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'Darkness' in Golding's Novels

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'Darkness' in Golding's Novels - 134 - The Problem of 'Darkness' in Golding's Novels Yasunori SUGIMURA (Received on 31, October, 1984) In William Golding's fictional world, we can find the pattern of duality which seems schematic rather than complicated. Even the imagery follows this pattern. Beauty and ugliness, light and darkness are al­ ways paired. But his main purpose does not lie in this schematic duality but in more inclusive dimension. While constructing the disrupted imagery, he criticises this situation. When he depicts the darkness, he seems to point out the inability of the common Christianity to cope with it. I think the 'darkness' in Gold­ ing's novels is all the more important because he takes special interest in this dark phase characterised by cloacal, fetid and perverted imagery. In this paper I'd like to investigate the 'darkness' by focusing on his two works, Pincher Martin and Darkness Visible, and further to approach a kind of mysticism distinct from ordinary religion. A few years ago I discussed the disrupted imagery in Golding's novels and concluded that 'Golding regards universe as one harmonious unity to which our broken worlds should be restored by the coopera­ tion of science and religion.' 1 With the development of modern science, the relationship between God and man is partly broken and nothingness invades the interstice. Golding's view of God does not stop at the personal level but proceeds further toward the impersonal universe. The current Christianity Golding seems to criticise is apt to pay attention only to the personal level and disregards the other phase. Those who consider God only from tke personal points of view always put emphasis on life, spirit, and soul, rejecting death or inanimate beings as opposed to religion - as belonging to scientific category. But Golding's God is 'THE LORD OF THE EARTH AND TEH SUN AND THE PLANETS AND ALL THE CREATURES THAT ARE ON THEM.' 2 Golding often shows us the heartlessness and indifference of nature3 toward human beings' happiness or misery, and modern natural science also proves this fact. Golding seems to wonder if the current view of God can cope with this heartless indifference of universe. In this sense Gold­ ing's view of God gives us a new horizon in the field of religion. He often refers to the characters who stick only to their lives. If they cling to nothing but the up­ wardness, the contrary force represses them downward. In Pincher Martin Golding vividly represents these details, using the imagery of the Cartesian diver in a jam jar. The pleasure of the jar lay in the fact that the little glass figure was so delicately balanced between opposing forces. Lay a finger on the membrane and you would compress the air below it which in turn would press more strongly on the water. Then the water would force itself farther up the little tube in the figure, and it would begin to sink. 4 The vast pressure on the glass sailor comes from the heavens5 - the universe. Darkness arises where characters catch a glimpse of death in the midst of life. When Sophy in Darkness Visible accidentally kill­ ed a chick with a large pebble, the germ of darkness got on her. It settled at the back of her head like night when she knew Gran was going to die. Instead of accepting her own mortality, she cried out, 'I shan't die I' (p. 112) She was 'sitting at the mouth of a tunnel' but dared not to go through it. - 135 - The Problem of 'Darkness' in Golding's Novels There are eyes in the back of my head .... With her front eyes shut it was as if those other eyes opened in the back of her head and stared into a darkness that stretched away infinitely, a cone of black light. (p. 134) Such a state of mind easily falls into nihilism. Sophy regards sex as 'the long, long convulsions, the un­ knotting, the throbbing and disentangling of space and time on,on, on into nothingness - .' (P. 167) At first sight she seems to accept nothingness and abandon her attachment to self. But like Pincher Martin she had an ingenious artifice to contrive the situation of 'nothingness' within herself. By clinging to 'noth­ ingness' inside herself, she still clings to self. This is, as it were, multiplied self-attachment. The real self­ liberation should be acquired beyond the darkness - at the exit of a tunnel. But her faked 'nothingness' was set at the mouth of it. 2 The imagery betrays itself as the index of this fake. The deliberate contrivance of 'nothingness' IS shown in the following scene of extreme grotesqueness and perversion . ... reaching far in, her lower lip hurting between clenched teeth ... she felt the pear-shaped thing stuck inside the front of her stomach where it ought to be, inert, a time bomb, though that was hard to be­ lieve of yourself or your body. The thought of the possible explosion of the time bomb started her even more elaborately probing and washing, pain or not ; and she came on the other shape, lying op­ posite the womb but at the back, a shape lying behind the smooth wall but easily to be felt through it, the rounded shape of her own turd working down the coiled gut and she convulsed, ... The feel­ ing was pure. (p. 138) Before this behaviour Sophy had allured a passing motorist to make love with her. But she couldn't gain the 'nothingness' which sex lectures refer to as orgasm-self-liberation. After she had succeeded in gaining the pure feeling somehow or other by her grotesque and perverted masturbation, she continued to contrive 'nothingness' at the mouth of the 'darkness'. 'It(sex) became nothing more than playing with yourself lazily in bed to the accompaniment of quite unusual or what seemed like quite unusual imaginings, very private indeed.' (p. 139) From what we have discussed above, we know why almost all the sexual images Golding depicts are shadowed by 'darkness'. Especially in Darkness Visible, we can notice various types of 'dark' sexual rela­ tionships. Among them the close connection between sex and scatology is one of Golding's striking char­ acteristics. As early as in Lord of the Flies we can perceive the scatological imagery combined with sexual desire. 6 In Pincher Martin 'Swiftian intensity in its association of basic bodily functions with uncleanness and sin'7 is achieved. He felt the cold trickle of the sea water in his bowels. He pumped and squeezed until the bladder was squashily flat. ... And the cadenza was coming-did come. It performed with explosive and triumphant completeness of technique into the sea. It was like the bursting of a dam, the smashing of all hind­ rance.Spasm after spasm with massive chords and sparkling arpeggios, the cadenza took of his strength till he lay straining and empty on the rock and the orchestra had gone. (p. 165) Even if the rites of the defecation performed by Sophy and Martin symbolize the purification of their sins, the 'nothingness' gained from it is still set at the mouth of darkness. The contrived 'nothingness' is - 136- Yasunori SUGIMURA set at the entrance of 'darkness' forever. It can't go through it by any means. It can't purify any sin. On the contrary, the faked self-renunciation will make it more and more difficult for them to penetrate the 'darkness', and will multiply their sins. Both Sophy and Martin made their 'factitious universe's to stave off the 'darkness'. But finally 'there was now nothing visible but darkness' (p.253) when Sophy picked her way back along the towpath. In case of Martin, 'he was reduced to complete nothingness by God's black lightning. '9 The only salvation Golding prepares for us exists where we break off the illusion and take us as we are. We must accept our mortality as original sin. If we are to restore correspondence with God, our pre­ liminary step is to penetrate the darkness and overcome it. In so far as we fear death and refuse to con­ front the darkness, we multiply our sins and cannot avoid annihilation. Simon in Lord of the Flies, Nathaniel Walterson in Pincher Martin and Matthew Septimus Windrove in Darkness Visible are mystics who pay more attention to the impersonal side of God which Christianity sometimes fails to notice. 3 Of these three mystics, the profoundest thinker is Matthew Windrove. Simon, like Tuami in The In­ heritors, confronts the darkness but can't transcend it. Nathaniel, a grown-up Simon, knows how to tran­ scend the darkness and acquire eternity. In this case, however, G()d conceived by Nathaniel has black lightning which reduces man to nothingness. If God has the darkness which engulfs us, our possibility of transcending the darkness is the possibility of penetrating God. Thus, God and man interpenetrate each other. This means that God and man are united on the basis of nothigness. Matthew Windrove achieved such a union of God and man by transcending the darkness of the fetid bog. He is no longer at the mercy of the God's will. Unlike those who were hit by black lightning, Matty(Matthew) actively advanced toward it. This is quite different from nihilism in quality, because in case of nihilism we confront the darkness outside God. Matty saw the darkness inside Him. He read the Bible intensively before plunging into half water half mud which gave off the stink of vegetable and animal decay. If he had done nothing but read the Bible and had not experienced this submergence, he could not have communicated with God.
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