Ho ETHICAL EPISTEMOLOGY IN THE NOVELS OF WILLIAM GOLDING Sunit B. Khera A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY December 1969 Approved by Doctoral Committee BOWLING G"EEfl STATE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY ii J 7/. 77/ 433101 $ dd» ABSTRACT Believing earnestly that_man's happiness and survival depend^on_his-knowledge of evil, in his novels to date William Golding dramatically presents the potentialities, development and validity of his characters1 understanding— a theme which can be defined under one non-conventional pairing, ethical epistemology. According to the variations on this theme, it is illuminating to pair the six protag­ onists into three non-chronological groups. The reader must interpret the pragmatic questipn,__of_suryiyal_in.' relation to pre-adolescent Ralph's rational, and childlike ^Neanderthal man Lok’s intuitive understanding of "adult“ evil in the first two novels Lord of the Flies (1954) and The Inheritors (1955). There is a distinction between the evasive symbols and delusion and the visionary symbols and understanding of the two obsessed men—egocentric and lustful naval officer Christopher and proud, prurient, and pious dean Jocelin—in the third and the fifth novels Pincher Martin (1956) and The Spire (1964). The questions of self-created sufferings and spiritual extinction are inseparably linked with these characters1 ethical being, intelligence and refusal to analyze themselves. The reader’s epistemological role in Free Fall (1959) and The Pyramid (1967) is to get a chronological perspective of the "guilty" and somewhat enlightened narrator protagonists’ flashbacks. Sammy and Oliver examine their individual personalities and environ­ ment with respect to redemption, guilt and choice. The greatest achievement of these thought-provoking novels is to present every character's distinct personality and understanding and yet to dramatize certain universal truths about evil and understanding. They enter the field of psychology because of their penetration into the depths of the human mind. S.ince they place man in the context of his^dis.tant ancestors, they become anthropologicaly dramatizing inheritance, environment and survival, they are Darwinian. Emphasis on choice makes thern^somewhat' Christian and existentialistat the same time. Exploring man*s Inhocehce. guilt. redemption, arfd^spiritual survival, they are religious ? in fact ethical epistemology is the religion of Golding1s universe. iii Contents Page Introduction .. .......................................................... 1 Ethical Epistemology Chapter I. ....... ...... 7 Innocence and Survival Chapter II»Lord of the Flies (1954) .34 ChapterIII The Inheritors (1955). 58 Obsession and Spiritual Survival Chapter IV Pincher Martin (1956). 85 Chapter V The Spire (1964). .103 Guilt and Redemption .... Chapter VI Free Fall (1959). • ..121 ChapterVII The Pyramid (1967). ..138 Conclusion. ............... 153 A Selected Bibliography ......... 163 Introduction Revolving around the theme of understanding man's "being," particularly his ethical being, William Golding's novels are of great relevance in this age when the clouds of nuclear war menacingly threaten our survival and when we are yearning for happiness perhaps more desperately than did our ancestors, vet except for Golding's first novel, Lord of the Flies (which became a best seller in England and America in 1961—seven years after its publi­ cation), his other five novels to date are relatively unknown. His second novel The Inheritors, published in .1955 in England, was not published in America till Lord of the Flies became widely known here. Since 1961, however, Golding has been more generally recognized. He was invited from England to Hollins College, Virginia, as a writer-in- redidence and to several American colleges and universities the same year for lectures. He has been interviewed by several critics since then; Owen Webster and Frank Kermode were the only ones to have interviewed him before his general recognition. It is the daring nature of his work that seems to account for this slow recognition; most of his novels are obscure, shocking, pessimistic, or lacking in social conflict, and are often adversely criticized for these reasons. But it 2 has been rarely pointed out that these distinctive qualities are an inherent part of his vision as an artist and a man. Golding demands a complete involvement from his reader. The more one reads Golding the more one becomes convinced that obscurity is inherent in the subject matter of the novels and that it is not a compensation for their "obvious" ethical content. Each reading answers more puzzles, though there are always more to be unraveled. Exploring the depths of the protagonists’ being, one finds that Golding is shocking because he makes one penetrate the truth (which may momentar­ ily seem to be exaggerated and unrealistic) about oneself and about one's fellow man. Promising a ray of hope in self-analysis, the novels_begln to seem optimistic. The lack of social conflict in most of these novels emphasizes the fact that though society Influences individual lives, salvation of society and of the individual lies more in the individual's understanding of ethical problems than in social institutions. Ethical differences in the personalities of Golding's protagonists are important, two extremes being innocent Lok of The Inheritors and wicked Christopher csf Pincher Martin? the other protagonists can be placed in an ascending scale of evil between Lok and Christopher: largely innocent Ralph, guilty Sammy and Oliver, largely wicked Jocelin. 1 Sammy Mountjoy, the narrator protagonist of Golding’s Free Fall classifies the people he knows into four general 3 The degree to which these characters are evil depends on the extent to which they hurt others and even themselves. I do not believe I could classify any other major novelist’s protagonists in this manner. But then Golding himself _ distinguishes between his characters on the basis of the degree -tO-which- they are -innocent—or-wicked-. He makes Christopher corrpletely wicked and acknowledges that he deliberately does so. Replying to a question by Frank Kermode, Golding said that Christopher is "fallen man, ... Very much fallen—he’s fallen more than most. In fact, I went out of my way to damn Pincher as much as I could think of."*3 The narrator of a short story "Miss Pulkinhorn" differentiates between Miss Pulkinhorn and her lovers "He was a self-deceiver, as successful in his line as Miss Pulkinhorn, but his deceit had a kind of innocence about it."3 It must be mentioned here that Golding’s view of man’s nature is not necessarily and rigidly Christian. Though he uses Christian terminology such as paradise, fall, original groups: innocent, good, wicked and guilty; guilty people being between the two extremes of innocence and goodness on the one hand and wickedness on the other hand. I am using these categories because I find that the novels bear out that Sammy’s classification is Golding’s. 3 "Meaning of It All." Books and Bookmen. V (Oct. 1959), p. 10. 3 Encounter. XV (August 1960), p. 28. 4 sin and innocence, the ethical framework of his novels goes beyond Christianity. He never specifies that man's fall occurred when Adam disobeyed God; nor does he present God in Christian terms. His view of the origin of evil in roan seems more like Darwin's emphasis on inheritance and on individual differences. The damnation of Christopher may seem Christian, but Christopher's purgatory and sufferings are not representative of conventional ideas of Christians on these subjects? and Christopher is not punished by a "Christian God." Golding himself possesses a quality that he thinks "a writer must have": "an intransigence in the face of accepted belief. If he takes one oX—these for granted, then he ceases to have any use in socley at all. He should always be able to say? 'Well, that's all very 4 well for you, but this is the picture as I see it.,M { Golding does not depend on any conventional system of understanding man'—Christianity or science, for example, but comes close to them whenever necessary, since his subject (man) is the same as theirs. Concerned with man and his problems, Golding takes his vocation as a writer seriously and in a unique way. He alms to understand his own and , others' evil and to communicate that knowledge to his readers in order to help them know themselves. Since wickedness 4 Owen Webster, "Living with Chaos," Books and Art. I (March 1958), p. 16. 5 hurts other people and brings unhappiness, he wants to diagnose it and to help in controlling it. At an inter­ national writers* conference in Leningrad, he saids I can only tell you, briefly, what it is that makes me write. I have not had any of the terrible personal experiences which other writers have described to us, but I have observed the world—I started to write late—and I have reached certain conclusions. I have always been struck by things which men do to other men. I know of deeds which took place during the war, about which I still cannot think without feeling physically ill. I am becoming--ever more convinced that humanity—the people we .gu^_J&QSjg_ag_meet‘—is suffering—'fxom.a 'ter ribledls ease. I want to~examine~~this_dlsease, because only by knowing it, is there any hope of being, able to control it. And when I look around me, to find exanples of this sickness, I seek it in theZplace where itis most easily accessible to me, I mean in myself. ~ : I n my opinion, therefore, the novelist does not limit. Himself to reporting facts, but diagnoses them, and his vocation has the same value as that ~of the doctor.. TotHose wKo~are_too~Ignorant or too. iazy_to_know themselves, I shall continue to says *LookJ___L.ookl VdokT'S Being Interested in his readers* knowledge of man's ethicalbelng, Golding explores__his_characters> understanding.