The Best of the Bureau/The_Best_of_the_Bureau_Bureau_Development_Inc._1992.iso/dp/0125/01257.txt

Text File | 1992-08-07 | 9KB | 161 lines

$Unique_ID{bob01257}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Works of William Golding
Introduction}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Golding, William}
$Affiliation{Department Of English, Bard College}
$Subject{war
golding
human
fall
first
novels
society
boys
free
life}
$Date{}
$Log{}
Title:       Works of William Golding
Book:        Introduction to William Golding
Author:      Golding, William
Critic:      Dewsnap, Terence
Affiliation: Department Of English, Bard College

Introduction

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 g