th Century
The specific feature of modern literature is the variety of genres and styles. Since 1950s the literary life in Great Britain has developed greatly. The new time brings new heroes, new experience in theatrical life and poetry, new forms and standards in fiction. Liberal and open-minded attitudes in society allowed authors to deal with a wide range of subject matter. On the one hand, the themes in the modern literary works concern more global problems: the Peace and the War, the environmental protection, the relations between the mankind and Universe. But on the other hand, there are themes that have always been in the centre of public attention: duties and obligations of an individual, moral choice, human nature, power and money, etc. An outstanding literary movement of the 1950s was the Angry Young Men, a term applied by journalists to the authors and protagonists of some contemporary novels and plays that expressed protest or resentment against the values of the British middle class. The post-war changes had given a chance to a large number of young people from the more democratic layers of society to receive higher education at universities. But on graduating, these students found they had no prospects in life. There appeared works dealing with the characters of young men who were angry with everything and everybody, because no one was interested in their opinions. The works that expressed “angry” attitudes included Kingsley Amis's (1922–1995) campus novel Lucky Jim (1954), and John Braine's (1922–1986) novel of social ambition, Room at the Top (1957). The label Andry Young Men is more appropriate to the anti-heroes of these works than to the authors, whose views were interpreted as being socially radical. As for the literary techniques, the Angry Young Men are conservatives. They looked upon modernist writers of the twenties as museum pieces. The Angry Young Men are not especially interested in the philosophical problems of men's existence. “The great questions I ask to myself”, Kingsley Amis says, “are those like ‘How am I going to pay the electric bill?’ “The working-class or lower-middle class realism in the work of the Angry Young Men gave way in the 1960s and 1970s to a less provincial outlook in English fiction. In the second half of the 20th century the novel continued to be the leading genre. It developed in many directions covering a wide range of forms, characters and themes. John Ronald Tolkien (1892–1973), the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit (1937), The Lord of the Rings (1954–55) and The Silmarillion (1977), was one of the most influential authors, whose fascinating world of elves and goblins has inspired thousands of imitators. Content High fantasy is a sub-genre of fantasy fiction, defined either by its setting in an imaginary world or by the epic stature of its characters, themes and plot. Quintessential work of high fantasy is The Lord of the Rings. High fantasy exists on one side of a spectrum, opposite low fantasy or urban fantasy, which are set in the “real” world. Some works, such as The Chronicles of Narnia, concern characters that travel between realistic and imaginary settings, and are thus difficult to classify on this spectrum. High fantasy is often classified as epic fantasy; however, although the two subgenres are extremely similar, the latter usually contains a wider range of main characters. William Golding (1911–1993) explored the basic nature of man. His books often take the form of a moral allegory, in which the characters, as representatives of the human race, reveal some of the dark aspects of human nature. In his most famous novel Lord of the Flies (1954), a group of English schoolboys left to themselves in a desert island, far from modern civilisation, regress to a primitive state and turn to savagery. The name Lord of the Flies is a literal translation of the Biblical Beelzebub. Beelzebub is a contemporary name for the devil. In Christian and Biblical sources, Beelzebub is another name for the devil. He is one of the seven princes of Hell described as a demonic fly who is also known as the “Lord of the Flies”. Allegorically the book represents the conflict between man’s desire to live by rules in a civilised society and his desire to rule according to his own will, between groupthink and individuality, between rational and emotional reactions, and between morality and immorality. In The Inheritors (1955) Golding examines how Homo Sapiens gained control of the earth at the expense of his predecessors Neanderthals. Golding won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1983. Graham Greene (1904–1991) was an acute observer of his fellow-man, though often in a more humorous and light-hearted way than Golding. His novels present a vast panorama of characters and storylines.

Content
Lord of the Flies, by William Golding

During World War II, a group of British schoolboys stranded on a Pacific island after their plane crashed. Two of the boys, Ralph and Piggy, set up a democratic government with Ralph as leader. A signal fire is set with the lens of Piggy’s glasses to call passing ships to rescue. The school’s choir leader, Jack, soon becomes obsessed with hunting the pigs. He abandons any thought of being rescued, and eventually leaves the group to start a “tribe” with his choir boys turned into hunters. The increasing fear of a supposed “beast” on the island made all the boys except Ralph, Piggy, Simon and the twins Samneric (Sam and Eric) support Jack. The beast on the mountain appears to be only the rotting corpse of a pilot whose plane had been shot down near the island. Simon runs down from the mountain to share this happy news. All the boys are engaged in a primal ritual celebrating the murder of a pig they have just eaten. Mistaken to be the beast, Simon is killed by the boys’ spears. Ralph, Piggy, and Samneric refuse to join Jack’s tribe. They struggle to keep a signal fire burning on the beach. Then Jack and his hunters attack the four and steal Piggy’s glasses they need for pig-roasting fires. Piggy decides to go to the hunters’ base. Reluctantly, Ralph and Samneric agree. As they arrive Jack begins to fight with Ralph. Samneric are seized at Jack’s command by the hunters and Roger, Jack's second-in-command, drops a large boulder on the head of Piggy and kills him. Ralph alone runs away. Samneric betray the secret of his hiding place. The hunters run after Ralph with their spears. Ralph at last comes to the beach. The shelters he had built are in flames and, falling upon Content the sand with nowhere left to run, Ralph looks up to see a naval officer. Rescue comes at last to the boys’ aid. Ralph breaks down in tears. Soon, all the hunters begin crying at the sight of grown-ups on the beach. Ralph weeps for “the end of innocence” and “the darkness of man’s heart.”