The time in which the novel is set:
The novel was written after a lot of fights and conflicts, in 1954. This book must had been inspired by a lot of things that had happened, and so they gave Golding some ideas about the world. These are some historical facts, that were going on in the time of Golding's life and Lord of the Flies:
- Fighting- Golding worked in command of a small rocket ship in Royal Navy and he was involved in the sinking of the German battleship Bismarck
The German battleship Bismarck After Golding's World War II experiences, he has said:
“I began to see what people were capable of doing. Anyone who moved through those years without understanding that man produces evil as a bee produces honey, must have been blind or wrong in the head.”
- Atom bombs threatened England in a war against "the reds"
- The Nazi concentration camps
A Nazi concentration camp 
Children prisoners of the Nazi concentration camps
- The Japanese mistreated their prisoners
- The British and American mass bombing against civilians
- The Coral Island- It is a book about boys, who also try to survive on an island. However these boys are friendly and peaceful all the time. This book was published in 1858, and about 100 years later Golding wanted to write a similar book, but with a realistic plot, that the boys actually go savage, because in Coral Island, everybody stay civilized and friendly. Therefore Golding wanted to show, how the real world looked like. He realized the world is not beautiful all the time, and it can be cruel, such as in the World War II, the Nazi concentration camps or the mass bombing against civilians. So he wanted to write a book, how it would actually look in the real life.
The peaceful Coral Island