William Golding: Some Critical Considerations

University of Kentucky UKnowledge Literature in English, North America English Language and Literature 1978 William Golding: Some Critical Considerations Jack I. Biles Georgia State University Robert O. Evans University of Kentucky Click here to let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Thanks to the University of Kentucky Libraries and the University Press of Kentucky, this book is freely available to current faculty, students, and staff at the University of Kentucky. Find other University of Kentucky Books at uknowledge.uky.edu/upk. For more information, please contact UKnowledge at [email protected]. Recommended Citation Biles, Jack I. and Evans, Robert O., "William Golding: Some Critical Considerations" (1978). Literature in English, North America. 21. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_english_language_and_literature_north_america/21 WILLIAM GOLDING DAVID ANDERSON TED E. BOYLE PHILIPPA TRISTRAM PETER WOLFE JEANNE DELBAERE-GARANT ROBERT 0. EVANS ARNOLD JOHNSTON JAY L. HALIO E. C. BUFKIN RICHARDS. CAMMAROTA DAVID SKILTON LEIGHTON HODSON MAURICE McCULLEN JACK I. BILES William Golding SOME CRITICAL CONSIDERATIONS EDITED BY Jack 1 Biles & Robert 0. Evans THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY ISBN: 978-0-8131-5127-4 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 77-73705 Copyright© 1978 by The University Press of Kentucky A statewide cooperative scholarly publishing agency serving Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Club, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University. Editorial and Sales Offices: Lexington, Kentucky 40506 CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vii INTRODUCTION ix David Anderson IS GOLDING'S THEOLOGY CHRISTIAN? 1 Ted E. Boyle GOLDING'S EXISTENTIAL VISION 21 Philippa Tristram GOLDING AND THE LANGUAGE OF CALIBAN 39 Peter Wolfe THE BRASS BUTTERFLY: FORMULA FOR SLOW CHANGE 56 Jeanne Delbaere-Garant RHYTHM AND EXPANSION IN LORD OF THE FLIES 72 Robert 0. Evans THE INHERITORS: SOME INVERSIONS 87 A mold]ohnston THE MISCASTING OF PINCHER MARTIN 103 Jay L. Halio FREE FALL: GOLDING'S MODERN NOVEL 117 E. C. Bufkin THE SPIRE: THE IMAGE OF THE BOOK 1~ RichardS. Cammarota THE SPIRE: A SYMBOLIC ANALYSIS 151 David Skilton THE PYRAMID AND COMIC SOCIAL FICTION 176 Leighton Hodson THE SCORPION GOD: CLARITY, TECHNIQUE, AND COMMUNICATION 188 Maurice L. McCullen LORD OF THE FLIES: THE CRITICAL QUEST 203 Jack I. Biles WILLIAM GOLDING: BIBLIOGRAPHY OF PRIMARY AND SECONDARY SOURCES 237 CONTRIBUTORS 281 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS THE EDITORS ARE INDEBTED not only to the au thors who worked so hard and so long to produce their essays but also to the many assistants who cut the manuscript, typed it, and finally prepared it for publication. We are indebted also to the University of Kentucky Research Fund, which paid for part of the preparation. We owe something as well to all the Golding critics who do not appear in these pages, even those who discouraged the project. And we acknowledge with as much gratitude as we can muster the invaluable efforts of Professor Robert D. Jacobs, Callaway Professor of English at Georgia State University, who carefully read and revised the original manuscript and offered innumerable suggestions for its improvement. This page intentionally left blank INTRODUCTION LITERARY HISTORY TEACHES us that judgment of a contemporary writer must of necessity be tentative. Shake speare was ranked by his contemporaries beneath Ben Jonson and Beaumont and Fletcher. Ann Radcliffe, considered a genius in her day, has passed from serious consideration, while George Eliot, who faded into eclipse after her death, has been revived by F. R. Leavis and Joan Bennett. Notwith standing, the editors and essayists here, willing like Don Juan in Tirso de Molina's play Burlador de Sevilla to accept any challenge, will assert, if pressed, that Golding's reputation will outlive that of most of his contemporaries (excepting perhaps Graham Greene). There are critics who have not forgiven Golding for the immense popularity of Lord of the Flies, the In book of an entire generation, but most would agree with Maurice Mc Cullen that it is a modern classic. Admittedly its popularity tends to obscure the later works, though a number of critics have decided that The Spire is really Golding's masterpiece. That explains why there are two essays on that book in this collection. Golding has worked a score of years receiving much praise and not a little denigration. Since critical opinions differ widely and he remains a difficult writer to assess, it seems X INTRODUCTION time for a summation from a group of critics rather than another appraisal from a single point of view. All of the essays here are original, in keeping with that goal. Each deals with major themes or technical considerations, though many of these of course have already received some attention. The first three essays address major considerations. In the beginning theologian David Anderson examines the question "Is Golding's theology Christian?" To answer he must re phrase: "Are the experiences enacted and communicated by Golding the kind . in which the Christian doctrine of man becomes existentially significant in terms of explanatory power?" He finds in the works a "collapse of bogus versions of reality and of the false religion which invents them." Gold ing's mythological enactments, he suggests, are a modern equivalent of the archetypal stories in Genesis-but let the reader judge for himself. Ted Boyle examines Golding's existential vision, drawing upon Camus, Sartre, and Tillich. He finds Golding's most persistent theme the horror of life without restraints imposed by social order. Philippa Tristram's concern is with style, the "dubious" gift of speech itself, in an essay that sheds new light on Golding and provides a means of understanding his work. The essays in the next section of the book take up indi vidual works. First there is Peter Wolfe's essay on The Brass Butterfo.J, Golding's single excursion into drama. Examination of the fiction form of this work comes later in Leighton Hod son's essay on The Scorpion God. There follow essays on each of the published works excepting The Hot Gates. (The essays there, and the uncollected ones, incline to the personal and autobiographical; though interesting adjuncts to criticism, they differ in kind from the fiction on which Golding's literary reputation must rest and are therefore omitted from consider ation here.) Jeanne Delbaere-Garant writes on Lord of the Flies, Robert 0. Evans on The Inheritors, Arnold Johnston on Pincher Martin, Jay Halio on Free Fall, E. C. Bufkin and INTRODUCTION xi Richard Cammarota on The Spire, David Skilton on The Pyramid, and Leighton Hodson on The Scorpion God. The last part of the volume deals with special consider ations. Maurice McCullen examines in detail the critical re ception of Lord of the Flies, a work so popular it seems to deserve its own history. Then comes Jack I. Biles's bibliogra phy, the most complete yet printed, a critical consideration in that it furnishes an indispensable tool for the critics of the future. Perhaps the most difficult aspect of Golding's art is the demand he makes upon his readers, far greater than we are accustomed to expect in works of fiction. He prods our minds, forming our opinions by implications, ironies, glances, hints, and even sometimes deliberate omissions so that we have to work matters out for ourselves. He aims at sharpening our perceptions and our self-knowledge. If this collection helps us to understand what he is driving at, without of course detract ing from his remarkable achievement (by making him easy where he wants to be hard), it will have served its purpose. It is with that hope we offer it. This page intentionally left blank David Anderson IS GOLDING'S THEOLOGY CHRISTIAN? THE QUESTION POSED in this essay is more complex than it may look. Golding's books are novels, with all the den sity, ambiguity, and concreteness of an art-form-far re moved, it would seem, from the systematized abstractions suggested by theology. Nevertheless, one critic has said the novels do not make sense unless one remembers that Golding is a Christian writer. 1 He was thinking in particular of the failure of reviewers to recognize the shift from a naturalistic to a theological perspective implied in the last line of Pincher Martin. Reviewers thought the novel was about "the classic predicament of man pitched against the elements," when in fact it was about "the classic predicament of man pitched against God even in death." Only the latter interpretation takes the whole novel into account, and Golding has said that in Pincher Martin he made the mistake of assuming greater theological awareness among his readers than the majority possessed. 2 Obviously, Golding's novels are not theology in the academic sense, but it can hardly be disputed that they are theologically oriented. Some maintain that a theological novelist compromises his 2 DAVID ANDERSON integrity as an artist: he necessarily starts with foregone con clusions which make impossible the free exercise of the crea tive imagination. For the Christian, truth has already been made manifest and there is nothing new to discover. So characters tend to become mere exemplars of doctrine, pup pets whose actions reinforce a message which exists indepen dently of them. Thus the Christian novelist is a polemicist. Does Golding's work fall under this condemnation? To say a writer has a theology need not mean he has bowed before a set of doctrinal absolutes. His theology need indicate no more than an understanding of man which takes his experience of transcendence into account, which finds in adequate the positivist doctrine that the individual can be de scribed in terms of the social and psychological structures in which he exists.

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