Not everything worth reading is hot off the press. In this section, we recommend "something old" that is still well worth reading. "Something Old" can mean anything from a venerable and antique classic to a good book first published year or two ago.
THE DEFINITIVE JUDGEMENT OF WILLIAM GOLDING’S WORKS [No other judgement will be accepted.]
For the last three months I have been working my way through all of William Golding’s novels and writing comments about them. As I said when I began this enterprise I was not going to write about his first novel Lord of the Flies because any true reader would have read it and already know what it is about. It has been published and re-published more than any other of Golding’s works. Lord of the Flies is often used as a text in high-schools. Indeed those who do not read much assume that Lord of the Flies is the only novel by Golding that is worth reading. I also noted that, before I began reading all of Golding’s works, I had read Golding’s second novel The Inheritors which, life-long, Golding said he thought was his best novel. I wrote on this blog about The Inheritors some years before I decided to read and review all his other novels. I am aware that Golding wrote a play, two collections of reviews and commentary, and a book about visiting in Egypt; but I deal only with his novels – and one collection of novelle.
Golding’s earlier novels were what could be called fables or allegories, and in all of them he speaks of what is deeply flawed in the human race. Despite being thinking creatures, we homo sapiens are capable of being murderous creatures, deceiving, making war, being jealous, lusting for power, and getting others to follow down the wrong path. Of course this is not true of all homo sapiens, but it has formed much of history. In Lord of the Flies, Golding has schoolboys stranded on an idyllic island which at first seems paradise, but one gang of boys take over, first learning how to hunt and kill pigs; and then ending up hunting – and killing – the boys who are not part of their gang. There is a more-or-less saintly boy called Simon who understands what evil is. It is not outside us. It is within us. Two other boys Ralph and “Piggy” are reasoning boys who understand that something is wrong. But these three boys are the target of the hunters. So, in many ways, we are flawed. What made us go wrong? If you were a Christian, you would talk about Original Sin – God gave us Paradise, but we disobeyed God. Many other religions have ideas on how things went wrong, such as the Ying and Yang saying there is a permanent war between good and evil… and so on.
But, as I interpret it, Golding was not entirely satisfied with his first novel. He wanted to give us a more persuasive version of “the fall of man”. Many savants have attempted to explain why there has always been violent discord among human beings. In the 17th century Thomas Hobbes said “life in the state of nature is solitary, nasty, brutish, and short” and this was taken to mean that there was a sort of unending war among primitive human beings. Hobbes solution was that there should be a dominating force, a firm government to control any society. In the 18th century Rousseau, with typical naivety in his treatise De L’Inegalite Parmi Les Hommes, claimed that early primitive peoples were happy and peaceful when they were “hunter-gatherers” [not that Rousseau knew that term] but human beings became violent and fought wars only when they set up barriers and fences and claimed land as their own. Golding’s The Inheritors is not as naïve as Rousseau’s idea, but he comes very close to it. In a far distant time Golding pits Neanderthals against Homo Sapiens Sapiens – in other words us. The Neanderthals are presented as peaceful, caring creatures who look after their tribe, do not know what aggression is, are thoughtful, and have their rituals. By contrast the “inheritors”- us - are capable of violence, don’t mind killing Neanderthals, are capable of going to war etc. So here is Golding’s version of “paradise lost”. Golding, towards the end of the novel, does suggest that the “inheritors” have at least the merit of being able to create arts. And one Neanderthal infant is captured and looked after, perhaps suggesting that the two species will combine… and it is true that recent examinations of D. N. A. show that many people have some genes coming from the Neanderthals. But what Golding got wrong was the idea that Neanderthals were permanently peaceful. The most recent studies show that they were as belligerent as the Homo Sapiens who followed them. So his attempt to explain The Fall does not persuade. Yet The Inheritors is still a compelling story.
Golding’s next novels are also allegories. Pincher Martin, the sailor who was stranded on a rock in the middle of the ocean, does not realise he is dead until he comes face-to-face with God. A “wicked man” [as Golding described him to his wife] Pincher curses God. He has been in Purgatory. Golding, raised by an atheist father and an Anglican church-going mother, decided to use the Catholic idea of Purgatory. At least then he would be able to make his character have the time to repent. Free Fall gives us the long self-confession of a man who was only interested in himself and had never helped others. He was self-obsessed. Only late in his life does he understand that he has under-valued others… but it is not as simple as that. As is often the case in Golding’s work, the ending is ambiguous. The Spire deals with hubris, placed in a medieval setting where a priest is more concerned with his prestige than with his religious duties. The novel also touches a clash between religion and early science.
When we get to The Pyramid, we are reading a very different type of novel. It is not allegory, but is more in the nature of a version of Golding’s youth. Not entirely, and many events are fictitious, but certainly looking back at some things he recalled; and very readable. After which he went dry. Apart from the three novelle that were put together with the title The Scorpion God, Golding did not write any more novels for a bit over ten years. What had happened? The hard fact is that Golding had become an alcoholic and found it hard to focus. When he got himself together, his next novel Darkness Visible again gnawed at the idea of God, or at least some substitute thereof. The novel includes a naïve but Christ-like character called Matty who has to deal with evil. But it was not necessarily a struggle with God. It was more a struggle with what evil is in us. When it came to The Paper Men, he was not only satirising publishers and pests who wanted to write his biography; but by having as his main character a drunkard, he was really depicting himself. I regard his trilogy To the Ends of the Earth [Rites of Passage, Close Quarters, Fire Down Below] as his relief as a former seaman, certainly dealing with the sordor of ships in the early 18th century and even dealing with some pure evil, but not really dealing with God or no God. By this stage, he had himself declared that he was a Christian. In his posthumous novel The Double Tongue, set in decaying Ancient Greece, Golding warns us that all societies ultimately decay and fade away, and perhaps this also means the decay of religion.. But though the main character, a priestess, has lost her faith with the gods, she still yearns for “The Unknown God”. Perhaps Golding is saying, like it or not, that we human beings will always feel the need for a greater force than ourselves. In other words, God.
So what critique can I give you after reading all his novels? I admit that I found Darkness Visible and The Paper Men to be hard reading, in some places almost cryptic. Having said that though, most of his prose is clear and he makes a good case for still trying to work out whether there is or is not a God.
Footnote: Apart from Lord of the Flies, all William Golding’s novels are examined on this blog.
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