Note: for a Critical Commentary and Bibliography of William Golding
Background:
The literary career of William Golding (born in Cornwall in 1911) can be traced to two changes in his outlook. The first came after two years at Oxford University, when he abandoned his scientific studies for English literature, especially Old English poetry. He was graduated from Oxford with a B.A. in 1935. The second took form during World War II and concerns his view of human nature: Joining the British Navy in 1940, he participated in many important battles, including the Normandy invasion on D day, and by the end of the war, he was a lieutenant in command of a rocket warship. "When I was young, before the war, I did have some airy-fairy views about man," he said in "A Conversation with Golding" (Douglas M. Davis, The New Republic, May 4, 1963). "But I went through the war and that changed me. The war taught me different and a lot of others like me." After the war he became a school teacher in Salisbury, England. For fifteen years "I read nothing but classical Greek, not because it was the snobbish thing to do or even the most enjoyable, but because this is where the meat is." During this period he wrote poetry, short stories, and a historical play, The Brass Butterfly (1958), as well as the novels that have made him famous: Lord of the Flies (1954), The Inheritors (1955), Pincher Martin (1956), and Free Fall (1959).
Golding owes the distinctive quality of his fiction to the influence of the Greek drama and epic. His use of the disheveled choirboys in Lord of the Flies and the inner voices of Pincher Martin and Sammy Mountjoy as choruses; his use of myth; his evocation of fate as a force directing human lives in opposition, often, to laws of probability; his use of tragic irony, where the destiny of an individual is patently obvious to everyone but the individual; his description of ritual processions and sacrifices: all of these elements from Greek literature contribute to the symbolic overtones of his novels.
Realism:
His novels are, in some respects, close to actuality. There is a realism in his rendering of physical detail, for example, his description of Pincher Martin's view of the ocean breaking over a rock: "He heaved over in the sea and saw how each swell dipped for a moment, flung up a white hand of foam then disappeared as if the rock had swallowed it." And the accuracy with which he depicts the visual scene carries over into his presentation of the mechanics of human behavior, particularly the psychology of fear. There is a further realism in his dependence on his own experience for documentation. Lord of the Flies, an account of the struggle for survival of a group of boys on a tropical island, depends on his accurate observation and recording, as schoolboy and teacher, of the behavior of boys. The Inheritors, in which the last eight members of a tribe of Neanderthal men meet a tribe of Homo sapiens and are destroyed, is based not only on his archeological readings and his knowledge of Old English epic, but on his experience of the terrors and tensions of war. Pincher Martin, about a sailor shipwrecked alone on a rock in the Atlantic, depends upon scenes witnessed by Golding in his years in the navy. Free Fall might seem to be far removed from the author's experience, since it is a study of the mind of a prisoner of war of the Germans. But the central figure, Samuel Mountjoy, is an artist by profession, is the same age, and has had an intellectual and political history similar to the author's.
Symbolism:
Although, like many authors, he utilizes his personal history, Golding is unique in the way that he uses the actual to build a structure of meaning. The symbolism of his novels is often more important than the action. Though the literal story is in itself interesting, his characters, images, and settings go beyond the merely literal, to represent universal truths about human nature and society.
Lord Of The Flies:
Golding's first novel is more than a boyhood adventure story. The conflicts on the island are the ever present antagonisms of human society. The problems are the problems of the world. The evil thriving in the individual boy is the evil that threatens mankind. Two movements in the novel represent the two forces that govern society. The first is the tendency to orderliness represented in the parliamentary rules of the boys' meetings and in their attempts to build a signal fire. The second is the movement towards chaos as the fire gets out of hand or is forgotten, and as the boys participate in orgies of hunting, primitive dance, and even human sacrifice. The second force is the stronger; without the traditional protection of society, and without superior intellectual guidance the boys swing towards anarchy.
The Inheritors:
The Inheritors is at first glance a mere primitive tale, though clearly based on serious linguistic, psychological, and anthropological research. But it gradually becomes apparent that the primitive story is a mirror for the contemporary age. The problems of the primitive society are contemporary. The struggle for survival by the last of the Neanderthals, as they encounter the more sophisticated tribe with their canoes and sharper weapons, is the situation of modern man confronted by technological advances in weapons and destructive chemicals. Just as Homo sapiens treated the Neanderthal with cruelty, so technology, according to Golding, produces a new potentiality for human cruelty in the modern world. His examination of the roots of personal and racial hatred leads him to suggest that the problem of man's inhumanity to man is not a new one, and that the need for reform is more than governmental; it must take into account the individual's natural proneness to evil.
Pincher Martin:
This is a survival novel dealing with the adventures of a shipwrecked sailor. But the question is not merely one of physical survival, but, more importantly, who is this man Christopher Martin? And what is he worth? Partially, the question is to be answered in terms of his personal characteristics-his toughness and greed. But more significant than these is his blind refusal to admit his guilt. He shuns the lobster that lurks by his island rock. He hates that kind of creature. But with his two claws reaching out to grab whatever soft morsel comes within his reach, he is a lobster. His tragedy is his lack of awareness. Like other Golding characters, he fails to use reason to control the violence in himself, because he does not know himself.
Free Fall:
Golding's fourth novel traces a quest for the meaning of life by a man representative of modern thought. After World War II, taking stock of his life, Samuel Mountjoy focuses on his experience as a war prisoner of the Germans. He knew at the time that he could be persuaded to give up information about his fellow prisoners, and that his nobility or infamy would be a result of circumstance and not choice. A representation of man in the prison of society and self who behaves according to machine-like impulses, he goes back over the history of his life in an attempt to solve the problem of why he acts the way he does. As he pursues the origins of his flawed character, he comes to the realization that the first cause of his fall was not in his poor environment but rather in himself. The first fall was free. And once he wastes the freedom possessed in childhood, his life becomes like the free fall of an object in space. Now that he possesses this knowledge, he recovers a sense of totality that enables him to give direction to his life.
General View:
Golding's novels raise the question of how violence and disorder are to be controlled in the modern world. If the novels do not contain an explicit solution to the problem, the implied answer is that man, who contains within himself the seeds of evil, also possesses the faculty of reason to control anarchistic impulses. The meaning of his symbolism is ultimately optimistic.
