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Lord of The Flies - Beezlebub Revisited
Lord of The Flies - Beezlebub Revisited
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90 COLLEGE ENGLISH
fields of interest. Some of the volumes well doubt, however, whether the non-
shown had even appeared in recent professional reader or the general re-
months. searcher would find access to books quite
There seems to be no question about so unrestricted.
the existence of western books and peri- My reception in Russia was undeni-
odicals in the Lenin Library and prob- ably pleasant. Professors Evashova and
ably. in other libraries as well, certainly Zassourskii in Moscow, Kovalyov and
in the Library of Foreign Literature and Nina Diakonova at Leningrad were
in Leningrad's Saltykov-Shchedrin State friendly and helpful. I felt that my audi-
Library (which claims 12,000,000 vol- ences were sincerely interested in my
umes). Just how accessible these are to lectures even if my point of view was
the average reader or student is quite perhaps both strange and inadmissible
another matter. Reading privileges in the to them. The surprising proficiency of
Lenin Library are carefully guarded and the students in English, especially in in-
identifying cards are a necessity. Uni- stitutions where English language lec-
formed guards check all entrances and
tures are not common, was gratifying.
often readers who pass from one part
Perhaps the most disturbing feature was
of the library to another. Discussion with that Soviet students and critics of litera-
various Russian professors of English
convinced me that qualified persons ex- ture, either by conviction or by compul-
perienced no difficulty in using the li- sion, seem to have only one criterion:
brary resources or even in requesting social purpose. Technique, form, aesthe-
special books from outside. One might tic appeal-these they ignore.
Unknown ten years ago, William Ger- accolade of One Who May Last. Al-
ald Golding today stands as a prime can- though he has written a play and some
didate for the Anglo-American title of fugitive short pieces, as well as a book
Novelist of the Fifties, with the added of poetry, his reputation rests upon four
novels-all four published during the
Mr.. Oldsey, co-author of From Fact to Judg- past decade, all just over novelette size,
ment and Visions and Revisions, has published and each with its share of backers as
articles on Hemingway, Salinger, D. H. Law- his best work. Some few critics prefer
rence, and Hawthorne. Mr. Weintraub is edi- his second novel, The Inheritors (1955),
tor of The Shaw Review and author of
Private Shaw and Public Shaw and C. P. Snow: a sympathetic and imaginative portrayal
A Spectrum. Both authors are associate pro- of a remnant band of ur-men in conflict
fessors of English at Penn State University. with early Homo sapiens. Others prefer
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LORD OF THE FLIES 91
Pincher Martin (1956), a taut interior blasted as insignificant art encased in bad
monologue woven around the idea that, writing.3
contrary to John Donne, one man can Certainly Lord of the Flies is deriva-
be an island. Still others prefer Free Fall tive, in the sense that it falls well within
(1959), a water-closet drama packed the main stream of several English lit-
tight with psycho-religious revelations erary traditions. It is a "boys' book," as
concerning free will and man's fall. But are Treasure Island, The Wind in the
it is Lord of the Flies (1954), Golding's Willows, High Wind in Jamaica, and
first novel and the one that established other books primarily about juvenile
his reputation, that is still most widely characters which transcend juvenile ap-
acclaimed as his major work. Not only peal. It is in the tradition of the survival
has it captured a large segment of the narrative, along with Robinson Crusoe,
popular and academic imagination (hav- The Swiss Family Robinson, and even
Barrie's Admirable Crichton. It is in the
ing the effect there of replacing J. D.
tradition-best exemplified by Conrad,
Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye), but
Cary, and Greene in our century-that
it has also attracted the greatest amount
examines our culture by transplanting
of critical attention directed at Golding. it harshly to an exotic locale where it
To date, that critical attention has prospers or withers depending upon its
proven various, specialized, and spotty. intrinsic value and strength. It is in the
A remarkable "first novel" on any terms, long tradition of anti-science writing in
Lord of the Flies has been praised on England, where authors for centuries
literary grounds much less often than have equated scientific progress with de-
as sociological, psychological, or religious humanization. And it at least appears to
tract, as "pure parable," fable, or myth.' be in the Nonconformist English reli-
gious tradition which assumes mankind's
The terminology of Frazer and Freud
fall from grace.
are more often brought to bear upon If all these traditions lead back to one
the novel than the yardsticks of literary
criticism. As literature, however, it has key source of inspiration, it may be no
accident. The traditions embodied in
been-even while praised-called unorigi- Lord of the Flies can be discovered in
nal and derivative, filled with "gim- Gulliver's Travels-Swift's version of the
mickry," devoid of characterization, and primeval savagery and greed which civil-
lacking in logic.2 Only once has it been ization only masks in modern man. It
seems no coincidence that we also find
1See, for example, John Peter, "The Fables in Golding a Swiftian obsession with
of William Golding," Kenyon Review, 19
(Fall 1957), 577-92; Claire Rosenfield, "'Men physical ugliness, meanness, and nastiness
of Smaller Growth': A Psychological Analysis (sometimes bordering on the scatologi-
of William Golding's Lord of the Flies," Lit- cal), and with the sense of how tenuous
erature and Psychology, 11 (Autumn 1961), is the hold of intelligence, reason, and
93-101; and Edmund Fuller, "The Compelling humaneness as a brake upon man's re-
Lure of William Golding," New York Herald
Tribune Books (Nov. 4, 1962), pp. 1, 3. gression into barbarism.
2Carl Niemeyer, in "The Coral Island Re- Eventually, of course, Golding must
visited," CE, 22 (January 1961), 241-45, makes be judged according to his individual
explicit Golding's use of R. M. Ballantyne's talent rather than his tradition or his
The Coral Island, a boys' book published in
1857; and James Gindin, in "'Gimmick' and
Metaphor in the Novels of William Golding," 3There may be other adverse criticism of
MFS 6 (Summer 1960), 145-52, tries to indicate Golding, but Martin Green's "Distaste for the
how much of Golding's work is marred by Contemporary," The Nation (May 21, 1960),
"clever tricks." pp. 451-54, seems egregiously harsh and willful.
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92 COLLEGE ENGLISH
polemical appeal. Since other critical dis" (Addis Ababa), as well at "at matins
visits to his minor devil's island have over the precentor."4
been accomplished mainly at a distance, Shaped roughly like an outrigged boat,
through special-field glasses, it is here the boys' haven is a tropical island with
proposed that we revisit the island- a coral base. A mile out along one side
armed only with the knowledge that runs a barrier reef, between which and
Golding is essentially a literary man who the island lies a lagoon, on whose inward
uses scene, character, and symbol (not to shore the boys hold their assemblies. At
mention an exceedingly fine style and one end of the island there appears to
some admittedly tricky plot methods) be another, smaller island; but upon close
to achieve imaginative literary effects. inspection this is found to be attached
The scenic qualities of Lord of the by a rocky isthmus. Topographically,
Flies help make it an imaginative work the island rises from low jungle and
in two senses; that is, for the reader as orchard land to a mountain top, or ridge,
well as the author. Although Golding with few or no trees. By way of food,
occasionally provides consolidating de- it provides the boys with bananas, coco-
tail, he more commonly requires the nuts, an "olive-grey, jelly-like fruit," and
reader to pull narrative and descriptive wild pig, as well as crab and fish taken
elements into focus. For instance, he pro- from the sea. At midday the island gets
vides no endpaper map or block descrip- hot enough to produce mirage effects.
tion of his fictional island. The reader
If there were an endpaper map for
must explore it along with the partici- Golding's island, it would no doubt be
pants in the story and piece together a marked to indicate these major points of
usable concept of time and place. What interest: (1) the beach along the lagoon,
we learn in this way is just enough to where Piggy and Ralph find the conch,
keep the work within the realm of fic- and where assemblies are held near a
tion, but not enough to remove it from natural platform of fallen trees; (2) the
the realm of allegory. And the essence mountain top, from which the island is
of Golding's art resides exactly within surveyed, where the signal fire is placed,
the area of overlap. and where eventually the dead para-
Fable-like, time and place are vague. chutist is trapped by wind and rock;
The Queen (Elizabeth?) still reigns, and (3) the burned-out quarter mile, where
"reds" are apparently the vague enemy. the mulberry-faced boy dies in the first
It is the post-catastrophic near-future, fire; (4) Simon's leafy bower, to which
in which nuclear war has laid waste to he makes his mystic retreats and from
much of the West. ("They're all dead," which he views the ceremony of impal-
Piggy thinks. And "civilization," cor- ing the pig's head upon a stake; (5) the
roborates Golding, is "in ruins.") The orchard, where the fruit is picked and
fiery crash of the boys' plane upon a where some of the "littluns" are "caught
tropical island has been the final stage short," leaving behind their fecal trail;
of their evacuation from England. The (6) the "Castle" at the tail end of the
island seems to lie somewhere in the island, rising a hundred feet from the
sea, where the first search for the "beast"
Indian or Pacific Ocean, probably on a
line extending from England to Australia, is made, and where Piggy is killed after
which could well have been the planned Jack has made this bastion his headquar-
terminus of their evacuation. Jack pro-
vides the clue for such geographical "Lord of the Flies (New York: Capricorn
Books, 1959), p. 28. All subsequent references
extrapolation when he speaks of Simon's to the novel are to this edition and are included
seizures at "Gib." (Gibraltar) and "Ad- in the text parenthetically.
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LORD OF THE FLIES 93
ters; and (7) the jungle, with its hanging yet artistically-this very tension between
vines that recall snakes and "beasties," realistic novel and allegorical fable im-
with its pig trails where Jack hunts and parts to Lord of the Flies some of its
where Ralph is finally hunted. unique power.
When the details are extracted and Golding's characters, like his setting,
given order under an analytical light, represent neither fictional reality nor
Golding's island looks naturalistic in fabulistic unreality, but rather partake
specification. But matters are not at all of the naturalistic and the allegorical at
that clear within the book. The location the same time. As a result, they emerge
of the island, for example, is kept delib- more full bodied than Kafka's ethereal
erately vague: it is sufficiently remote to forms, more subtly shaded than Orwell's
draw only two ships in a month or so, animal-farm types, and more compre-
yet close enough to "civilization" to be hensibly motivated than Bunyan's reli-
the floor above which deadly, and old- gious ciphers. Bit by bit we can piece to-
fashioned, air battles are fought miles gether fairly solid pictures of the major
high (the boys' plane itself has been shot figures in Lord of the Flies. And since
down). The nearby air and naval war a number of commentators have fallen
in progress, with conventional weapons, into interpretative error by precipitously
is somewhat out of keeping with earlier trying to state what these characters
reports of utter catastrophe. Equally "mean," perhaps it would be best here
incongruous is the smartly attired naval to start by trying to state what, they
"are."
officer and savior of the closing pages,
whose jaunty mien is incompatible with Ralph, the protagonist, is a boy twelve
catastrophe. Yet he is as important to years and a "few months" old. He enters
the machinery of the allegory as the
naively, turning handsprings of joy upon
earlier crash, which is equally difficult
finding himself in an exciting place free
to explain on rational grounds. During
of adult supervision. But his rble turns
the crash the fuselage of the evacuation
responsible as leadership is thrust upon
plane has apparently broken in two: the
him-partly because of his size, partly
forward half (holding pilot and others,
because of his attractive appearance, and
including more boys) has been cleanly
partly because of the conch with which,
washed out to sea by a conveniently like some miniature Roland, he has blown
concomitant storm; and the after-section
the first assembly. Ralph is probably the
(which makes a long fiery scar as it cuts
largest boy on the island (built like a
through the jungle) tumbles unscathed boxer, he nevertheless has a "mildness.
children onto the island. As incompatible,
obscure, askew, and unrealistic as these about his mouth and eyes that proclaimed:
no devil"). But he is not so intellectual
elements may be, they are no more so
than Gulliver's adventures. And Gold- and logical as Piggy ("he would never
make a very good chess player," Gold-
ing's graphically novelistic character and
ing assures us), not so intuitively right
topographic details, both poetic and nat-
as Simon, nor even so aggressively able-
uralistic, tend to blur the fabulous qual-
ities of the narrative's use of time and to take advantage of opportunity as Jack.
For these reasons there has been some
setting in its opening and close. Although
reader tendency to downplay Ralph as
it is enough to say that the fabulist must a rather befuddled Everyman, a straw
be permitted pegs upon which to hang boy of democracy tossed about by forces
his fable, it is Golding's richly novelistic he cannot cope with. Yet he should
elements of the telling that call attention emerge from this rites-of-passage bil-
to the subtle dissonance. Paradoxically- dungsroman with the reader's respect.
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94 COLLEGE ENGLISH
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LORD OF THE FLIES 95
beginning all the sadistic attributes of of Simon is taken out to sea by the tide,
the demagogue's hangman underling. In Golding here reaching close to tragic
his treatment of the sow he proves de- exaltation as Simon is literally transfig-
serving of his appellation in English slang. ured in death.6 With his mysterious
Through his intense, furtive, silent qual- touch of greatness Simon comes closest
ities, he acts as a sinister foil to Simon. to foreshadowing the kind of hero Gold-
By the end of the novel Golding has re- ing himself has seen as representing man's
vealed Roger; we hardly need be told greatest need if he is to advance in his
that "the hangman's horror clung round humanity-the Saint Augustines, Shake-
him." speares, and Mozarts, "inexplicable, mi-
raculous.'"7
Simon is perhaps the most effectively
-and certainly the most poignantly- Piggy, who, just before his own vio-
characterized of all. A "skinny, vivid lent death, clutches at a rationalization
little boy, with a glance coming up from for Simon's murder, has all the good and
under a hut of straight hair that hung bad attributes of the weaker sort of in-
down, black and coarse," he is (at nine tellectual. Despised by Jack and pro-
or ten) the lonely visionary, the clear- tected by Ralph, he is set off from the
sighted realist, logical,5 sensitive, and others by his spectacles, asthma, accent,
mature beyond his years. We learn that and very fat, short body. Freudian ana-
he has a history of epileptic seizures-a lysts would have Piggy stand as super-
dubious endowment sometimes credited ego, but he is extremely id-directed
to great men of the past, particularly toward food: it is Ralph who must try
those with a touch of the mystic. We to hold him back from accepting Jack's
see the unusual grace and sensitivity of pig meat, and Ralph who acts as strong
his personality crop up here and there conscience in making Piggy accept par-
as the story unfolds until he becomes the tial responsibility for Simon's death.8 Al-
central figure of the "Lord of the Flies" though ranked as one of the "biguns,"
scene-one of Golding's most powerful Piggy is physically incapable and emo-
and poetic. We see Simon's instinctive tionally immature. The logic of his mind
compassion and intelligence as he ap- is insufficient to cope with the human
proaches the rotting corpse of the para- problems of their coral-island situation.
chutist, which, imprisoned in the rocks But this insight into him is fictionally
on the hill in flying suit and parachute blurred-denied to the Ralphs of this
harness, is the only palpable "monster" world, who (as on the last page of the
on the island. Although Simon's senses novel) weep not for Simon, but for "the
force him to vomit with revulsion, he true, wise friend called Piggy."
nevertheless frees it "from the wind's How many children originally landed
indignity." When he returns to tell his on the island alive we never learn; how-
frightened, blood-crazed companions ever, we do know that there were more
that, in effect, they have nothing to fear than the eighteen boys whose names are
but fear itself, his murder becomes the actually mentioned in the course of the
martyrdom of a saint and prophet, a
point in human degeneration next to "Any attack that concentrates on Golding's
which the wanton killing of Piggy is style should come to grips with the kind of
but an anticlimax. In some of the novel's writing used to depict this scene, pp. 189-91.
Green's article does not.
richest, most sensitive prose, the body 'William Golding, "On the Crest of the
Wave," The Writer's Dilemma (London,
'Simon is usually thought of as being mystical 1961), pp. 42-51.
or prophetic, but he is also as logical as any of 8Psychoanalytical articles thus far published
the others, even Piggy; see p. 128, for example. fail to account for such behavior.
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96 COLLEGE ENGLISH
novel. Census matters are not helped by of Golding's characters suggest more
the first signal fire, for it goes out of than themselves, contributing to critical
control and scatters the boys in fright. controversy as well as the total signifi-
Ralph, worried about the littluns, ac- cance of the novel. In the nearly ten
cuses Piggy of dereliction of duty in not years since initial publication of Lord
making a list of names. Piggy is exag- of the Flies, critical analysis has been
geratedly indignant: "How could I, all hardening into dogmatic opinion, much
by myself? They waited for two min- of it allegoristic, as evidenced by such
utes, then they fell into the sea; they titles as "Allegories of Innocence," "Se-
went into the forest; they scattered cret Parables," and "The Fables of Wil-
everywhere. How was I to know which liam Golding."' And even where the
was wxhich?" But only one child known titles are not indicative (as with E. L.
to any of the survivors has clearly dis- Epstein's Capricorn edition afterword,
appeared-a small unnamed boy with a and the equally Freudian analysis of
mulberry-marked face. This fact lends Claire Rosenfield),1o critical literature
little credence to Piggy's tale of decima- has generally forced the book into a
tion. neat allegorical mold. The temptation is
Of those who remain, at least a dozen strong, since the novel is evocative and
of whom are littluns, a significant num- the characters seem to beg for placement
ber come alive through Golding's ability within handy categories of meaning-
to characterize memorably with a few political, sociological, religious, and psy-
deft lines. Only two have surnames as chological categories. Yet Golding is a
well as Christian names: Jack Merridew, simply complicated writer; and, so much
already mentioned as Ralph's rival, and the better for the novel as novel, none
the littlun Percival Wemys Madison. of the boxes fits precisely.
Jack at first demands to be called, as at Oversimplifying, Frederick Karl writes
school, "Merridew," the surname his that "When the boys on the island strug-
mark of superior age and authority. gle for supremacy, they re-enact a ritual
Percival Wemys Madison ("the Vicar- of the adult world, as much as the col-
age, Harcourt St. Anthony, Hants, tele- lege Fellows in Snow's The Masters work
phone, tele-") clutches vainly at the out the ritual of a power struggle in the
civilized incantation, learned by rote-in larger world."" Jack may appear to be
case he should get lost. And he is. His the demagogic dictator and Roger his
distant recent past has so completely re- sadistic henchman; Ralph may be a con-
ceded by the end of the novel that he can fused democrat, with Piggy his "brain-
get no farther in self-identification than trust"; but the neatness of the political
"I'm, I'm-" for he "sought in his head allegory is complicated by the clear im-
for an incantation that had faded clean
portance of the mystical, generalization-
away." We learn little more about him,
and hardly need to. Here again, in char- 9John Peter's perceptive article has already
acterization, Golding's straddling the been noted; see also Millar Maclure, "Allegories
boundary line between allegory and na- of Innocence," Dalhouste Review, 40 (Summer
1960), 145-56; and V. S. Pritchett, "Secret
turalism demonstrates either the para-
Parables," New Statesman, 56 (August 2, 1958),
doxical power of his weakness as novelist, 146.
or his ability to make the most of his "'Both Epstein and Rosenfield concentrate on
shortcomings. the Freudian concept of id, ego, superego; but
Whatever the case, Percival Wemys Epstein makes his most acute analytical point
with the Oedipal wedding night aspect of the
Madison epitomizes the novel and under- sow's death.
lines its theme, in his regession to the "Frederick Karl, The Contemporary English
point of reduced existence. In fact, most Novel (New York, 1962), p. 258.
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LORD OF THE FLIES 97
defying Simon. Although Simon, who reef and for a moment they felt that
alone among the boys has gone up to the the boat was moving steadily astern"
mountain top and discovered the truth, (p. 38). This sternward movement not
is sacrificed in a subhuman orgy, those only conjures up the regressive back-
who have seen a religious allegory in sliding away from civilization that con-
the novel find it more in the fall of man stitutes the theme of the novel, but is
from paradise, as the island Eden turns imagistically associated with Piggy's
into a fiery hell, and the Satanic Jack "ass-mar" and the general note of scatol-
into the fallen archangel. But Ralph ogy-as with the littluns being "caught
makes only a tenuous Adam; the sow is short" in the orchard-which prevails in
a sorry Eve; and Piggy, the sightless this book on Beelzebub, lord of the flies
sage, has no comfortable place in Chris- and dung. Later, when Simon asks the
tian myth. Further, it is an ironic com- assembly to think of the dirtiest thing
mentary upon religious interpretations imaginable, Jack answers with the mono-
of Lord of the Flies that of an island syllable for excrement. This is not what
full of choirboys, not one ever resorts Simon means at all: he is thinking of the
-even automatically-to prayer or to evil in man. But the two concepts merge
appeals to a deity, not even before they in Golding's imagination-covertly in
begin backsliding. And the Edenic qual- Lord of the Flies and manifestly so in
ity of the island paradise is compromised Free Fall, which is a literary cloaca, full
from the beginning, for, although the of that revulsion psychologists try to
essentials of life are abundant, so are explain in terms of the proximity and
the essentials of pain, terror, and death: ambiguity of the apertures utilized for
the fruit which makes them ill, the ani- birth and excreta.
mals which awaken their bloodthirsti-
Some critics who see the allegory of
ness and greed, the cruel war in the air evil as just the surface meaning of the
above them, the darkness and the un-
novel have been led into psychological
known which beget their fears. labyrinths, where Jack appears as the
As a social allegory of human regres- Freudian id personified; Ralph the ego;
sion the novel is more easily (perhaps and Piggy the superego, conscience of
too neatly) explainable as "the way in the grown-up world. But William Was-
which, when the civilized restraints serstrom has dealt severely with Miss
which we impose on ourselves are aban- Rosenfield in this kind of interpretation;
doned, the passions of anger, lust and the experts have fallen out;13 and be-
fear wash across the mind, obliterating sides, the Freudian mrnnage a trois fails
commonsense and care, and life once to accommodate the vital Simon. In-
again becomes nasty, brutish and deed, the problem in all attempts to ex-
short."'12 The island itself supports this plain Lord of the Flies as some kind of
concept, for it is shaped like a boat, and parable is that the novel is not a parable:
takes on symbolic proportions, not sim- it is too long, and lacks the point-by-
ply in the microcosmic-macrocosmic point parallelism necessary to meet the
sense, but as subtle foreshadowing of definition. Nor, in the precise sense, is
the regression about to take place among it a fable, since it deals primarily with
the boys: "It was roughly boat-shaped. human beings, since it does not rely upon
... The tide was running so that long folkloristic or fantastic materials, and
streaks of foam tailed away from the
3William Wasserstrom and Claire Rosenfield,
12J. Bowen, "One Man's Meat: The Idea of "An Exchange of Opinion concerning William
Individual Responsibility in Golding's Fiction," Golding's Lord of the Flies," Literature and
TLS (August 7, 1959), p. xii. Psychology, 12 (Winter 1962), 2-3; 11-12.
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98 COLLEGE ENGLISH
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THE QUALITY OF GRAHAM GREENE'S MERCY 99
have grown almost titanic in their strug- no act of hope or charity or even con-
gle are suddenly seen again as mere trition. It is an act of recognition. The
boys, some just tots, dirty-nosed and tone is peculiarly calm: Golding keeps
bedraggled. And then a retrospective his distance from his materials; he does
irony results, since the boys deserve to not interfere or preach; and the mate-
be thought of as titanic: if they have rial is made to speak for itself through
been fighting our battle, we realize- a simplicity of prose style and a natural-
with both hope and dismay-that man- istic-allegorical form. The vision of
kind is still in something of a pre-puberty Golding is through both ends of the
stage. Thus Lord of the Flies ends as telescope.
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