William Golding (1911-1993)

William Golding is representative for a generation of English writers known as

the disillusioned writers who lived through the two World Wars and whose main
thematic element is the idea of evil and the fight between good and evil. Among
his works we should mention:
Lord of the Flies (1954)
The Inheritors (1955)
Pincher Martin (1956)
Free Fall (1959)
The Spire (1964)
The Pyramid (1967)
The Paper Man (1984)
Fire Down Below (1989)
His best known novels are Lord of the Flies and Pincher Martin, the first one, a
philosophical and allegorical novel treating the problem of evil and the second
one innovating on the concept of focalization (point of view) as a narrative
technique.

Golding goes back to allegory and tries to approach it from a philosophical

point of view (in the Middle Ages allegory meant a character embodying an
idea, virtue or vice – Vice, Satan – in morality plays; in Romanticism the
allegory was replaced by the symbol which has many interpretations). The
result is an archetypal attitude, quintessential myth of humanity, a large
universal perspective on mankind which is both timeless and generally valid.
His characters are 20th century real people transformed into prototypes or
paradigmatic samples of humanity.
The problem of evil is in Golding’s works a very challenging fictional
topos because ‘it contains the poetry of disorder and draws the reader’s
attention onto the struggle between the primitive level of the instincts (intuition,
subconsciousness, carnal instincts) and consciousness, logic, reason, etc.’
(Golding)
The author’s aim is to make us reconsider our own moral behaviour, our
conceptions on what is ethical or good when we are included in a community.

In Lord of the Flies a group of children aged between 6 and 15 land on an

isolated island. The first element connected to evil is thus the very idea of an
island, since their isolation represents a taking out from the normal context in
which we all grow up.
 Golding’s fundamental idea here opposes the romantic conception which
provided that men within society are corrupted while men living closer to
nature are purified, they become noble savages (cf. Shelley, Wordsworth who
emphasise pantheism = the belief in the divinity of nature).
For Golding, if left alone, outside the social and political context, human
beings turn into savages, into cruel and blood-thirsty creatures.
The island initially stands for the Garden of Eden, a paradise described in
terms of balance, power and luxury, but it gradually turns into a prison, a
deforming, deteriorating instrument. The tension comes from the very shape of
the island, although it symbolises the prison the children cannot escape,
corrupting them, it has the form of a ship ready to sail away.
The children appear as modern Robinson Crusoe but who do not tame the
island; they manage to find a shelter, so they are not forced to be creative like
Robinson; so they become victims of the island, being strictly separated from
the world of the grown-ups. The island prevents them from becoming the
grown-up, mature and logical persons they should become. Their hostility is a
barrier in their development, they victimize the island, they are aggressive
versus nature, they dislike and destroy it because they are afraid of it.

There are 4 main characters:

Ralph – the symbol of intelligence, duty, hope. As all characters are allegorical,
he stands for good and virtue, and becomes the leader of the children from the
very beginning.
Jack – is initially similar to Ralph but he is gradually changing into a violent,
primitive and cruel child, demonstrating thus the principle of evil, of tribal
primitivism that exists in all people. Jack manages to take with him a large
number of children who turn against Ralph, and they undergo the same process
of deterioration, while Ralph ends up alone.
Piggy – symbolises material life (body) – while Ralph stands for spiritual life –
but also intellectual life, as he wears glasses and is eager to fight for freedom.
Piggy is best characterised by the vital energy of his body and mind.
Simon – is the one that sacrifices himself for the others to realise how far things
had gone, becoming thus the figure of the Saviour, of the liberator in the novel.
The Beast on the island they are horrified with is in fact in the hearts of the
children, the fear that they feel and the evil that they develop is actually the
beast.

The four characters correspond to the four elements:

Ralph – stands for fire – he wants to keep the fire burning all the time =
hope, liberation, spirit, superiority of the mind;
 Jack – water = blood;
Piggy – earth = material life;
Simon – air
The 4 elements are present in the novel as well: the fire which has to keep
burning, the water – the sea which surrounds the island and does not let them
escape, earth – the island, air – the beast, parachute, plane.

The fight between the children is thus associated with the fight of the 4
elements, which brings about the destruction of harmony and the corruption of
the children, as only when the four elements are in balance the human being can
function.
The Beast represents the dark, the impenetrable, fearful, creates tension
and should be seen as the seed of evil that germinates, creating also
irresponsibility, fury, violence, savage and aggressive acts that cannot be
stopped.
Fire becomes the active principle and its permanent presence is the only
way in which evil can be stopped. Fire (= reason) opposes darkness, both
outside (night, terrifying for children) and inside (destruction of the spirit by
instincts).
The use of masks is interesting here, since by decorating their faces, the
children fall on a lower scale of evolution, they cover their identity and
personality and become more and more involved in primitive actions like
killing (first pigs, then children – Simon, Piggy).

Ralph is eventually saved by a grown-up person, a messenger from the

civilized world, the positive element which, by saving Ralph, manages to save
all humanity left on the island
Evil: island/darkness/children/beast/mask/fire (burns the island down)

Pincher Martin is very important for the innovations in terms of focalisation

that it involves. There is always someone who sees, focalises, it may be the
writer/narrator/character, but not the person who speaks. This technique is
rarely noticed by the reader who doesn’t feel the difference between people
speaking and seeing.
Basically, it’s the story of a British soldier whose ship wrecks and
struggles to survive, going through a lot of pain. He eventually reaches an
island and remains alone on the shore for 6 days doing nothing but seeing,
looking at things, watching and thinking or remembering (the eye and the
mind).
 His fight is for keeping his mind sane because he knows that when he
loses control of his mind, he dies. Many chapters begin with comments on eyes
and seeing, because it seems this is the only thing he can do. In the end he loses
his capacity of seeing and he dies.
We are witnessing a constant fight for spiritual survival associated with
physical pain (the island is a rock without vegetation, he is hit by the stones); he
repeats frequently that he is sorry for not having his boots. This culminates with
delirious moments; he has visions indicating that he can no longer control his
mind and he eventually dies
Two officers find his dead body, comment on the fact whether his death
was painful or not. They also mention that he still has his boots on, while in the
first chapter we were told that he took off his boots in order to swim easier.
Consequently, the other chapters are in fact his hallucinations while drowning
in the sea, so he did not reach the island, nothing actually happened and
therefore, there is no story.
We are facing a dramatization of evil, of life after death, of sin; it is
supposed to render the conflict between past, present and future, the
confrontation with God, the problem of finding the centre, the relationship of
the reader with the text, etc.
R. Stevenson comments on the complexity of this mechanism: the novel
functions on a first realistic level where you believe everything as true, but
when you reach the end the realistic text has to be interpreted, shifting to a
symbolic level. Therefore, the relation of the reader with the text becomes
ambiguous, urging the reader to re-read the novel.
The narrative involves visions within visions, focalisations within
focalisations, and we become interested in these visions and not in what the
narrator tells us. It is a game with images, with reflections on the mirror; we
don’t know in fact who sees all things – is it the character/writer/narrator who
wants to play a trick on the reader?