14. R. P. Winnington-Ingram, Euripides and Dionysus: An Interpretation

of the Bacchae (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1948), pp.

9-10.

15. See Ian Gregor and Mark Kinkead-Weekes, "The Strange Case of Mr.

Golding and his Critics," Twentieth Century. 167 (February, 1960), 118.

Unfortunately, the critics have concentrated all too much on Golding's

debt to Christian sources, with the result that he is popularly regarded as

a rigid Christian moralist Yet the fact is that he does not reject one

orthodoxy only to fall into another. The emphasis of his critics has

obscured Gold-ing's fundamental realism and made it difficult to recognize

that he satirizes the Christian as well as the rationalist point of view. In

Lord of the Flies, for example, the much discussed last chapter offers none

of the traditional comforts. A fable, by virtue of its far-reaching

suggestions, touches upon a dimension that most fiction does not-the

dimension of prophecy. With the appearance of the naval officer it is no

longer possible to accept the evolution of the island society as an isolated

failure. The events we have witnessed constitute a picture of realities

which obtain in the world at large. There, too, a legendary beast has

emerged from the dark wood, come from the sea, or fallen from the sky; and

men have gathered for the communion of the hunt. In retrospect, the entire

fable suggests a grim parallel with the prophecies of the Biblical

Apocalypse. According to that vision the weary repetition of human failure

is assured by the birth of new devils for each generation of men. The first

demon, who fathers all the others, falls from the heavens; the second is

summoned from the sea to make war upon the saints and overcome them; the

third, emerging from the earth itself, induces man to make and worship an

image of the beast. It also decrees that this image "should both speak and

cause that as many as should not worship" the beast should be killed. Each

devil in turn lords over the earth for an era, and then the long nightmare

of history is broken by the second coming and the divine millennium. In Lord

of the Flies (note some of the chapter tides) we see much the same sequence,

but it occurs in a highly accelerated evolution. The parallel ends, however,

with the irony of Golding's climactic revelation. The childish hope of

rescue perishes as the beast-man comes to the shore, for he bears in his

nature the bitter promise that things will remain as they are, and as they

have been since his first appearance ages and ages ago.

The rebirth of evil is made certain by the fatal defects inherent in

human nature, and the haunted island we occupy must always be a fortress on

which enchanted hunters pursue the beast. There is no rescue. The making of

history and the making of myth are finally the selfsame process-an old

process in which the soul makes its own place, its own reality.

In spite of its rich and varied metaphor Lord of the Flies is not a

bookish fable, and Golding has warned that he will concede little or nothing

to The Golden Bough.¹⁶ There are real dangers in ignoring this

disclaimer. To do so obscures the contemporary relevance of his art and its

experiential sources. During the period of World War II he observed first

hand the expenditure of human ingenuity in the old ritual of war. As the

illusions of his early rationalism and humanism fell away, new images

emerged, and, as for Simon, a picture of "a human at once heroic and sick"

formed in his mind. When the war ended, Golding was ready to write (as he

had not been before), and it was natural to find in the traditions he knew

the metaphors which could define the continuity of the soul's flaws. In one

sense, the "fable" was already written. One had but to trace over the words

upon the scroll¹⁷ and so collaborate with history.