Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0126/01263.txt

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$Unique_ID{bob01263}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Works of William Golding
Summary Of Free Fall}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Golding, William}
$Affiliation{Department Of English, Bard College}
$Subject{sammy
beatrice
halde
miss
sammy's
becomes
philip
character
teacher
does}
$Date{}
$Log{}
Title:       Works of William Golding
Book:        Free Fall
Author:      Golding, William
Critic:      Dewsnap, Terence
Affiliation: Department Of English, Bard College

Summary Of Free Fall

Chapters 1 And 2

     Sammy Mountjoy, a bastard born of a drunken mother in a rural slum called
Rotten Row, is recalling his life. His first expansion of human relationships
beyond the sphere of his mother and the boarder upstairs occurs when he goes
to public school and meets Evie, a habitual liar who tells of her cousin who
lives in a palace in America and her uncle who dwells in a suit of armor. He
recalls the two boys who influenced him, Johnny Spragg and Philip Arnold.
Johnny, rough and independent, has a genius for airplanes and adventure. He
leads Sammy on two dangerous nighttime excursions, one to the airport, and
another to the estate of a general. Philip, a more sinister personality,
enjoys getting others into trouble. He encourages Sammy to waylay the younger
boys in the school lavatory to steal their collection of "fagcards" (picture
cards enclosed in cigarette packages). On another occasion, he dares Sammy to
defile the altar of his church. As Sammy spits, he is caught and struck by
the church custodian who drags him before the parson. Sammy ends up in bed
with a sore ear, which eventually has to be operated on.

Comment:

     Sammy is trying to answer two questions-when did he become the person
he now is? And when did he lose freedom of choice? He hopes by reliving his
childhood experiences to solve these questions.

     We later learn that he is an artist who, serving as a soldier in World
War II, was captured by the Germans. The crucial experience in the narration
is his undergoing psychological torture at the hands of the Germans, which
forces him to a realization of the poverty of his moral resources.

     The point of view that Golding uses in this novel is an outgrowth of
previous experiments. We saw how the omniscient author point of view had
become increasingly more concentrated in his three previous novels. In Lord
of the Flies he ranged freely from character to character. In The Inheritors
he used the outlook of several characters, but gradually fixed on that of Lok
until the last two chapters when he moved outside of Lok, and then, after
several pages of objective description, used the mind of Tuami as a focus. In
Pincher Martin he stayed within the mind of Christopher until the last
chapter. Gradually the tendency has been towards the single consciousness of
the main character. And here, finally, his technique is to stay absolutely
within the limits of the mind of Sammy. Instead of omniscient author, he uses
the point of view of the "I" as protagonist, pretending that the story is
being told by Sammy.

     All of the experiences narrated, contribute to an understanding of Sammy
Mountjoy as artist and man. His sensitive imagination is easily played upon by
Evie or his mother, and his feelings of inferiority make him an easy prey to
external influence.

Character Analyses:

     Sammy Mountjoy - born out of wedlock in a slum neighborhood, he becomes
an artist. For a poor boy, and one who is constantly in trouble, the name
Mountjoy might seem ironic. But actually he does think of his childhood as a
time of joy and freedom in spite of the hardships.

     Mrs. Mountjoy - an immoral, boisterous woman but a good mother.

     Evie - a congenital liar of about six years old who stimulates the
imagination of Sammy.

     Johnny Spragg - a boyhood chum who leads Sammy on dangerous expeditions.

     Philip Arnold - even in childhood his warped personality compels him to
destroy the ideals of himself and others.

     Father Watts-Watt - a kindly parson, shy and withdrawing. He shows signs
of persecution complex.

     The Verger - the church custodian who strikes Sammy and then is
repentant.

     Father Anselm - Fr. Watts- Watt's attractive young curate.

Chapters 3 and 4

     Sammy, in a hospital ward, is visited by the parson of the church he
profaned, Fr. Watts-Watt, who adopts him when his mother dies. Chapter 4 skips
ahead about eight years. Sammy, nineteen, is an art student in love with a
girl named Beatrice. He waits outside the college where the girl is studying
to be a teacher, pretends to meet her by chance, and begins a courtship. At
this time Sammy is a member of the Communist Party and he brings his boyhood
friend, Philip, to a meeting. Philip is struck by the absurdity of the meeting
because only one worker attends; the rest are professional people-parsons,
librarians, teachers.

Comment:

     Sammy's attitude to life becomes increasingly more cynical, but still,
he reflects, he has not become the person he is to be. He has not fallen. He
has not lost his capacity for idealistic political faith in the Communist
Party nor for the adoration of a beautiful girl. Beatrice is appropriately
named. For she resembles that Beatrice whom Dante praised in sonnets and in
The Divine Comedy for her perfect beauty and chastity. Beatrice Ifor is also
an ideal and unattainable beauty-at least so far.

Character Analyses:

     Beatrice Ifor - beautiful and seemingly inaccessible, she is the girl of
Sammy's dreams. We later learn that she attended the same secondary school as
Sammy.

     Dai Reece - the only worker in Sammy's communist cell.

Chapters 5 and 6

     When Sammy seduces Beatrice, he destroys the ideal that she represents.
Not only is she now accessible, but she hardly seems worth the trouble. He
discovers that she is frigid sexually, and that her conversation is limited
to a few stock responses. Eventually he meets a girl named Taffy at a
Communist rally and gives up Beatrice for her. When Beatrice writes to him
and goes to his friends asking for his address, he ignores her. He marries
Taffy and, out of indifference, leaves the Communist Party.

Comment:

     This brings Sammy to the point where he enters the service as a war
artist. He still has not discovered his present self in his past history,
nor does he accept his guilt; but he begins to understand his loss of free
will. He sees that it occurred in his relations with Beatrice when he began
to treat her with vicious disregard. To do so was to give away his free will
and become something less than human.

     At this point Sammy has become a moral anarchist. He welcomes the war
because "There was anarchy in the mind where I lived and anarchy in the world
at large, two states so similar that one might have produced the other." And,
indeed, one did produce the other. The diseased mind produced the diseased
world. Sammy's failure to comprehend his guilt is symptomatic of the general
failure of mankind. He is too callous to interpret his own moral position.
He is an ironic figure-intelligent, but blind to his sins of negligence. His
real crime, like that of Christopher Martin's, is a lack of self-knowledge.

Character Analysis

     Taffy - amoral and strong-willed, she has a more outgoing personality
than Beatrice.

Chapters 7 and 8

     Sammy, a prisoner of war, is brought before a psychologist, Dr.Halde, a
civilian member of the Gestapo. Halde wants information about escape plans.
When Sammy insists that he knows nothing about such plans, he is taken out and
blindfolded.

     As he recalls the blindfold, he is reminded of the first night of his
adoption by Fr. Watts-Watt, when the darkness in his room in the parsonage
threw him into terror. Fr. Watts-Watt comes into the room and makes advances
at Sammy. Then he begins to cry out against his imaginary enemies.

Comment:

     Sammy sees himself for the first time as Halde describes him, as a man
of no strong commitments to ideas or nation, and an easy subject for torture.
Halde himself, the university professor turned torturer, is an example of the
disturbed condition of the world.

     In his relationship to Halde, as with Fr. Watts-Watt, Sammy goes through
a process of disillusionment. When he first encounters Halde, he thinks that
he could like him because he seems so civilized. But then the mask crumbles
and Halde becomes a ruthless torturer. Fr. Watts-Watt similarly loses his
attractiveness in the eyes of the boy. Perhaps these are substitute fathers
being tested in positions of authority in relation to Sammy.

Character Analyses:

     Doctor Halde - like Philip, a man who enjoys seeing others hurt. He is a
university psychologist who has adapted his professional skills to Gestapo
services.

     Ralph and Nobby - fellow prisoners and friends of Sammy's.

Chapters 9 and 10

     When he removes his blindfold, he is still shrouded in darkness. He feels
along the wall and deduces that he is in a small cell. His imagination tells
him that there is some terrible object in the center of the cell. As he feels
forward, he touches a slimy lump of dead matter. Thinking that it is a lump
of human flesh, he wonders if there is a corpse hanging from the ceiling from
which a piece fell. When the commandant lets him out, it is as if he is dead.
The world outside has turned to harmonious forms. The world within himself is
ugly and loathsome.

Comment:

     The psychological torture is diabolically conceived to work upon the
imagination of Sammy. Knowing that he is dealing with a sensitive artist,
Halde places him in frightening darkness, and then brings him into contact
with the most ugly object conceivable, a segment of a corpse. Though there is
no body hanging from the ceiling, the suggestion of that terrible possibility
is worse than actuality.

     Ironically, the realization of such ugliness becomes, in Sammy, a
realization of the ugliness in himself. He has the same insight as did Simon
in Lord of the Flies when he perceived that the beast on the island was a
representation of the dirtiest part of man.

Chapter 11 and 12

     Sammy thinks back to the part of his life corresponding to the
secondary-school period. Two strong influences are Miss Pringle, who teaches
religion, and Nick Shales, who teaches science. Miss Pringle, although a
pious and sometimes entertaining teacher, is cruel in her treatment of Sammy.
Nick, an atheist, is kind. The result is that Sammy loses all faith, and
becomes a freethinker.

     He also recalls, from this period, giving a sketch of Beatrice to Philip
to pass as his own, and how the art teacher praised the drawing.

     At this time, when his atheism is prompting Sammy to decide all questions
on the basis of his own selfish pleasure, and when his love is awakening for
Beatrice, a scandal occurs at the school that increases his cyncism: The
attractive French teacher, Miss Manning, and the rugby coach, Mr. Carew, have
an affair which is exposed.

Comment:

     This is the time in Sammy's life when he becomes his adult self. It is
the time when he loses religious and moral sensitivity, and when he loses all
interest in life except for the pursuit of Beatrice. He does not appreciate
the emptiness in himself until he comes across the piece of deformity, a hunk
of dead human flesh, in his prison cell. It is then that the world around
him becomes beautiful again and his own self becomes ugly. It is then that
Beatrice becomes again a worthwhile person because of her moral goodness. But
while he is in school, he is aware only of the worst parts of the philosophies
of those around him. And his ego is inflated.

     It is interesting to observe the simplification that Golding uses to
present the issues in Sammy's mental development. Miss Pringle is put on
one side of him and Nick Shales on the other.

     They might be compared to good and bad angels hovering over an individual
in a religious painting, except that it would be impossible to say which of
the two teachers is really the good angel.

Character Analyses:

     Miss Pringle - a streak of religion and a streak of brutality are both
present in this spinster schoolteacher.

     Nick Shales - a kindly atheist, one of several temporary "fathers" of
Sammy.

     Miss Curtis - the art teacher teases Sammy, commending the drawing that
he has passed to Philip.

     Miss Manning - a French teacher whose beauty and immorality excite and
scandalize the boys.

     Mr. Carew - Latin teacher and rugby coach who half seduces, and is half
seduced by Miss Manning.

     The Headmaster - he befriends Sammy but does not know how to advise him.

Chapters 13 and 14

     After the war, Sammy visits Beatrice in a sanatorium where she has been
confined for seven years. Her only response to his presence is to urinate on
the floor. The doctor in charge, who is in love with Sammy's wife, berates
him: "You use everyone. You used that woman. You used Taffy. And now you've
used me." Sammy admits, "Yes. It's all my fault."

     He goes to a hospital to visit Nick Shales, intending to refute his
atheism, but withdraws in silence, awed by the dignity of the dying man. He
goes to Miss Pringle to ease her guilt at mistreating him. But, before he can
speak, she reveals her complete lack of a sense of guilt; she praises his
art and hopes that she has been, in some way, responsible for his success. His
recollections shift to his removal from the prison cell and the commandant's
strange apology: "The Herr Doctor does not know about peoples."

Comment:

     The worlds of childhood and adulthood merge in these last chapters. The
general's home, which he once explored in the dead of night with Johnny
Spragg, has been turned into the insane asylum where Beatrice is confined.
Beatrice, when she urinates in his presence, recalls an imbecile girl, Minnie,
who in the infant school urinated on the shoes of a visitor. For Sammy, the
past and present, near and far, authority and revolt, flesh and spirit come
together because he realizes that both worlds, that of science and that of
morality, that of the objective and that of the subjective, do exist in him.
There is a chain of cause and effect in the lives of himself and those around
him. Beatrice is probably in the asylum because of the frustration of her love
for him. And he cut off this love because of who he is. And he is what he is
because of the forces working on him from without, the examples and influences
that make themselves felt. At the same time, looking at Beatrice's situation
from another point of view, she is punished for her sin. And he is punished
for his. He realizes finally that he must recognize his crimes in order for
him to be whole. He must recognize the dark side of the human spirit. "For
this mode which we must call the spirit breathes through the universe and
does not touch it; touches only the dark things, held prisoner, incommunicado,
touches, judges, sentences and passes on." When the commandant says that
Halde does not know "peoples," he is grammatically incorrect but thematically
exact. Halde can define the individual with great accuracy, as he does with
Sammy. But he leaves out of his consideration the most important part of
man, the spirit. He leaves out the darkness and shadows. He mistakenly tries
to deal with the soul of man through strictly scientific methods. He lacks
a sense of the spirit and, accordingly, misinterprets Sammy.

     Sammy says in Chapter 2, "Man is not an instantaneous creature, nothing
but a physical body and the reaction of the moment. He is an incredible
bundle of miscellaneous memories and feelings, of fossils and coral growths."
If this is true, then a part of the bundle is the impulse to anarchy and the
need for recognition of this impulse-a need present not only in Sammy but in
those characters in the novel who prey upon others, including Halde, Miss
Pringle, and Philip.

Character Analyses:

     Kenneth Enticott - this psychiatrist has a double connection with Sammy.
He is in charge of the sanitarium where Beatrice resides, and he is in love
with Sammy's wife, Taffy.

     The Commandant - a German officer who possesses more compassion for
Sammy than does the civilian, Halde.

Character Analyses

     Sammy Mountjoy: All his life an outsider because he was born out of
wedlock in a slum neighborhood. He is a talented artist who believes he is
above conventional morality. He spends his life searching for something,
perhaps a father, perhaps a code, to give his life meaning. Ultimately, he
discovers his own identity and his own guilt, and this makes all of his
previous knowledge obsolete.

     Beatrice Ifor: The ideal girl of Sammy's dreams, she is beautiful and
inaccessible when he first pursues her. When he seduces her, she becomes
listless and subdued. Finally, when he deserts her, she becomes a hopeless
case in a mental institution. Because of her lack of imagination and her
strict conventionalism, Beatrice is a foil to the artist Sammy who makes his
own morality.

     Johnny Spragg: Generous and goodhearted but reckless. Golding's last
description of Johnny is on a motorcycle with a girl, kissing on a blind
hill-top at a hundred miles an hour.

     Philip Arnold: Devious, self-protective, and cynical. He not only enjoys
getting other people into trouble, he also delights in destroying the ideals
of others. At the end, he is an important officer in the British government.

     Taffy: Simple, healthy, and amoral. Her character is much more forceful
than Beatrice's and this makes her a match for Sammy. She responds naturally
and without inhibition and easily manages the transition from Communist to
homemaker and mother.

     Evie: A childhood companion and influence on Sammy's imagination, she is
a congential liar whose marvelous tales lift Sammy out of the narrow
dimensions of his home in Rotten Row.

     Mrs: Mountjoy: In spite of the poverty of their surroundings, his mother,
who is a drinker and little better than a prostitute, brings to Sammy love and
romantic tales that stimulate his imagination. She is a shrew to her
neighbors, but a nearly perfect mother to Sammy. Actually, she is a very good
person, because she does not deliberately hurt other people.

     Dr. Halde: A university professor who has accepted his role in wartime as
torturer. As a psychologist in the process of attempting to elicit a
confession he is able to give Sammy his first full view of himself. He is,
like Philip, one of those people who give in to their destructive impulses and
make cruelty a pleasant profession. He resembles Roger in Lord of the Flies.

     Rowena Pringle: A teacher of religion who is also, like Halde, one of the
vicious. She thinks nothing of teaching religion and breathing hatred at the
same time. Her passion for Sammy's guardian, Father Watts-Watt, makes her all
the more cruel and repressive in treating Sammy. Her violent animosity drives
Sammy away from Christianity.

     Nick Shales: A kindly atheist, one of several substitute fathers of
Sammy. A science teacher, he provides a contrast to Miss Pringle during
Sammy's secondary school years.

     Father Watts-Watt: Another father substitute. He is a generous man but
guilt-ridden and fearful of imaginary enemies.

     The Verger: Remorseful after striking Sammy on the head, an uncertain
warrior in the camp of Father Watts-Watt.

     Father Anselm: The curate of Father Watts-Watt, who is so attractive to
Philip that he prompts Sammy to desecrate the church to defeat his own
tendency toward religious belief.

     Miss Manning: A beautiful French teacher, cool and amoral. Vastly
attractive to her pupils, she becomes even more of a goddess by having an
affair with Mr. Carew.

     Mr. Carew: A married man who coaches rugby and teaches Latin, and
imprudently carries on an affair with Miss Manning.

     Miss Curtis: An art teacher in Sammy's secondary school.

     Benjie: The drunken janitor who betrays Miss Manning and Mr Carew.

     The Headmaster: Charitable but ineffective, he tries to advise Sammy but
cannot find the words.

     Kenneth Enticott: The psychiatrist in charge of the asylum where Beatrice
resides. Like Halde he is incapable of curing his own malady, an unrequited
passion for Sammy's wife Taffy.