A Metaphysical Quest in the Novels of William Golding
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ISSN- 2394-5125 VOL 7, ISSUE 19, 2020 A METAPHYSICAL QUEST IN THE NOVELS OF WILLIAM GOLDING DR. G. CHRISTOPHER Assistant Professor, Senior, Department of English, VIT, Vellore E-mail: [email protected] Received: 14 April 2020 Revised and Accepted: 8 August 2020 ABSTRACT: NWilliam Golding's world lacks order and that is the fundamental dilemma of the modern human race. Golding believes that the world is contaminated with the evil nature of modern man and that men struggle in all ages to rescue himself from that wickedness, which is born of his own absurd behaviour. William Golding's pursuit of moral vision is demonstrated in his early novels. He is interested in the metaphysics of human behavior that governs each of his first five novels that deal with the fall of man and describes a man's struggle for survival in the face of alien nature. He is concerned with the degradation of the human condition and his profound awareness of "mankind's essential illness" is worked and reworked in almost all his novels. He believes contemporary man lacks vision because of the ignored religious dimensions of humanism experience. He establishes the only hope for humanity is self-knowledge attained and practiced by the individual. There is a metaphysical quest of the author through the protagonists of his early novels; the characters undergo trials to overcome the inherent evil qualities of human beings. The protagonist of Golding’s novel symbolizes the entire humanity. KEYWORDS: dilemma, absurd, metaphysical, vision, quest I. INTRODUCTION William Golding, who acquired a new stature as the Nobel Laureate of Literature in 1983, was born in Cornwall on 19 September 1911. He has spoken of how he was born into a world of "sanity and logic and fascination" to employ his own words. He seems to have possessed a sense of perpetual wonder when he was young. Golding experienced two things that he counts the greatest influences on his writing—first, the war and his service in the navy and second, his learning ancient Greek. Golding's works lie before us as a systematic body of writing: written over four decades, characteristic yet flexible, various, changeable, open to new initiatives yet with a recognizable coherence. His first two novels Lord of the Flies (1954) and The Inheritors (1955), are carefully worked out allegories in which man is presented as a creature unredeemable fallen from grace. His third and fourth novel Pincher Martin (1956) and Free Fall (1959), tells of his courageous and ingenious struggle to preserve his life and to live until he is rescued. The knowledge of his previous life is revealed through a series of flashbacks. Our admiration of Martin's epic fight for life is slowly undermined by our increasing knowledge of his viciousness and greed. The truth is that he is already drowned, his long battle for life on the rock was a fantasy sustained by his will, a frantic refusal to "die into heaven." The Spire (1964) is based on the actual building of the Spire of Salisbury Cathedral in the fourteenth-century. For the first time in Golding's work, the narrative is based on historical facts rather than on earlier fiction. Jocelin instructed by God, forces his Spire upwards, at the cost of friendship and health, at the cost of other men's lives, at the cost of sacrilege. And when it is completed, he is dying, and he no longer knows whether the work is blessed or damned, scared, or obscene, only that the Spire is there. It shows a man apparently achieving something good. Yet everything connected with it is evil. Before he dies, he reflects that there is no innocent work and this is the truth of the book. William Golding's pursuit for moral vision is demonstrated in his early novels, Lord of the Flies, The Inheritors, Pincher Martin; Free Fall and The Spire. As a novelist, Golding is very much concerned with the artificial patterns man has tried to impose upon the "natural chaos of existence." He is concerned with the degradation of the human condition, his religious sense does not drag him from the reality of human life but makes him observe and comment upon human fate with deep sympathy and compassion. He deals with the inner chaos of man to explain the outer world of social behaviour. His profound awareness of "mankind's essential illness" is worked and reworked in almost all his novels. 6544 ISSN- 2394-5125 VOL 7, ISSUE 19, 2020 In Golding's view, contemporary man lacks vision. He insists upon the ignored religious dimensions of humanism experience. He is interested in the metaphysics of human behavior that governs each of his first five novels. Golding's first novel Lord of the Flies is a fable which deals with the story of a group of children isolated on an island. He presents his view of the human condition with a moral vision. The children typify all human beings with their feelings of love, hatred, pain and guilt. The second novel, The Inheritors is concerned with man's loss of innocence. The pride of the modern man who imagines that he is in complete control of his own destiny is attacked. It attempts to reveal the absurdity that lies under the facade of "civilization." Pincher Martin deals with the fall of man and describes a man's struggle for survival in the face of alien nature. He believes the only hope for humanity is self-knowledge attained and practiced by the individual. Pincher symbolizes the entire humanity. Free Fall, Golding's fourth novel, is anchored in social surroundings, but it also deals with the illusion that man can rationally control his world. The fifth novel, The Spire, tells the story of Jocelin, Dean of a cathedral and his inspiring dedication to the erection of a crowning four hundred foot spire. Lord of the Flies is the Robinson Crusoe of our days. It is known to thousands of children (and to thousands more who were children, and have grown up discovering other Golding novels). Despite this fame, Golding himself remains virtually unknown — as shadowy, almost, as Defoe. That seems a deliberate choice. But, as a teacher-turned-writer, more easily remembered as an "observant, reflective, thoughtful man apparently brooding on problems which he did not seem to share with anyone else" (55) [1], he was more interested in understanding man for what he was and the ills that plague him. In reply to a question, Golding answered thus: I am serious. I believe that man suffers from an appalling ignorance of his own view, in the belief that it may be something like the truth. I am fully engaged in the human dilemma but see it as far more fundamental than a complex of taxes and astronomy (46) [2]. This statement was made in all earnestness and it can be seen from the critical examination of the varied human behaviour in his writings. Though he says he has no solutions to offer, his novels force one to pause and think about oneself and the world that one inhabits. One is aroused to the awareness that no one is perfect and no one is above guilt. Human failings are common. Only the realization comes late, as with Dean Jocelin in The Spire: I'm a fool... I'm a building with a vast cell a rage where rats live, and t here's some kind of blight on my hands. I injure everyone I touch, particularly those I love. Now I've come in pain and shame, ask you to forgive me. (210 -11) [3] In book after book, Golding has strived to probe and analyse human failings and weaknesses in totality and silently pass on the message or warning that either one could deliberately choose the evil path of a "Free Fall, or, in all humbleness submit to the Divine Will and Mercy. By making People understand their own humanity" through his writings, Golding perhaps visualizes the day when people would become "self -aware and honest with themselves about the condition they find themselves in, and the kind of life they lead" (19) [4]. Pincher Martin had the benefit of Nathaniel's friendly advice to learn the technique of dying into heaven and give up his present way of living. But, Martin did not pay heed to what Nathaniel said. He did not find it appealing. Neither was he interested in accepting the Compassion or the offer of Heaven of the Merciful. He preferred to live by his own laws and his self-created heaven. For all his bragging, he found himself alone in the end, forsaken and deserted -"I'm so alone! Christ! I'm so alone! Because of what I did I am an outsider and alone" (160) [5]. He would, as Pincher Martin did, end up with no hopes of survival, either in this world or the world hereafter. By showing how Pincher Martin's actions are responsible for his sufferings, Golding clarifies that "if the Universe is as the Christian sees it, you will still go either to heaven or hell or purgatory. But your purgatory or your heaven or your hell won't have the Christian attributes... They'll be things that you make yourself" (68) [4]. If the only man could profit by Pincher Martin's experience, Golding's efforts to cure mankind of his inner darkness and evil would stand achieved. Like Pincher Martin, Sammy Mountjoy was equally responsible for making a mess of his life. He had thrown the cautioning words of the Headmaster— that nothing could be got without sacrifice and the return would always not be equal to the sacrifice— to the winds.