William golding

_{(b. 1911)}

William Golding denies any links with existentialism, yet his ideas are close to it. His works are complicated, they are full of implication. In them modernistic elements go side by side with realistic ones, concrete pictures alternate with allegorical images. Golding himself called his novels fables, thus stressing their didactic nature. His aim, ac­ cording to the writer, is to record everything dark that he sees around, to show people the dark abyss into which they are, or may be thrown, to warn them against it and, if possible, to change their lives.

Golding was born in 1911 in Cornwall. He gra­

duated from Oxford University During World War II he served in the British Navy; later he worked as a school teacher in the town of Salisbury. The atrocities of fascists, the horrors of the war made him think of the nature of man and the future of mankind. All his novels, in one way or another, raise the problem of Good and Evil in man and society.

This problem has occupied people's thoughts for a long time. In the 18th century philosophers and writers thought that man was born good and virtuous and it was the ugly environment that could sometimes spoil him. Yet they believed in the ability of man's reason to defeat Evil. The complicated atmosphere of the 20th century, the two world wars, the moral crisis of society, violence and crime char­ acteristic of the modern world led some people, Golding among them, to see the cause of Evil in man's nature. In

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his commentary on the novel Lord of the Flies (1954) he wrote: "He who has passed through the years of fascist violence and has not realised that Evil is inherent in man is either blind or insane" Like many others, Golding came to the pessimistic conclusion that evil was inherent in man, that man was born with a disposition to egoism, greed and violence

LORD OF THE FLIES

The novel Lord of the Flies was a result of the author's reflections upon fascism and its roots. It is an anti-utopian novel and was written as a parody of The Coral Island

( 18.58) by R. M. Ballantyne, where three teenagers lead a happy and harmonious life on a Pacific island. In

Golding's novel a similar plot develops in an entirely different way A group of English children was taken on board a plane to a safer place because an atomic war had broken out. The plane crashed and the boys found them­ selves on an uninhabited island somewhere in the Pacific. The boys realised the necessity of rules that would regulate their life. One of the boys, Ralph, was elected Chief; they agreed to hold assemblies to discuss their problems. They gathered to the sound of a conch in his hands. Ralph sug­ gested building shelters and making a fire so that a ship sailing by might notice the smoke and come to their rescue, A group of boys with Jack at the head were to hunt for pigs, the others were to keep the fire burning. To make a fire the boys used the glasses one of the boys, Piggy, wore.

Gradually, the hunters grew more and more fierce. The

sense of their power, the smell and sight of blood and fresh meat brought out savage instincts in them. They painted

their faces and bodies, after the hunt they used to dance

imitating hunting scenes and singing "Kill the pig! Cut her throat! Spill the blood!" Once they put up the head of

a killed pig on a stick. Lord of the Flies- the ugly-looking head, covered with flies, became a symbol of their power As time passed, more and more boys gave up the tiresome job of building the shelters and keeping the fire and joined the hunters. Jack who had always been jealous of Ralph's authority did his best to establish his power over them. He skilfully made use of the boys' fear of the Beast which, as they thought, lived on the top of the mountain. Soon there

were only Ralph, Piggy and Simon to keep the fire burning.

One day Simon, a very shy, but intelligent and bright

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boy, decided to find out whether there really was any beast on the island. He climbed the mountain and saw that the thing they were all so afraid of was nothing but the dead boby of an airman. Simon hurried down the mountain to tell the boys that they did not need to be afraid of the Beast. It was already dark, the boys were having a dance. Over­ come by fear and blood-thirst they mistook Simon for the beast and killed him.

One night Jack and the other hunters ruined Ralph's and Piggy's shelter, beat them and stole Piggy's glasses to make a fire for roasting meat. Some boys were sent to guard the hunter's camp against the enemy-- Ralph and Piggy. These two made an attempt to tell the hunters how unreasonable their behavior was, but the guard, on Jack's order, killed Piggy. The beautiful conch that Piggy was holding in his hands broke to pieces. Ralph had to hide himself in the forest. Jack and his boys hunted him. They set the wood on fire. Fortunately the smoke was noticed from a ship sailing by and Ralph was saved. To the grown­ ups the dramatic events on the island seemed no more than a children's game. But Ralph knew it was not.

Here is the last scene of the novel:

...The tears began to flow and sobs shook him. He gave himself up to them now for lhe first time on the island; great, shuddering spasms of grief that seemed to wrench his whole body. His voice rose under the black smoke before lhe burning wreckage of the island; and infected by that emotion, the other little boys began lo shake and sob too. And in the mid­ dle of them, with filthy body, matted hair, and unwiped nose, Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy ...

Like the existentialists Golding believes society to con­ sist of isolated individuals and, since Evil is inherent in each of them, there is always a danger that the whole society will go vicious. The novel Lord of the Flies is a warning to people not to let fascism, the worst form of Evil, revive. The novel is full of allegorical images, the main ones being the conch and the head of the killed pig. The former is a symbol of beauty, democracy, the latter, Lord of

the Flies, embodies chaos, Evil and savage power.

In his next work- The Inheritors ( 1955)- Golding places the scene in the remote past. To the land inhabited by primitive men, Neanderthals, new people come. They are more civilised than the natives but they are cruel, merciless and cunning. They are a caricature of homo sapiens. They

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kill the natives and revel in blood. Golding means that the evolution of mankind does not improve people's morals, that civilisation only makes people more vicious. It is a purely existentialist view of the perspectives of mankind's development.

Golding's other works are the novels Pincher Martin (1956), Free Fall (1959), The Spire (1964), The Pyramid ( 1967), Darkness Visible ( 1979), Rites of Passage ( 1981 ), The Paper Men ( 1984), and the long short stories Envoy Extraordinary (1956), Scorpion God (1971).

He often presents his characters- either isolated indi­ viduals or small groups- in some extreme situations which bring out every man's basic traits, or his identity. Thus, Sam Mountjoy (Free Fall), when thrown into a concentration camp. betrays his comrades. He traces back his whole life and realises that his moral fall is the result of the numerous wrong "choices" he has made in the course of it. Another character, Jocelyn, (The Spire) is obsessed with an ambitious desire to build a high spire above the church.

He stops at nothing, sacrificing his own life and the lives of other people, to accomplish his plan.

The scene of the novel Darkness Visible is laid in pres­

ent-day Britain. The characters are mostly abnormal peo­

ple- thieves, madmen, maniacs. It tells the story of Matti, who, as a child, became a victim of the Nazi bombing of the London docks. Matti is kind and noble but very lonely because his burnt, ugly face scares people. In despair Matti leaves for Australia. A still greater misfortune be­ falls him there, he goes half-insane. He returns to England thinking himself a prophet. Though Matti dies saving a kidnapped child from a fire he is not a positive character. He makes friends with an evil old man and commits a crime. Golding stresses that the evil side of man's nature can easily triumph over the good one.

The life of Matti is shown against the background of English social life. Economic decline, immorality, violence, terrorism are characteristic of it. An English critic called the novel "a picture of England in the surrounding darkness"

However pessimistic Golding's books are, they pursue a highly humanist aim- to helg_people do away with Evil. The writer himself compared his books to a street sign, warning people of danger. A pessimist, he says, would have never put up the sign.

For his contribution to world literature Golding was

awarded the Nobel Prize in 1983.