MASARYK UNIVERSITY

FACULTY OF EDUCATION

Department of English Language and Literature

Christian Vision in William Golding's Works

Diploma Thesis

Brno 2017

Author: Supervisor:
Bc. Václav Raitmajer Mgr. Lucie Podroužková, Ph.D.
Abstract

The diploma thesis deals with less known works of William Golding, specifically Pincher
Martin and The Inheritors. The thesis focuses on Christian morality, religion and symbolism
in these novels and how they influence people´s attitudes and motivate their actions. The
objective is to thoroughly analyze the primary sources - the individual novels - from the point
of view of literary theory, Christian symbolism and the use of poetical features. The thesis
discusses the conflict of the good and evil in human beings and sinfulness of man from the
point of view of Christian religion. The thesis consists of introduction, main body and
conclusion. The introduction includes analysis of Golding´s use of symbols and allegory. The
main body analyses and compares the two novels. The conclusion summarizes the research of
the thesis. The study material covered and cited in the thesis includes both primary and
secondary sources.

Key words
William Golding, Christian symbolism, allegory, Pincher Martin, The Inheritors, morality,
good and evil in man, religion

Anotace

Diplomová práce se zabývá méně známými díly Williama Goldinga, specificky novelami
Pincher Martin a Dědicové. Práce se zaměřuje na křesťanskou morálku, náboženství a
symbolismus v těchto románech a jak ovlivňují lidské postoje a motivují jejich činnosti.
Cílem je precizně analyzovat primární zdroje - jednotlivé romány - z hlediska literární teorie,
křesťanské symboliky a poetických rysů. Práce rozebírá konflikt dobra a zla v člověku a
hříšnost člověka z hlediska křesťanského náboženství. Práce se skládá z úvodu, praktické
hlavní části a závěru. Úvod zahrnuje užívání symbolů a alegorie v Goldingových dílech,
praktická část analyzuje a srovnává oba romány. Závěrečná část shrnuje výsledky analýzy
románů. Studijní materiál zahrnutý v práci pokrývá jak primární tak sekundární zdroje.

Klíčová slova
William Golding, křesťanská symbolika, alegorie, náboženství, Pincher Martin, Dědicové,
dobro a zlo v člověku, morálka

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Declaration

Hereby, I declare that I have compiled this thesis on my own and all the sources of
information used in the bachelor thesis are listed in the references.

Brno, 25th June 2017 ………………………..

Bc. Raitmajer Václav

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Acknowledgement

I would like to express my thanks to my supervisor Mgr. Lucie Podroužková, Ph.D.

for her kind advice and valuable feedback.

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Contents

Introduction................................................................................................................6
1. Theoretical part......................................................................................................8
1. 1 Christianity and William Golding....................................................................8
1. 2 Symbolism and allegory in William Golding's novels.....................................9
2. Practical part.........................................................................................................12
2. 1 Pincher Martin................................................................................................12
2. 1. 1 Plot summary..........................................................................................12
2. 1. 2 Interpretations of the novel.....................................................................12
2. 1. 3 Christian symbolism in Pincher Martin.................................................15
2. 1. 4 Christian sins in Pincher Martin............................................................19
2. 1. 5 Animal symbolism in Pincher Martin....................................................22
2. 1. 6 People and name symbolism in Pincher Martin....................................24
2. 1. 7 Identity and society................................................................................26
2. 1. 8 Intelligence and materialism..................................................................28
2. 1. 9 Pincher Martin and God.........................................................................30
2. 2 The Inheritors.................................................................................................32
2. 2. 1 Some interpretations of the novel..........................................................32
2. 2. 2 Plot summary.........................................................................................34
2. 2. 3 The Neanderhals....................................................................................35
2. 2. 4 The New People....................................................................................40
2. 2. 5 Christian symbols in The Inheritors......................................................43
Conclusion...............................................................................................................51
Works cited..............................................................................................................54

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Introduction

William Golding belongs to one of the most significant British authors of the twentieth
century. The mention of Lord of the Flies sparks immediate recognition, however, there are
other novels which deserve readers' attention. Most readers are unaware of Golding's variety
of topics and themes in his novels, which is unjust to Golding, because their knowledge of his
work is limited to his masterpiece, Lord of the Flies.
Most of Golding's novels are usually referred to as being modern fables and allegories,
which discuss religious and moral themes and biblical symbolism. He is concerned with the
origins of evil in human beings, conscience, civilization and other moral values. The thesis
pays special attention to the use of Christian biblical symbols and concepts in Golding's two
novels, The Inheritors and Pincher Martin. All the novels depict mostly the inner lives of
their characters. Golding´s characters range from Neanderthal men to an army officer in the
British Navy during the Second World War. The novels were chosen to depict different
periods of human history. One of them is a prehistoric fiction, the other novel is an allusion to
such novels as Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. The aim of the thesis is to draw the readers'
attention to the parallels between the novels and Christian symbolism and allegory in them. It
attempts to stress the fact that modern people are influenced by the echoes of Christian
thinking even more than they are able to imagine or recognize.
Although not being an orthodox Christian, William Golding explored deeply
thoroughly religious and moral themes in his novels. His thinking and message originate from
Western ethical values and traditions, social norms and beliefs. Christianity has inevitably
shaped this Western culture and played an important role in its development. People raised in
Western civilization, although they deny to be true and practising Christians, share the values
such as the concepts of good and evil, responsibility, certain patterns of social behaviour and
morality in general.
The thesis intends to stress the importance of some moral values and illustrate that the
values are closely interconnected with the values of Christian religion and thinking and that
they are part of our everyday life even today. It discusses symbols, especially the Christian
symbols, that Golding employs and uses in his novels. It aims to draw readers' attention to
some aspects which are similar to old biblical or Christian themes. The thesis intends to prove
that the echoes of Christian themes are significant in William Golding´s novels. Moreover, the
thesis intends to raise questions about the origins of morality and human actions; what

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imposes morality to a man. Is it society and civilization, authority, religion or his own pursuit
of pleasure and happiness? Why should people attempt to be good and not evil?
The thesis is divided into theoretical and practical part. The theoretical part deals with
William Golding and his views of Christianity and how it is reflected in his work. It also
discusses concepts of allegory and symbolism. The practical part focuses on two novels,
namely Pincher Martin and The Inheritors, and tries to analyse them with attention to
Christian symbolism and allegory and Christian values.

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1. Theoretical part

1. 1 Christianity and William Golding

It is difficult to say if Golding believed in any god. He had a gruesome experience

from the World War II, that is why his views of life and human origins were quite pessimistic.
The war changed his life as it changed the lives of many men and women. Golding served in
the British Navy as a lieutenant and he experienced a lot of cruelty. The war experience
changed his attitudes towards life and it was an influential source of inspiration on his literary
work.
The next source was his family, especially his father Alec. Golding was raised in a
family where religion was not important. Golding's father was an atheist, who was interested
in scientific rationalism. Carey describes him as a man who believed that Jesus Christ was
simply a perfect man and that the Supreme Power is energy (7). On the other hand, Golding
remembers his father in a radio broadcast in 1959 and he is sad that he was an atheist. “It was
the greatest grief of Golding's life. Years later he wrote that he had wept for Alec the most of
tears. It hurt him to think of his father's atheism, because it meant that he had died in no hope.
He had been an atheist only because he could not bring himself to believe in the cruel God of
the Old Testament, so he had chosen the dry, indifferent universe of rationalism as the only
alternative. He was thus a profoundly religious man who remained a grieving atheist until the
last days of his life” (Carey, 217).
Golding was a Christian, however, he was not a member of the Church. He was not a
Christian in the ordinary sense, however, there are Christian religious themes in his books. As
a young man, he was interested in Rudolf Steiner´s thoughts, which were known as
anthroposophy. Steiner taught that there is no necessary division between knowledge and faith
and that Christ is central to all religions under different names. He believed in a scheme of
cosmic evolution guided by spiritual hierarchies. The “Christ-being” is thus manifest in all
cultures and all religions are equally true. For Golding, it “seemed to offer a reconciliation of
his father´s scientific rationalism and his own spiritual experiences” (Carey, 48).
Golding was also significantly influenced by Greek literature and thinking. He was
enthusiastic about Greek literature and “learning Greek was a profound importance to

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Golding's thought and writing. Greek literature was a passion, and it testifies to his powers of
application that he could concentrate on acquiring this complex and abstruse language”
(Carey, 92). Some authors, for example Kevin McCarron in his work William Golding, also
see a significant similarity of Golding's novels with Greek tragedies (2). He especially
mentions the use of deus ex machina in many Golding's novels, for instance in Pincher
Martin.
It is important to say that Golding was not an old-fashioned Christian moralist. He
wrote about themes that are common to all religions. On the other hand, his themes of moral
responsibility, evil and good in a man, original sin, civilization and conscience are deeply
rooted in everyone who is a member of western Christian civilization. We do not have to be
necessarily true Christian believers to understand the message of his novels, the notions of
good and evil are deeply rooted in our minds. Golding attempted to explore in his novels
under which situations and conditions the evil arises and how it influences other people and
their actions.

1. 2 Symbolism and allegory in William Golding´s novels

Two terms need our attention and definition when we intend to discuss William
Golding's novels. These terms are symbol and allegory. A symbol is a word that stands for, or
points to, a reality beyond itself. The word (or a group of words) has other meanings or
connotations in addition to its literal meaning. A sunset may symbolize death or it may be
associated with what lies beyond death. For example, the waterfall in The Inheritors is a
symbol. The use of symbols in Golding´s novels enriches the texts and they add more
meaning, which may be hidden for most readers at first reading. The repeated use of number
of symbols conveys some more additional meaning and the symbols signify something
important, something which needs and deserves our attention.
In other words, symbolism is a practice of repeating and using some words and groups
of words to add some additional meaning. The groups of words do not have their literal
meaning, there is a number of connotations and extra meanings. Edvin Honig mentions in his
Dark Conceit: The Making of Allegory: “The symbol in allegory means something both
literally and as a trope – that is, as a thing and as a quality of that thing, analogically

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conceived – before it is understood as being used and developed with other kinds of trope in
an extended fiction” (113).
When we discuss an allegory in our modern sense, we do not imagine an allegory in its
original medieval sense. In medieval times, authors wrote allegories as a set form. For
example, John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress is an excellent example of medieval allegory
where a Christian man and his life and experience on this world are described as a difficult
journey with incidents on it. Different incidents are referred to as symbols, e. g. his despair
becomes the Castle of Despair. Christian theology and its manifestation are hidden in the
book.
On the other hand, a modern writer works differently with an allegory, he does not see
it so universally. His works are not allegories in their form, he only uses some elements from
it thus creating works which are allegorical. Ellen Leyburn' view is a contemporary one. She
discusses allegories in terms of using various images. She writes in her essay Satiric Allegory:
Mirror of Man: “We can, then, call allegory the particular method of saying one thing in
terms of another in which the two levels of meaning are sustained and in which the two levels
correspond in pattern of relationship among the details” (6).
Golding's novels are very often compared by critics to modern allegories because his
stories demonstrate religious and philosophical beliefs. In allegory, every element stands for
an aspect of the belief that the story attempts to explain. Some of Golding's characters are
highly allegorical, e. g. Simon in the Lord of the Flies resembles Christ because he is killed
for bringing the good news to the boys. The same may be applied to Christopher Martin
Hadley in Pincher Martin, who stands for a fallen man. Similarly, the Neanderthals in The
Inheritors represent purity and innocence. William Golding is a modern writer and it is
obvious that he did not write allegories in the traditional medieval sense similar to John
Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. He was not a Christian moralist, who reflects Christian theology
in his works. His works are allegorical, i. e. he uses some elements of allegories and his
novels have some characteristics of allegories.
As C. S. Lewis wrote in The Allegory of Love: “Allegory, in some sense, belongs not
to medieval man but to man, or even to mind, in general. It is of the very nature of thought
and language to represent what is immaterial in picturable terms” (44). Since Lord of the Flies
most Golding's novels were referred to as allegorical to at least some extent.
Generally, allegory is a metaphor which conveys a moral message. William Golding,
on the other hand, preferred the term 'myth' as more convenient. It is a well-known fact that
he was familiar with Greek mythology and he saw the myth as a story which contains some

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religious message and also unconscious symbolism. Philip Redpath argues in his essay
William Golding: A Structural Reading of His Fiction that Golding saw myths as “something
which comes out from the roots of things in the ancient sense of being the key to existence”
(168).

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2. Practical part

2. 1 Pincher Martin

2. 1. 1 Plot summary

The novel Pincher Martin is William Golding's third novel and was published in 1955.
It was welcomed eagerly by critics after the success of his masterpieces Lord of the Flies and
The Inheritors. At the same time, the critics have found it as most challenging novel because
the story itself is very unusual and the ending is ambiguous.
The eponymous hero, or anti-hero, is a British Navy officer, who apparently survives
on a tiny rocky islet in the North Atlantic Ocean after his torpedo destroyer was sank by a
German U-boat. The novel is a detailed description of his hopeless struggle and ordeal to
survive in harsh conditions on a barren, isolated and remote island. The hero tries to use his
intelligence, knowledge, education and training to collect fresh water and food and to alert
any potential rescuers. At the same time, it is also his spiritual, psychological and existential
struggle to maintain sanity. It is only in the very last chapter, when Golding reveals that the
struggle was in vain, that the sailor was dead from the first chapter. His dead body was found
on a beach. Obviously, the struggle for survival never happened or it happened just in
Martin's head.

2. 1. 2 Interpretations of the novel

At first, readers may consider the novel as a prototype of such novels as Robinson
Crusoe by Daniel Defoe or The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne, however, Martin's
existential plight is hopeless, he suffers from hallucinations, which reveal his true character,
and he is doomed to a bitter end. His struggle is not a heroic struggle about marooning and
survival on an exotic island, he becomes a poor being, he is no more than the limpets,
anemones, seals and seagulls, which surround him and which he is forced to eat. The last
chapter is an unexpected twist and it reveals that Martin actually drowned in the very first
chapter. Captain Davidson, who was sent to retrieve the body of Pincher Martin, replies to
Mr. Campbell's question: “He didn't even have time to kick off his seaboots.” It is obvious

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that Pincher Martin died at the very beginning of the novel when he drowned and tried to call
his mother (“The lumps of hard water jerked in the gullet, the lips came together and parted,
the tongue arched, the brain lit a neon track. Moth--. But the man lay suspended behind the
whole commotion, detached from his jerking body.”). His physical struggle on the islet never
happened, it was an illusion. However, after this point the story continues as a narrative about
Martin's survival and most readers, who were not attentive enough, simply ignore his physical
death until the last chapter, which is the most important for our understanding.
The novel is also sometimes compared to a book called Pincher Martin O. D., which
was first published in 1916 by Henry Taprell Dorling. In contrast with William Golding's
Pincher Martin, Dorling's Pincher is a patriotic, loyal, brave naval officer. His ship is
torpedoed and he is flung into the sea. He also struggles to remove his sea-boots, as Golding's
Pincher, however, he does not manage to do so and dies peacefully and calmly. He commits
his soul to God because he is a Christian. He does not struggle with his selfishness. Whereas
Golding's Pincher Martin “spits on God”, Dorling's Martin meets his death with Christian
fortitude.
The original American title of the book from 1957 was Two Deaths of Christopher
Martin and it reveals much more about the story than the British title Pincher Martin. The
obvious question is what happened between the two deaths. Readers are forced to re-read and
re-evaluate the thirteen chapters of the novel when they learn about the seaboots at the end of
the book. The ending caused a lot of discussion and controversy among critics and the novel
achieved a certain notoriety because of its ending. It is very difficult to comprehend the novel
and its message on a first reading.
Golding's gimmick at the end of the novel turns it into an allegory about things
between hell and heaven, about human responsibility of their everyday lives and deeds. It is
not a description of Martin's physical struggle to survive, it is a detailed record of his soul
and conscience. The trick at the end of the novel is sometimes compared to the short story An
Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce where a convict imagines his escape,
standing on a gallows, before he is finally hanged. Nonetheless, Pincher Martin is not a
moment-of-death narrative, as some critics claim, it is a post mortem narrative. It seems that
Martin's spirit lives on and he struggles for his identity as Leon Surette claims in his essay
Pincher Martin's Afterlife: “Ostensibly and rationally he is a survivor from a torpedoed
destroyer: but deep down he knows the truth. He is not fighting for bodily survival but for his
continuing identity in face of what will smash it and sweep it away” (207). Martin's body dies
but he has an opportunity for reconciliation: “Eternity, inseparable from pain, was there to be

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examined and experienced. The snarl endured. He thought. The thoughts were laborious” (PM
8). Virginia Tiger claims in her essay William Golding: The Dark Fields of Discovery that the
novel is a report about man's consciousness and she stresses the “necessity of religious belief”
(102).
Martin's spirit lives on and it is driven by his greed for life. He is alive only in his
head. He created his own world where he is doomed to suffer for his sins and wrongdoings.
Although his physical body dies quickly in Chapter 1, his soul dies for eternity. William
Golding explained what he had intended in a letter published in the Radio Times on 21 March
1958:

Christopher Hadley Martin had no belief in anything but the

importance of his own life; no love, no God. Because he was created
in the image of God he had a freedom of choice which he used to
centre the world on himself. He did not believe in purgatory and
therefore when he died it was not presented to him in overtly
theological terms. The greed for life which had been the mainspring of
his nature, forced him to refuse the selfless act of dying. He continued
to exist separately in a world composed of his own murderous nature.
His drowned body lies rolling in the Atlantic but the ravenous ego
invents a rock for him to endure on. (Carey, 196)

For some readers, who are not true or orthodox Christians, it is difficult to accept the
idea of suffering in Christian purgatory or they do not believe in eternity as it is described in
The Bible. In any way, what we read is a hallucination of Pincher Martin's soul, a reflection of
a corrupt man who devoted his whole life to greed for power and who destroyed lives of many
people around him. We read about his existential crisis, in which he questions his past deeds
and their bitter consequences.
For the readers who are not willing to believe in the concept of purgatory (or eternity),
there is a chance of another explanation. At the end of Chapter 11 Pincher Martin feels his
teeth with his tongue: “His tongue felt along the barrier of his teeth – round to the side where
the big ones were and the gap. He brought his hands together and held his breath. He stared
at the sea and saw nothing. His tongue was remembering. It pried into the gap between the
teeth and re-created the old, aching shape. It touched the rough edge of the cliff, traced the

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slope down, trench after aching trench, down towards the smooth surface where the Red Lion
was, just above the gum – understood what was so hauntingly familiar and painful about an
isolated and decaying rock in the middle of the sea” (PM 185). The geography of the tooth is
the geography of the rock. It may be that at the moment of drowning, he remembered the
suffering connected with the old tooth.
Some authors compare the novel with the theory of evolution and speak about it as an
evolutionary allegory. The hero, who is drowning in the sea, finally crawls on the island and
his struggle represents the history of the life evolution. In my view, this theory is not true due
to the surprising ending of the novel. Moreover, the sailor does not prosper on the island, he
suffers and he does not much evolve. Water may be a symbol of life, on the other hand,
Pincher Martin actually died there as we can see at the end.
Carey mentiones the surviving notes for Pincher Martin, which were written in a
green hardcover Bishop Wordsworth's School exercise book by Golding. It includes the moral
scheme, which Golding intended:

Basic. He is utterly selfish. Risking anything to preserve his life. Why

is he what he is? Because he has been running away from God (The
old woman in the cellar). This is no answer. Somewhere he went
wronger than most. That must have been pre-natal. Running away
from God is running away from helplessness and death towards power
and life. Life then means power over things and power over the most
expensive things called women. The greatest power is to break the
opposite thing an innocent and holy being. (Carey, 194)

2. 1. 3 Christian symbolism in Pincher Martin

The novel is plentiful in Christian symbols. One of the most prominent and
distinguishable is the fall of man. We watch a man struggling for his life on a piece of rock
and he gradually reveals his true character through a series of recollections about his previous
life. It is through these flashbacks that we can see a fallen man, who destroyed his life and the
lives of other people he had met during his life. He is arrogant and self-centred and refuses to

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accept a fact that there is a stronger power above him, that there is God. He thinks that he is at
the top of the food chain because he is intelligent. He believes only in himself and the power
of his intelligence and education and thus he assumes he is the only one who is righteous to
answer to nobody. In fact, he regards himself as God. As a matter of fact, he violates the first
Christian commandment, which is “You shall have no other gods before Me”. However,
Pincher Martin is not a Christian in the theological sense and thus he is doomed to his
inevitable fall.
Pincher Martin thinks that he himself and nobody else has the right to control his life.
In fact, he does not control anything, it is his self-interested arrogance that drives him to his
bitter end. Unfortunately, his existence on the isolated rock is no more than the existence of
seagulls, weed and limpets. He is a poor being at the same level and of the same importance.
It is several times in Chapter 2 when he compares himself to the lowest of creatures, he cries
out desperately: “Like a limpet!” (PM 32). Moreover, Golding describes his movements with
such verbs as “crawl”, “creep” or “climb”.
Martin's confidence in his knowledge, intelligence and his self-importance can be
compared to the fall of man as we know it from The Bible. The Book of Genesis, Chapter 3,
deals with the fall of man. Eve eats fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, which God had
forbidden, and thus she is (together with Adam) expelled from the Garden of Eden. This first
original sin was then transmitted to all their descendants. This primeval event makes all
humans sinful and corrupt from the very first day they are born. Pincher Martin is not
primarily doomed to his fall, he is doomed because of the evil and unscrupulous deeds, which
he committed in his previous life to other people around him.
Another important symbol in Pincher Martin is the symbol of an island. Islands are
beautiful because they are safe havens and they are dangerous at the same time because a man
may be isolated at them. This symbol in Pincher Martin suggests futility and isolation.
Pincher Martin is marooned on a tiny piece of rock in the middle of the Atlantic, he is
frightened and lost. He is surrounded by vast open waters and the sky above him. Every day
he hopes for his rescue. Nevertheless, he has to persuade himself every day: “You can't give
up.” He mutters from time to time: “I shall be rescued today” and he thinks that he will be
“damned” if he cannot survive. He attempts to impose his intelligence and knowledge on the
island, e. g. he gives some places names, however, his attempts are vain. Pincher Martin feels
the need to tame the rock, his world: “I am busy surviving. I am netting down this rock with
names and taming it. What is given a name is given a seal, a chain. If this rock tries to adapt
me to its ways I will refuse and adapt it to mine. I will impose my routine on it, my

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geography. I will tie it down with names.” (PM 90) James Baker claims in his essay William
Golding, A Critical Study that Pincher Martin tries to “create an ordered preserve for himself
in an otherwise patternless world" (26). It is Martin's desire to possess things around him, to
devour them, to impose his power and will on them. He treats the world as if it belonged to
him. In case of Pincher Martin, the island is not a pleasant place to be at, it is not a safe haven
for him. It is his prison, his dungeon.
On one hand, the island is a piece of land that provides Pincher Martin with fresh
water, food, shelter, it is a “safe” place, at least for a short period of time. On the other hand,
it is place where there is no hope: “It felt like solidity but it was a sea-trap, as alien to
breathing life as the soft slop of the last night and the vertical mile” (PM 29). It is often
described in negative, unfriendly and even hostile terms. It is a place where life is a burden. It
resembles the Christian concept of Hell, a place designed and created for the sinners to suffer
in. The island provides Pincher Martin with just enough food and water to prolong his
suffering.
Symbol of water and sea is also very dominant in the novel. Pincher Martin is
surrounded by a vast open ocean. From the Christian perspective, water symbolizes purity and
purification. Unfortunately, for Pincher Martin it is not a force that makes him a better man. It
is something terrible that separates him from civilization: “Beyond the rock was nothing but a
smoking advance of sea with watery sunlight caught in it” (PM 24). Moreover, Golding
personifies the sea, sometimes it is tame, sometimes it is wild: “He felt the sea run down to
smell at his feet then come back and nuzzle under his arm. It no longer licked his face. There
was a pattern in front of him that occupied all the space under the arches. It meant nothing.
The sea nuzzled under his arm again” (PM 18). The sea may also represent a transmitting
power, a cleansing element. It is something that Pincher Martin had to go through into another
world when his ship was sunk.
Moreover, ocean and sea, water in general, is a place where life first originated. In
Genesis 1:20, we can read: “And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving
creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of
heaven.” Water is everlasting life, however, in case of Pincher Martin, it is an everlasting
suffering. Water separates him from other beings and from the world that he used to know
before the shipwreck.
Apart from the ocean, another form of water in the novel is rain. Rain is a very
important symbol and it corresponds to the rain in The Bible. There are several symbolic
explanations of rain in The Bible. On one hand, rain is a blessing to a man: “Then he prayed

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again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit” (James 5:18). On the other hand, it
symbolizes flood and destruction: “The flood continued forty days on the earth. The waters
increased and bore up the ark, and it rose high above the earth. The waters prevailed and
increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the face of the waters. And the waters
prevailed so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were
covered. The waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep. And
all flesh died that moved on the earth, birds, livestock, beasts, all swarming creatures that
swarm on the earth, and all mankind” (Genesis 7:17-24). Pincher Martin wishes for rain in the
novel: “Let there be rain and there was rain” (PM 182). It is at the moment when Pincher
Martin was in a desperate need for water. However, the rain turns into a storm, which afflicts
him. Rain was not a blessing for Pincher Martin.
Pincher Martin not only struggles with his physical surroundings, he also struggles
with his own isolation and his fear of becoming insane. He feels entrapped on the tiny islet
and he is entrapped and stranded in his solitude, he is away from civilization and his morality
is being tested. The island becomes his prison where his soul suffers. There is nobody to help
him. In the end of the book, Pincher Martin cries out: “Can't anyone understand how I feel?”
He starts to speak to himself and he attempts to persuade himself that this is a proof of his
sanity and identity: “I must watch my mind. I must not let madness steal up on me and take
me by surprise. Already – I must expect hallucinations. That is the real battle. That is why I
shall talk out loud for all the blotting-paper. In normal life to talk out loud is a sign of
insanity. Here it is proof of identity“ (PM 84). In fact, everything on the island including
Pincher Martin is monstrous and bizarre, it is hallucinatory. Carey supports this argument:
“his body and everything else on the rock assume monstrous shapes. The flying reptiles that
attack him are seagulls, the terrible red lobsters beside him are his sunburnt hands“ (192).
Pincher Martin's struggle on the island lasts for six days and it corresponds to the
number of days God took to create the world. Number six is also a symbol of imperfection
and humankind in Christian symbolism. The Bible, especially the Old Testament, was an
influential source of inspiration for Golding. Some critics, most importantly Kevin McCarron,
compare Golding´s novel to a parody to the myth of creation: “for six days and six nights
Martin creates his world: the rock, the sea, the sky, night, day, the seaweed, the gulls, and the
shell fish“ (16).
Purgatory as a Christian concept is dominant in the novel. The Bible does not mention
the place directly, no such name can be traced there. However, there are several references to
such a place. It is a place where souls are cleansed from petty sins before they can enter

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Heaven. Many critics compare Pincher Martin's suffering to the Christian Purgatory. It is the
minimalistic setting of the novel, the tiny islet, which is Pincher Martin's personal Purgatory.
Moreover, it is also his mind, his consciousness where all his hallucinations and flashbacks
take place.
Pincher Martin struggles with his own conscience. Readers may feel sympathy for the
lonely survivor. However, after several chapters Pincher Martin begins to reveal his true
character through a series of flashbacks on his past life. We start to feel antipathy towards the
protagonist because of his immoral deeds, we start to realize his true character. In his self-
centredness and narcissism he was using people for his own purposes, he saw people as mere
things or opportunities for his own selfish benefit. He did not treat them as living and feeling
people, he did not treat them as his equals. Pincher Martin's self is his God, he loves himself.
In his isolation on the rock, far away from the civilization, his moral virtues are tested.
In Chapter 1 Pincher Martin is talking to himself as he is drowning. We can realize
Pincher Martin's self-love and what he thinks about himself: “Presently it will be daylight. I
shall see the wreckage. I won't die. I can't die. Not me - . Precious” (PM 9).

2. 1. 4 Christian sins in Pincher Martin

John Carey believes that “Pincher, born with his mouth and his flies open, embodies
what Golding saw as his own greed, lust, egotism, cruelty and ambition” (Carey, 193). Who is
Pincher Martin? What is his true character? His true character is revealed through a series of
recollections on his past life. Pincher Martin's deeds were all controlled by his greed. One of
his colleagues speaks about him and expresses his beliefs about him: “He takes the best part,
the best seat, the most money, the best notice, the best woman. He was born with his mouth
and his flies open and both hands out to grab” (PM 127). His greed drives his every action and
decision in life. It is his mouth (and flies) and eating that symbolizes another Christian
concept, the concept of greed.
According to the Christian doctrine, greed is one of the Seven Deadly Sins, or the
capital vices. It is a sin of desire, greed inspires manipulation, violence, lust, theft, trickery
and pursuit of material possessions. All these traits are typical of Martin's true character, they
take different shapes and are manifested in his decisions and actions. It seems that Pincher
Martin is possessed by his greed. Greed drives all his actions.

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 One of the most vivid manifestations of Pincher Martin´s greed is his desire for food
on the island. The symbol of eating and devouring is significant in the whole novel and it
takes different shapes. Pincher Martin is interested in eating from the very first time he crawls
on the island. He is possessed with consuming, he eats limpets and mussels and weed. This
greed is also a manifestation of Pincher Martin's tendency to use his reason, to think rationally
in order to survive: “The end to be desired is rescue. For that, the bare minimum necessary is
survival. I must keep this body going. I must give it drink and food and shelter” (PM 84).
Interestingly, his is greed for food on the island causes him food poisoning: “I'll live if I have
to eat everything else on this bloody box! He looked down at his legs. I know the name for
you bloody blotches. Urticaria. Food poisoning” (PM 170). It is the food poisoning that made
the world go crazy for him. The greed for food and survival caused the worst, he was not able
to maintain his sanity: “There was illness of the body, effect of exposure. There was food-
poisoning that made the world a mad place. There was solitude and hope deferred” (PM 172).
Moreover, in case of Pincher Martin, eating has the form of devouring everything:
“Think about women then or eating. Think about eating women, eating men, crunching up
Alfred, that other girl, that boy, that crude and unsatisfactory experiment, lie restful as a log
and consider the gnawed tunnel of life right up to this uneasy intermission” (PM 94). Eating,
gnawing and gluttony are expressed in a symbol of teeth which occurs several times in the
novel. As a matter of fact, the islet itself with its rugged rocks resembles a jaw full of teeth:
“A single point of rock, peak of a mountain range, one tooth set in the ancient jaw of a sunken
world, projecting through the inconceivable vastness of the whole ocean – and how many
miles from dry land” (PM 26). Paradoxically, Pincher Martin's trial takes place there so in
fact, he is the one who is being devoured and gnawed at in his isolation.
The notion of eating and devouring is also transmitted to the social relations that he
experienced in his past life. In his selfishness, he believes that life is a struggle for survival of
the fittest. The stronger eat the weaker. In fact, he is not a social creature in an ordinary sense,
his relationships with his friends and women lack any emotions. He only uses other people to
meet his own goals. This approach is demonstrated on the symbol of a Chinese box. Golding
describes it as a tin box which is filled with a fish and is buried to the ground. The worms start
eating each other so finally there is only one strongest worm left. The Chinese consider it a
delicacy: “The little ones eat the tiny ones. The middle-sized ones eat the little ones. The big
ones eat the middle-sized ones. Then the big ones eat each other. Then there are two and then
one and where there was a fish there is now one huge, successful maggot. Rare dish” (PM
144). Pincher Martin uses an expression “the Dirty Maggot Club”.

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 Some people are described as maggots in the novel, which shows Pincher Martin'
views: “She's the producer's wife, old man. Fat. White. Like a maggot with tiny black eyes. I
should like to eat you. I should love to play Danny. I should love to eat you. I should love to
put you in a play. How can I put you anywhere if I haven't eaten you?” (PM 99). Pincher
Martin does not consider other people his equals, he is used to exploiting them. In his eyes,
other people are only tools for fulfilling his own desires and wishes.
Moreover, the Chinese box may also be a symbol of a coffin. Golding writes about
Pincher Martin's friends and relatives who are at home, whereas he suffers on the island: “She
is sorry for me on this rock. Sybil was weeping and Alfred. Helen was crying. A bright boy
face was crying. He saw half-forgotten but now clearly remembered faces and they were all
weeping. That is because they know I am alone on a rock in the middle of a tin box” (PM
153). So finally, Pincher Martin is devoured by his greed and dies alone on the island. All the
other people he wanted to exploit are safe at home.
At the beginning of the novel, when Pincher Martin is drowning, there is another
symbol similar to a coffin. Yet, it represents the world and Martin's helpless body struggling
in the ocean. It is a jam jar filled with water and with a tiny little figure: “The jam jar was
standing on a table, brightly lit from O. P. It might have been a huge jar in the centre of a
stage or a small one almost touching the face, but it was interesting because one could see into
a little world there which was quite separate but which one could control. The jar was nearly
full of water and a tiny glass figure floated upright in it” (PM 2). Martin is compared to the
glass figure and there is someone, supposedly God, who is playing with him. This important
symbol comes right at the beginning of the novel to remind us that we live in the world where
there it is not always possible to control our actions and that we are just powerless bodies
against the might of something (or someone) much stronger. It is an important motif of the
life in this world. On the contrary, Pincher Martin thinks that it is himself who can do it: “You
could mutter, - sink now! And down it would go, down, down, you could steady it and relent”
(PM 3). Pincher Martin is thinking about the figure in the jar when swimming and struggling
for his life: “The delicate balance of the glass figure related itself to his body. In a moment of
wordless realization he saw himself touching the surface of the sea with such a dangerous
stability, poised between floating and going down” (PM 3).
Another strong Christian sin discussed in the novel is the sin of adultery. First, Pincher Martin
was cuckolding his friend Alfred with Alfred´s wife, Sybil. It is again connected with the
greed and exploiting other people: “Cuckolding reminded him. He turned from the mirror,
bound his dressing-gown with the cord and opened the bathroom door. And there, coming

21
towards him, as if the rather antiquated expression had conjured him up was Alfred. But it
was a different Alfred, pale, sweating, trembling, coming at a run toward” (PM 92). Pincher
Martin does not have any pricks of conscience. Again, adultery is one of the seven deadly sins
according to Christians.
Other seven deadly sins, apart from greed, gluttony and adultery, which are connected
to Pincher Martin, are discussed on pages 126 and 127. Martin's character is discussed by his
friends, who are also actors as him: “What about pride, George? He could play that without a
mask and just stylized make-up, couldn't he? Malice, George? Envy, Pete? I don't mind
playing Sloth, Pete” (PM 126). Another one mentioned is Lechery. Moreover, they compare
him to Greed: “Chris-Greed. Greed-Chris. Know each other” (PM 126).
Last but not least, there is the sin of jealousy. Jealousy is a sin which shows that we
are still controlled by our own desires and greed. The Bible tells us that: “Love is patient, love
is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking,
it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs” (1 Corinthians 13:4-5). On the contrary,
Pincher Martin is jealous because of Nathaniel, his best friend, when he wants to get married
with Mary, who refused him: “Christ, how I hate you. I could eat you. Because you fathomed
her mystery, you have a right to handle her transmuted cheap tweed, because you both have
made a place where I can't get, because in your fool innocence you've got what I had to get or
go mad. Then he found himself additionally furious with Nathaniel, not because of Mary, not
because he had happened on her as he might have tripped over a ring-bolt but because he
dared to sit to, tilting with the sea, held by a thread, so near the end that would be at once so
anguishing and restful like the bursting of a boil” (PM 105). The more Pincher Martin focuses
on his desires, the more he is jealous, the less he can be a good man. In other words, being
jealous means that Pincher Martin is not satisfied with his life.
For Pincher Martin there is no salvation, there is no peace and joy because he is not
able to love other people. His heart is hardened by self-love.

2. 1. 5 Animal symbolism in Pincher Martin

There are some animals, which appear throughout the novel. There are not many but
most have a symbolic meaning.
There is a motif of helplessness in Chapter 11. There is a tiny fish in a small pool,
which is slowly dying in the sun: “The weedy top of the limpet was above the surface. The

22
tiny fish, tricked by this unnatural ebb was lying on wet rock in the sun and trying to wriggle
against the surface tension. The anemones had shut their mouths even tighter. The bladder of
the lifebelt was two-thirds full” (PM 175). It represents helplessness of all creatures in the
world, which might be cruel to them and not interested in their fate. At the same time, it is a
motif of dying flesh leaving this world. Moreover, fish used to be a symbol of persecution in
Christianity. A fish is also a symbol of baptism and it is strongly connected with water
because fish is at home in water.
Another symbol is the use of birds in the novel. The only birds used and mentioned in
the novel are sea gulls. They are referred to as “flying reptiles” in some parts of the novel:
“They retired then and watched. Their heads were narrow. They were flying reptiles. An
ancient antipathy for things with claws set him shuddering at them and thinking their moth
outlines all the strangeness of bats and vampires” (PM 56). In the book, they represent
something rewarding and helpful and at the same time they are disgusting for him. Whenever
Pincher Martin sees them in his hallucinations, they bring a feeling of life. On the other hand,
they are a symbol of death to him because they are the connection with land and civilization
where he is not. They are a contradictory element in the novel.
The only idea of reptiles and their flying are revolting to a common reader. Serpents
and snakes were contradictory creatures in The Bible. On one hand, they were seen as
symbols of chaos and evil coming from the underworld, symbols of temptation. There is a
connection between Satan and a snake. In Genesis 3, we can read the following words, which
Lord God said to the serpent: “And the Lord God said unto the serpent. Because thou hast
done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field.” The snake is
portrayed as a trickster, a deceptive creature.
On the other hand, sometimes reptiles are not considered as something revolting in.
They are seen as symbols of fertility and life. In Pincher Martin, we can read the following
passage: “Then he was looking at a half-face and crying out. The half-face belonged to one of
the feathered reptiles. The creature was perched on the slab and looking down sideways at
him. As he cried out the wide wings beat and flapped away and immediately a glossy picture
swept the blue sky and the stone out of sight” (PM 100).
Another animal, which appears in the novel, is a lobster. Pincher Martin detests lobster
claws: “He crawled to the edge of the cliff and looked down. At once, as if his eye had created
it, he saw the lobster among the weed, different in dragon-shape, different in colour. He knelt,
looking down, mesmerized while the worms of loathing crawled over his skin. Beast. Filthy
sea-beast” (PM 118). At closer reading, however, we realize that the lobster claws, which

23
appear several times in the novel, are Pincher Martin's swollen and sunburnt hands. This may
be a symbol of what he has done in his life, a symbol of all the bad deeds. In fact, what
Pincher Martin hates are his own hands.

2. 1. 6 People and name symbolism in Pincher Martin

Pincher Martin has been discussed a lot in the previous chapters and there will be a lot
about him in the next chapters because he is the main protagonist of the novel.
The name of the novel Pincher Martin can have many associations. The verb “pinch”
may be associated with lobster´s claw, which occurs several times in the novel. It inflicts
something unpleasant, usually pain caused by a grip.
John Carey provides the explanation of the name: “All persons with the surname
Martin in the British navy are called 'Pincher', just as all Clarks are called 'Nobby'” (204).
The full name of the protagonist is Christopher Martin Hadley. Christopher means
“bearing Christ”; the name was used by early Christians and it meant that they had and carried
Christ in their hearts. Martin is derived from the Roman god Mars, who was their god of war.
There is a dichotomy in the names of the protagonist and they have an allegorical
significance. The first one refers to the protagonist as a godly man, which he is not, the other
refers to somebody associated with war and destruction.
An important person in Pincher Martin's life is Mary. She is the only woman who is
discussed in greater detail through Martin's hallucinations and flashbacks. It seems that
Pincher Martin is capable of strong feelings (not love) as far as Mary is concerned. In
Christian symbolism, the name Mary is associated with purity and obedience to God. In The
Bible, Mary answered to the angel: "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be [done] to
me according to your word." Yet, she is not willing to do so in the novel as it seems that
Pincher Martin's love is mixed or inspired by sexual desire. In fact, Mary in the novel may be
a symbol of Madonna because she represents real life and values. Along with Nathaniel, she
values her chastity and is not willing to sleep with Pincher Martin, whom she sees as amoral
and corrupt.
Pincher Martin, as it may seem, is obsessed with Mary but he behaves in a selfish way
because he wants to own her. However, she refuses him. She is described through Pincher
Martin's eyes. His feelings change after this refusal: “That's what it is. Ever since I met her
and she interrupted the pattern coming at random, obeying no law of life, facing me with the

24
insoluble, unbearable problem of her existence the acid's been chewing at my guts. I can't
even kill her because that would be her final victory over me. Yet as long as she lives the acid
will eat. She's there. In the flesh. In the not even lovely flesh. In the cheap mind. Obsession.
Not love. Or if love, insanely compounded of this jealousy of her very being” (PM 109). He
wants to kill her several times in the real life or in his mind: “There's nothing that can stand
that. And killing her would make it worse” (PM 109). These are his thoughts when he is
standing aboard the ship in the navy. After her refusal he starts to caricature her, he hates and
loves her at the same time. His ego cannot cope with the “offence” as he takes it.
Mary is a young, maybe rather ordinary girl, who lives her own life and she is not
interested in Pincher Martin. She is in love with Nathaniel, Pincher Martin's closest friend.
The most detailed description of her can be found in Chapter 10, in which Pincher Martin
attempts to rape her in his car: “She was common and undistinguished. But the eyes belonged
to some other person for they had nothing to do with the irregularity of the face or the
aspirations, prudish and social, of the voice. There was the individual, Mary, who was nothing
but the intersection of influences from the cradle up, the Mary gloved and hated for church,
she Mary who ate with such maddening refinement, the Mary who carried, poised on her two
little feet, a treasure of demoniac and musky attractiveness that was all more terrible because
she was almost unconscious of it” (PM 157). She is described as “the surely impregnable
virtue”. These all traits insult Pincher Martin's amorality because she does not want to have
sex with him.
Nathaniel is a counterpart of Pincher Martin because he is the embodiment of
character traits that Martin does not possess. The same is applied to Mary, who Nathaniel
marries. In fact, Nathaniel is the only character in the novel which is portrayed as good. He
represents the values which are good and tries to advise Martin to be good as well. On the
contrary, Martin plans to kill him. Nathaniel talks about heaven with Pincher Martin: “You
could say that I know it is important for you personally to understand about heaven – about
dying – because in only a few years –“ (PM 73). He talks about things which are not
materialistic but transcendental.
The name Nathaniel comes from Greek and it means “God has given”. Nathaniel is a
representation of spiritual values, he believes in God with a true Christian fortitude, he
discusses heaven with Pincher Martin, he is not self-centered and one of his main traits is self-
denial. That is why, Pincher Martin hates Nat and loves him at the same time: “Because I like
you, you fool and hate you. And now I hate you” (PM 168). “

25
 Nathaniel is good because he is able to be emotional and have real connections with
the world and people. He also does not stick to materialist world, it is not important for him:
“He would be enduring the wind and engine stink, the peculiar dusty dirt and shabbiness of a
wartime destroyer because life itself with all its touches, tastes, sights and sounds and smells
had been at a distance from him. He would go on enduring until custom made him indifferent.
He would never find his feet in the Navy because those great feet of his had always been
away out there, attached by accident while the man inside prayed and waited to meet his
aeons” (PM 49). Nathaniel is a man of God, an emotional being, distant from this world and
from its suffering.
When Nathaniel wants to join the navy and wants Pincher Martin to look after Mary,
Martin decides to join as well. He intends to kill him and win Mary back: “Pretend not to see.
Be as little connected as possible. Fire a fuse from the bridge that will blow him away from
her body and clear the way for me” (196 PM). Moreover, we are again reminded of the
Chinese box and eating: “Good-by, Nat, I loved you and it is not in my nature to love much.
But what can the last maggot but one do? Lose his identity?” (PM 196). So, Pincher Martin is
also a murderer, at least in intention.
To conclude the use of names in Pincher Martin, we must bear in mind that there are
not many characters in the novel and, moreover, only some of them are names with a
symbolic significance. It would be waste of time to attempt to analyze other names with
reversed or indirect meaning.

2. 1. 7 Identity and society

Pincher Martin does not obey any set of rules, regulations and values of Christian
society or civilization. He is able to follow only his own selfish moral principles, which are
driven by his greed and desire. In fact, he is not a part of society, he is just an individual. His
values are amoral. For him, life is only the struggle for the survival of the fittest as it was
mentioned above on the example of the Chinese box. In fact, Pincher Martin does not treat
other people with a difference, everybody is alike for him. People are used only for meeting
his own self-centered purposes, even his friends and women he “loved”. He acts against
society in a series of crimes. It seems that he is not always able to distinguish between good
and evil. Or he is not willing to.

26
 Pincher Martin tries to stay civilized and maintain his sanity, however, his fears of
death, loneliness and darkness turn him into a poor and savage being. He also remembers his
childhood nightmares and his fear to enter a dark and empty cellar: “The cellar door swinging
to behind a small child who must go down, down in his sleep to meet the thing he turned from
when he was created” (PM 202). Pincher Martin is different, “the whole novel is made out of
seeing-things-differently, or defamiliarization. As Pincher Martin struggles through
hallucination, dream and delusion, his body and everything else on the rock assume
monstrous shapes” (Carey, 192).
His flashbacks on the isolated rocky islet reveal his true wicked character and the
crimes, some are minor and others major. In fact, he is a voluntary outcast of society who
destroys lives of other people and at the same time, he unconsciously destroys his own life
and soul. His evil actions and supposedly free will led him to the suffering on the island:
“You gave me the power to choose and all my life you led me carefully to this suffering
because my choice was my own. Oh yes! I understand the pattern. All my life, whatever I had
done I should have found myself in the end of that same bridge, at that same time” (PM 180).
Yet, Pincher Martin needs other people and he is desperate when he is isolated on the
island. Interestingly, he cannot imagine to be on the island forever. Other people create his
identity, without other people he is only a thing on the isolated island: “I could be a character
in a body. But now I am this thing in here, a great many aches of bruised flesh, a bundle of
rags and those lobsters on the rock. The three lights of my window are not enough to identify
me however sufficient they were in the world. But there were other people to describe me to
myself – the fell in love with me, they applauded me, they caressed this body, they defined it
for me. There were the people I got the better of, people who disliked me, people who
quarrelled with me. Here I have nothing to quarrel with. I am in danger of losing identity”
(PM 140).
He always connects his identity with some material objects, for example a mirror to
look at himself: “There were mirrors too, tripple mirrors, more separate than the three lights in
this window. I could arrange the side ones so that there was a double reflection and spy
myself from the side or back in the reflected mirror as though I were watching a stranger. I
could spy myself and assess the impact of Christopher Hadley Martin on the world” (PM
140). His world is not spiritual.
Another object which connects him with his identity is his own photo from the Navy.
There is a smeared face in it, which looks distant and disappearing because Pincher Martin is
moving away from life and he is losing his identity: “He could see a carefully arranged head

27
of hair, a strong and smiling face, the white silk scarf round the neck. But detail had gone for
ever. The young man who smiled dimly at him through fog and brown stains was distant as
the posed portraits of great-grandparents in a faint, brown world” (PM 77). There is also a
soldier tag with his name on his neck. He has to read it several times and repeat his name to
recall his identity: “Christopher Hadley Martin. Martin. Chris. I am what I always was!” (PM
78).
He feels isolated on the tiny island and it is several times in the novel when he cries
out: “I am so alone!” He longs for audience, for people, who would listen to him and
acknowledge his identity: “He stood by the dwarf and began to talk like a man who has an
unwilling audience but who will have his say whether anyone listens to him or not” (PM 83).
He speaks for himself or he even talks to his echo: “Plenty of identity in here, Ladies and
Gentlemen. He cut his voice off sharply and heard the rock say, -men-“ (PM 90). Moreover,
when he sees the buttons on his shirt, he is reminded of Nat, his old friend. He starts to talk to
them in his solitude: “I know you. Nathaniel sewed you on. I asked him to” (PM 25).
At the end of the novel, when Mr. Campbell and Mr. Davidson find the body of
Pincher Martin on the beach, Pincher Martin's identity changes into a sheer “it”: “I beg your
pardon, sir. Come now and see where we found it” (PM 219).

2. 1. 8 Intelligence and materialism

Pincher Martin strongly believes in his intelligence and education and he is sure that
they will help him survive. He believes that he cannot be manipulated, however, he can
manipulate other people and the world around him. He is confident that he can “tame” the
island, e. g. by giving names to some rocks. “I am busy surviving. I am netting down this rock
with names and taming it. Some people would be incapable of understanding the importance
of that. What is given a name is given a seal, a chain. If this rock tries to adapt me to its ways
I will refuse and adapt it to mine. I will impose my routine on it, my geography. I will tie it
down with names” (PM 90).
The parts of the island are given names according to their distinctive characteristics: “I
call this place the Look-out. That is the Dwarf. The rock out there under the sun where I came
swimming is Safety Rock. The place where I get mussels and stuff is Food Cliff. Where I eat
them is The Red Lion. On the south side where the strap-weed is, I call Prospect Cliff. This
cliff here to the west with the funnel in it is –“ (PM 88). He attempts to impose patterns on the

28
world because it is what people do. He also names them to give them identity, to make them
different and identifiable. His view is purely materialistic because he is afraid of unfamiliar
things. He believes in rationality, intelligence and education. He likes to make patterns of the
nature that surrounds him: “The solution lies in intelligence. That is what distinguishes us
from the helpless animals that are caught in their patterns of behaviour, both mental and
physical” (PM 185). He puts his faith in intelligence because according to Pincher Martin it is
power and supremacy: “Men make patterns and superimpose them on nature” (PM 113).
Unfortunatelly for him, intelligence and rationality betray him.
Even when he makes some decisions in order to be rescued, he attempts to make
patterns. He uses seaweed to create a big cross on the islet, a big pattern. He supposes that it
will attract the attention of his potential rescuers, that it will be seen from the skies by pilots,
who might fly over the island: “Men make patterns. Seaweed, to impose an unnatural pattern
on nature, a pattern that would cry out to any rational beholder – Look! Here is thought. Here
is man!” (PM 115). He attempts to behave systematically. He solves problems one by one:
“Now: problems. First I must finish that line of weed. Then I must have a place for clothes so
that I never get into a panic again. I'd better stow them here so that I never forget. Second. No
Third. Clothes were second. First clothes in the crevice, then more weed until the line is
finished. Third, water.” (PM 128).
Another significant example of his clinging to rationality and his own intelligence is
that he declares “thinking days”. He needs a pattern for himself, he needs a daily routine:
“Today is a thinking day. I haven't done so badly” (PM 103). He thinks that he can outwit
everything, even his unfavourable fate. He believes that he is better than everything else:
“You are all a machine. I know you, wetness, hardness, movement. You have no mercy but
you have no intelligence. I can outwit you. All I have to do is to endure. I breathe this air into
my own furnace. I kill and eat” (PM 122). Although he takes all these necessary measures, he
cannot win over nature or God because he is only a materialistic creature.
As he strongly believes only in his own intelligence and has no spiritual beliefs or
faith in God, he has to convince himself constantly that he will be rescued: “I shall be rescued
today” (PM 130). At the same time, he has doubts about it: “I shall never get away from this
rock” (PM 170).
In his desire to be rescued he starts to use slabs of stones to build a figure of a dwarf, a
heap of stones which might help him to attract attention of passing ships. The Dwarf
gradually becomes the central point in his world of patterns, it is surrounded by other
important places, e. g. the Red Lion, Safety Rock and Prospect Cliff. In fact, the Dwarf

29
becomes Pincher Martin's fellow in his struggle. Not saying a word, the Dwarf stands in the
middle of the island. A useless signal to ships, which will never rescue Pincher Martin. The
Dwarf becomes alive in Pincher Martin's frequent hallucinations. It does not talk but it
ominously confirms Pincher Martin's fate: “I shall never get away from this rock. The terror
did more. It straightened the hinged bones and stood him up, sent him reeling round the Look-
out in the pressure of the sky till he was clinging to the Dwarf and the stone head was rocking
gently, rocking gently, and the sun was swinging to and fro, up and down in the silver face.
Get me off this rock! The Dwarf nodded its silver head, gently, kindly” (PM 172).

2. 1. 9 Pincher Martin and God

All his life Pincher Martin was running away from God, he was refusing to accept
God's will, he was refusing everything but his only greed. The only god for him was his desire
and his own ego. At the end of the novel, during his greatest suffering in the storm, Pincher
Martin speaks to God: “Yet, suppose I climbed away from the cellar over the bodies of used
and defeated people, broke them to make steps on the road away from you, why should you
torture me? If I ate them, who game me a mouth?” (PM 211). He thinks he created his own
heaven. He curses and threatens and that is only the proof that he cannot change his attitude to
the world. He cannot pass away into heaven because he cannot give away his ego and spoilt
nature. He cannot substitute his intelligence for spirituality and emotions.
Throughout the struggle on the desolate piece of rock, Pincher Martin vainly attempts
to have a rest, to sleep. Nevertheless, he cannot sleep because he is afraid of mortality: “Oh
God! Why can't I sleep? Gripping the lifebelt in two hands, with face lifted, eyes staring
straight ahead down the gloomy tunnel, he whispered the answer to his own question in a
mixture of astonishment and terror. I am afraid to” (PM 96). His fear of sleeping originates
from his fear of finity and eternity. He is afraid of something beyond this world, he is afraid
of heaven.
One of his last words are: “I shit on your heaven!” (PM 214). Pincher Martin is rather
willing to stay in his own personal hell than to accept love and heaven. He rathter chooses to
stay wicked and evil than change himself into a good man. The black lightning in the storm at
the end of the novel comes for Pincher Martin. It is a symbol of his heaven or rather hell. The
black lightning is in fact God and it may be an allusion to the death of Christ as it is described
in the Gospel.

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 All his life he was running away from the old woman from the dark cellar. The old
woman is a symbol of God. He cannot escape and at the end of his struggle on the island the
door closes behind him: “The cellar door swinging to behind a small child who must go down,
down in his sleep to meet the thing he turned from when he was created” (PM 202).
It is interesting to find out what Pincher Martin believes in. When tormented by the
storm at the end of the novel there is a dialogue between God and Pincher Martin: “What do
you believe in? Down the black boots, coal black, darkness of the cellar, but now down to a
forced answer. The thread of life” (PM 209). It is the “thread of life” that Pincher Martin
believes in, it is his life that is important for him. He only sticks to the earthly being, he does
not consider spirituality.

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2. 2 The Inheritors

2. 2. 1 Some interpretations of the novel

The next novel analyzed in the thesis is The Inheritors, which is William Golding's
second novel and was published in 1955. Golding considered The Inheritors his best novel
and it is true that some critics agree with him in this respect. The novel was published after
the publication of Lord of the Flies and it was written very fast. Golding wrote the novel in
twenty-nine days. The true fact is that both novels share similar themes: killing of an innocent
member of a society and the encounter of savagery and civilization. However, the thesis does
not focus on the novel Lord of the Flies. Instead, it focuses on the analysis of The Inheritors
and possible comparison with the novel Pincher Martin.
In the first place, The Inheritors is a moral allegory, which stresses the importance of
religion and morality in a man and it also discusses evil and violence and their origin. Last but
not least, it is concerned with the origins of sin. It is about the fear of the unknown, which lies
in every human being.
The novel is a reconstruction of the life of a small group of Neanderthals and their
encounter with a large group of the New People, Homo Sapiens - us. Golding did not consult
any experts when he was writing it. He claimed that he was writing imaginative literature, not
a scientific research. It is true that any interference of an expert would have been fatal, as we
can tell from the comments by Dr Calvin Wells, a palaeontologist. Wells objects that the
portrayal of the Neanderthals is inaccurate. He says that it is wrong to describe the
Neanderthal “with hands hanging down to his knees, partly running on all fours, and having
feet that can pick up objects as easily as a monkey. The description of Neanderthals as still
living in a world dominated by smell is probably ten million years behind the times” (Carey,
178).
Finally, Golding accompanied The Inheritors with an epigraph, a quotation from H. G.
Wells's Outline of History:

We know very little of the appearance of the Neanderthal man, but

this... seems to suggest an extreme hairiness. An ugliness, or a
repulsive strangeness in his appearance over and above his low
forehead, his beetle brows, his ape neck, and his inferior stature...
Says Sir Harry Johnston, in a survey of the rise of modern man in his

32
 Views and Reviews: 'The dim racial remembrance of such gorilla-like
monsters, with cunning brains, shambling gait, hairy bodies, strong
teeth, and possibly cannibalistic tendencies, may be the germ of the
ogre in folklore.' (Carey, 179)

In The Inheritors Golding rewrites and reverses the Wells' views and Golding's
Neanderthals are not cruel, cunning or cannibalistic. Instead, they are innocent and peaceful
and in fact they are portrayed as “unfallen” beings.
The Neanderthals' perception of the world can be well exemplified by Lok's first
encounter with the new people when they shoot an arrow at him: “His ears twitched and he
turned to the tree. By his face there had grown a twig: a twig that smelt of other, and of goose,
and of the bitter berries that Lok's stomach told him he must not eat. This twig had a white
bone at the end. There were hooks in the bone and sticky brown stuff hung in the crooks. His
nose examined this stuff and did not like it. He smelled along the shaft of the twig. The leaves
on the twig were red feathers and reminded him of goose. He was lost in a generalized
astonishment and excitement” (I, 96). Lok is puzzled by the twig, which is in fact an arrow,
and he thinks that the twig is an offering or a present from the new people. The novel is
emotionally powerful and the description of the Neanderthals' perception of the world is
original. Lok's sensory perception of the world resembles the comprehension of the world as a
child.
Lok is not able to understand the threat of the new people. He cannot comprehend why
they want to kill him and his tribe. He cannot imagine why someone should want to threaten
them and their old ways of living.
The story of the Neanderthals is told through the eyes of Lok, who is the least
intelligent of them. The perspective is thus very limited and portrays the Neanderthals as
simple and naive. Virginia Tiger suggests that “in the first part, events are viewed from the
limited perspective of the Neanderthal mind, a mind that cannot reason beyond sense data.
We participate as readers in a world in which ideas and communications are a series of
images, not a function of speech and causality” (73).
The Neanderthals have hardly any weapons and they live on plants, insect and berries.
They do not kill animals when they do not have to. Moreover, more advanced Homo sapiens
are cruel and wicked. Unlike the Neanderthals, they use bows and spears, they hunt, sacrifice
humans, murder, drink alcohol. They are capable of logical thinking.

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 The name of the novel, The Inheritors, may have at least two meanings. It may refer to
the “new people” who are the heirs of the Neanderthals and their progress in the history of
man. It can also refer to us, to contemporary people, who are heirs of the “new people”. In
any case, the title is ironic because it suggests that we are the inheritors of the sinful “new
people”. Moreover, there might be the third explanation of the title. The whole novel is a
discussion of evil in man. The title may suggest that all people are inheritors of the original
sin and that is why they are spoiled and sinister. It suggests that people are evil by nature,
from the very first moment they are born. William Golding contemplates that the inner nature
of all men is evil. The new people, who replace the Neanderthals and who are more advanced,
are ironically more spoiled and savage than their predecessors.

2. 2. 2 Plot summary

The novel tells a story of a group of hominids (Neanderthals) who migrate back from
the seacoast, where they spent winter, to their home cave in the mountains. There are eight of
them: two children and three couples. The oldest male of them, the patriarch of the group, is
Mal, the oldest female, the matriarch, does not have a name. They refer to her as “the old
woman”. She is superior to the other members of the group not only by his age, but also by
the fact that she carries hot coals for making the fire. Ha and Nil are a middle-aged couple.
They have to children, a very young girl called Liku, who carries a fetish called “little Oa”,
and a baby, who does not have a name. The youngest couple, still childless, is Lok, who is the
main protagonist, and Fa. They help with the children as if they were theirs, especially Liku.
They arrive at their summer home. It is a terrace under a cliff, it is separated from an
island by a river and there is a huge waterfall nearby. Thus, the terrace is quite safe. Lok and
Fa search for food every day, they do not make any reserves. By the end of the day, Mal dies
and Ha is missing. Lok, the least intelligent of the group, tries to find Ha and he scents
something strange and unusual, some “new people”. He also spots some new faces on the
island. The new people attack the old woman and Nil, who finally die in the waterfall. The
new people take Liku and the baby, so the only survivors are Lok and Fa.
Lok and Fa attempt to retrieve the members of their group, however, they are not
successful. The new people try to bypass the huge waterfall and they have to take their boats
up the hill. They are scared of Lok and Fa and attempt to kill them. Before they start
bypassing the waterfall, they perform a sacrifice, in which they kill Liku. The medicine man

34
of the new people, who is called Tuami, wears a deer' hide, dances around the fire and offers
blood to the totem. Before Liku is killed, she befriends a young girl, whose name is Tanakil.
The new people are so scared of the Neanderthals that they make one more sacrifice;
they tie up Tanakil at the terrace under the cliff. The climax of the novel is the point when Fa
is wounded and dies in the river, the new people finally leave upstream the river and take the
baby with them. Lok is left alone on the terrace, the only one who survived of his group. He
dies the next morning.
The novel finishes with a picture of new people sailing to the horizon on a big lake,
with Tuami meditating on what has happened.

2. 2. 3 The Neanderthals

The Neanderthals are portrayed as innocent and peace-loving people. They do not
incline to cruelty or violence; they do not know what cruelty is or they try to avoid it. They
are described as unspoiled; they live in harmony with nature surrounding them. Their lifestyle
and innocence remind us of the first people according to The Bible, Adam and Eve, and the
Garden of Eden. The Neanderthals are free of violence and sin, they live as a family and they
are not ashamed of their nakedness. They are portrayed as unfallen beings because they
cannot use their brains to think. When Golding discussed The Inheritors, he explained to an
audience that “his Neanderthals are unfallen because, though they can imagine, they cannot
think. The Fall is thought” (Carey, 520).
They do not hunt and kill animals, they steal from hyenas. When “a cat” kills a doe,
they take some meat with them to their cave. They detest blood and believe that blood is
something against their religion: “A cat has sucked all her blood. There is no blame” (I, 43).
They eat meat only when they have to: “There is little food when people come back from the
sea. There are not yet berries nor fruit nor honey nor almost anything to eat. The people are
thin with hunger and they must eat. They do not like the taste of meat but they must eat” (I,
46). Instead of killing animals, they eat plants, roots, berries and grubs. It reminds us of words
from the Book of Genesis: “And God said, 'Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed
that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for
food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that
creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for
food.' And it was so” (Genesis 1:29 – 30).

35
 They communicate using simple words and sounds and sometimes it seems that they
are capable of almost telepatic communication: “The three of them stood and looked at each
other. Then, as so often happened with the people, there were feelings between them. Fa and
Nil shared a picture of Ha thinking. He had thought that he must make sure the log was still in
position because if the water had taken the log or if the log had crawled off on business of its
own then the people would have to trek a day's journey round the swamp and that meant
danger or even more discomfort than usual” (I, 4). Virginia Tiger writes in her study William
Golding: The Dark Fields of Discovery that “the People communicate by sharing pictures or
imagining simultaneously images of events. Through these pictures the reader has access to
the Neanderthals' past and tradition” (81). There is no advanced communication, mainly
verbal. They see things in their heads. It seems that there is no continuity between the
pictures, there are only individual pictures for individual events. Moreover, the pictures are
not thoughts. Virginia Tiger comments that they are “telepathic snapshots not of an idea but
of an entire event” (82). The Neanderthals share pictures: “Without a word their pictures were
one picture” (I, 113). They can read each other's pictures, e. g. when Mal is dying: “They saw
not only Mal's body but the slow pictures that were waxing and waning in his head. One
above all was displacing the others, dawning through the cloudy arguments and doubts and
conjectures until they knew what it was he was thinking with such dull conviction. 'To-
morrow or the day after, I shall die'” (I, 28). All in all, the Neanderthals do not have a
language for communication and that is why they lack thinking and logic as well. They are
not able to think about logical consequences of events.
Apart from their simple view of the world through pictures and images, their names
are also very simple. They are monosyllabic words (Ha, Fa, Lok, Nil), which resemble shouts
and they reflect and symbolize the Neanderthal's “thinking”. The language of the novel is also
very simple, mainly in the dialogues, which are very short and usually not very complex. The
depiction of the Neanderthal's world is simple because we view it through the eyes of Lok,
who is the least intelligent of the band. “Ha has many pictures and few words. Lok has a
mouthful of words and no pictures” (I 28). It is only in the very last chapters that the
viewpoint changes. In the last chapters, Tuami is thinking as the new people are leaving and
we can view the world through the eyes of the new people.
On the other hand, the names of the new people are much more complex and poetic. It
reflects the fact that the new people are more advanced, on the contrary from the primitive
Neanderthals. Their names have more than just one syllable, e. g. Tanakil, Chestnut, Tuami or
Marlan.

36
 In the Neanderthal's band, it is the oldest Mal who is the most intelligent. He gives
orders and other members of the group have to obey his orders. He is the patriarch of the
group. Unfortunately for the band, he dies very soon and the group is left without a
leadership. They must look after themselves and they feel helpless and insecure. Lok, the least
intelligent member of the band, is to be the leader: “Now there is only Lok” (I 60). Lok is
scared and puzzled, he does not know what to do: “The pictures went out of his head for a
while. He scratched himself under the mouth. There were so many things to be said. He
wished he could ask Mal what it was that joined a picture to a picture so that the last of many
came out of the first” (I 86). The old woman orders Lok to be the head of the group, however,
Lok is frightened: “Here was the Mal place. She made Lok sit down, his back against the
rock, his hams in the smooth earthen dip that Mal had worn. The strangeness of this overcame
Lok. He looked sideways at the water, then back at the people and laughed. There were eyes
everywhere, and they waited for him. He was at the head of the procession not at the back of
it, and every picture went right out of his head” (I 84).
It seems that the most respected member is the old woman, who carries coals of fire.
She does not have a name, however, all members of the band respect her because she is
strongly connected with their goddess of fertility, Oa: “Lok had always been awed by the old
woman though she was his mother. She lived too near the great Oa in heart and head for a
man to look upon her without dread” (I 99). They love her and have respect for her at the
same time: “Therefore they loved her and dreaded her without fear, and they dropped their
eyes before her” (I 99).
As for their religion, they have a goddess of earth and fertility, Oa. It is a very
primitive religion, they do not have any rituals. They share the roles in accordance to their
beliefs: the old woman is the matriarch of the tribe, Mal takes place of the patriarch. The “ice
women” (huge icicles hanging in another cave) are the representation of their goddess and the
Neanderthals communicate via them and provide them with gifts. When Mal dies they want to
make an offering to them: “Without help Mal will die. Fa must take a present to the ice
women and speak for him to Oa” (I 60). The old woman takes care of the fire, which means
safety and warmth for the tribe, Mal gives orders and he stands for “reason” (pictures in his
head). The old woman is a manifestation of Oa, that is why she is always given so much
reverence.
The Neanderthal's imagination is limited to the present. They are not interested (or
capable to do so) in what happened the day before. They can imagine what will happen the
next day, however, they cannot imagine what will happen in the distant future because it is

37
not important for them: “The people were silent. Life was fulfilled, there was no need to look
farther for food, to-morrow was secure and the day after that so remote that no one would
bother to think of it. Life was exquisitely allayed hunger” (I 51). Their outlook in life is very
limited, they search for food only when they are hungry: “There was still food piled in the
recess, though little enough was left. What people would hunt for food when they were not
hungry” (I 95). They have no abstract thinking. There is no connection between cause and
effect.
Their thinking is anthropomorphic. They attribute human qualities and human traits to
the living and inanimate nature around them, to non-human entities. They have empathy with
plants, animals, stones, even the river and fire. A dead tree is “the standing corpse of the tree”,
fungi are “ears” growing from a tree and when they want to cross the river they imagine: “The
water was not awake like the river or the fall but asleep” (I 2). When they lose fire, they hope
they will get it somehow in the future: “I will take fire when it falls from the sky or wakes
among the heather” (I 122).
A very significant feature of the Neanderthals is that they act as a coherent
community, as a family. There are no problems among them, no fights. They understand each
other. The concept and symbol of family is very dominant in Christianity. There are two
commandments out of ten, which deal with the concept of family. It is the fifth one, which
commands to honour parents, and the seventh commandment, which prohibits adultery in
order to preserve family. The Neanderthals unselfishly look after each other and their
solicitude reminds us of the verses in The Bible: “Anyone who does not provide for their
relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an
unbeliever” (Timothy 5:8).
They live in accordance with nature and they rely on their instincts much more than
the new people, who use their intelligence. In fact, they do not understand evil; they can only
see it in nature, for example in hunting and killing other animals. When they encounter a dead
doe, which was killed by a wild cat, they are filled with fear, awe and disgust: “The air
between the rocks was forbidding with violence and sweat, with the rich smell of meat and
wickedness” (I 44).
The sense of family and communion is very precious for the Neanderthals, they care
for each other: “Some of the fungi were good to eat and Lok gave these to Liku” (I 6). They
have strong ties among themselves and when they are in danger, they can feel these ties:
“Without any warning fear flooded into him, fear as complete and unreasoning as Mal's when
he had seen the fire burning the forest in his dream. And because he was on of the people, tied

38
to them with a thousand invisible strings, his fear was for the people. He began to quake” (I
94). When Mal is sick they help him keep warm so that he can recover from his illness: “They
arranged themselves round Mal, huddling in, holding him in a cradle of warm flesh with the
fire in front of him. They shuffled and muttered. Mal coughed a little, then he too was asleep”
(I 29). Although being limited by their thinking, they do not act as savage beings, they do not
have any quarrels and family crises. In fact, their life is “limited” to the family.
The Neanderthals worship a fertility goddess, which they call “Oa”. The small girl
Liku carries a little figurine or a fetish of Oa with her. Mal speaks about Oa and describes her:
“There was the great Oa. She brought forth the earth from her belly. She gave suck. The earth
brought forth woman and the woman brought forth the first man out of her belly” (I 25). They
do not practise any rituals, however, the give Oa different offerings. Their belief is that
everything comes from Oa's belly. When Mal dies, they bury him into the ground, they fold
his body into a foetal position because they believe that he will go back to Oa's belly: “Oa has
taken Mal into her belly” (I 81). When they put him into his grave, the provide him with food:
“Eat, Mal, when you are hungry” (I 80) and water: “Drink when you are thirsty (I 80). The
believe that he might need food and drink for his journey. The believe in his rebirth, they
believe in infinity in nature.
The similar view can be traced later in the novel, almost at the end, when we witness
dying Lok, who is a pitiable character in the novel. He is no more Lok but a creature: “The
creature wrestled with a rock that was lying on a mound of earth but was too weak to move it.
At last it gave up and crawled round the hollow by the remains of a fire. It came close to the
ashes and lay on its side. It pulled its legs up, knees against the chest. It folded its hands under
its cheeks and lay still. The twisted and smoothed root lay before its face. It made no noise,
but seemed to be growing into the earth, drawing the soft flesh of its body into a contact so
close that the movements of pulse and breathing were inhibited” (I 211). His body “grows
into the earth”, he becomes a part of the earth, a part of the nature. Oa takes his body into her
belly. He dies in the same position as Lok was put in his grave in the cave.
It seems that the Neanderthals communicate with Oa, the fertility principle, via the ice
women. The ice women are remains of snow and ice hanging from the rock. When Mal is
dying, the old woman sends Fa to the ice woman with an offering for Oa: “Without help Mal
will die. Fa must take a present to the ice women and speak for him to Oa” (I 60). She sends a
woman, Fa, not a man, Lok. Women communicate with the goddess, not men: “A woman for
Oa and a man for the pictures in his head. Let Lok speak” (I 60).

39
 When Fa and Lok, who wanted to accompany Fa, enter the cave, the sanctuary, where
the ice women hang, Lok is terrified, “the hair lift on his skin”. He is scared to death: “His
belly felt as though he had eaten grass and would be sick. He could see nothing but green
lights that moved with merciless persistence through a void of blackness. The sound of the
sanctuary had entered his head and was living there like the sound of the sea in a shell. Fa's
lips moved against his ear. 'Before they see you.'” (I 74). Later, he comments how Oa is
terrifying for a man: “It is too much Oa for a man” (I 75).
Their religion is humble and they have their own simple moral codes. Their religion is
limited by their intelligence, however, on the contrary from the “new people”, they are free of
fighting, jealousy and envy, cruelty and wickedness. Their religion is more emotional than the
religion of the “new people”. They live in harmony with nature, which is their goddess, their
earth-mother Oa: “The sun chose this moment to reappear so that the whole world seemed to
share their pleasure” (I 8).

2. 2. 4 The New People

On the contrary, the new people are portrayed as wicked, violent, aggressive, cruel,
savage and spoiled: “Now Lok saw that when the people had finished their drink they came to
these and lifted them and took more to drink. The girl Tanakil was lying in front of one of the
caves, flat on her back as if she were dead. A man and a woman were fighting and kissing and
screeching and another man was crawling round and round the fire like a moth with a burnt
wing. Round and round he went, crawling, and the other people took no notice of him but
went on with their noise” (I 162).
They are superior as far as their tools and rational thinking is concerned, however,
they are described as sinful and fallen. Their tools (spears, bows, dugout canoes) are symbols
of civilization and logical thinking, thus they are symbols of their moral fall. At the same time
they symbolize the fall of the Neanderthals. “The new people have spears and bows and
arrows and dugout canoes to cross the river, which seems unbelievable to the Neanderthals,
and they are capable of logical thought. Pathetically, the Neanderthals regard them with
awestruck admiration, unable to understand, at first, that they intend their extermination”
(Carey, 180).
From the very first moment the new people arrive, they cause death and destruction.
They take the log that the Neanderthals used for crossing the river, thus causing indirectly the

40
death of Mal, who fell to the cold water: “He choked and coughed. He went on and on, the
coughs seeming to come out of his chest without warning or consultation. They threw his
body about and all the time he gaped for his breath. He fell over sideways and his body began
to shake. They could see his tongue and the fright in his eyes. The old woman spoke. 'This is
the cold of the water where the log was'” (I 24).
Later on in the novel, they kill Nil, the old woman and Ha and they send their dead
bodies downstream the river. They scare Lok from the very first moment, it is their scent that
pursues him: “Lok was running. The scent of the other was pursuing him and he could not get
away. It was night and the scent had paws and a cat's teeth. He was on the island where he had
never been. The fall roared by on either side. He was running along the bank, knowing that
presently he would drop from exhaustion and the other would have him. He fell and there was
an eternity of struggle” (I 83). Not only Lok is afraid of the new people, other members of the
group have nightmares: “The people did not dream very often, but while the light of the dawn
brightened over them they were beset by a throng of phantoms from the other place. The old
woman could see out of the corner of her eye how they were enmeshed, exalted and
tormented” (I 82).
They kidnap the new one and Liku, who they sacrifice in a bloody ritual. It is also
indirectly suggested that they eat her. This means that they try to remove her body from the
island. The same happens when they throw dead bodies of other Neanderthals to the river.
Moreover, they wound Fa, who also dies in the river and they leave Lok alone, the only one,
apart from the new one, who survives from the whole band. However, he dies the next day in
the cave. They seem to be merciless and at the end of the novel the Neanderthals are nearly
extinct. The only one who survives is the new one, to whom they refer as “the little devil”
because of his red fur and their fear of the Neanderthals. Their bloody ritual and sacrifice is a
symbol of fear of the new people that they have of the Neanderthals. They fear the unknown.
Although they bring death and inevitable destruction to the Neanderthals, Lok is
attracted to them: “I am one of the new people” (I 194). It seems that he is bewitched by them.
At the same time he realizes what the new people bring to his band and what they are: “The
new people are like a wolf and honey, rotten honey and the river. They are like a fire in the
forest” (I 187). He knows that the new people bring suffering, death and destruction. Lok
struggles with his feelings. He is attracted by the new people and he is afraid of them at the
same time. He thinks that they are dangerous, yet, he approaches them: “Only when they were
so close to him that he could see how the grass flattened in front of the roller did he remember
that the people were dangerous and flit away into the forest. He stopped when they were

41
hidden from sight but still within earshot” (I 183). His feelings are also controlled by his
senses: “The smell was like the new people, it repelled and attracted, it daunted and enticed, it
was like the fat woman and at the same time like the terror of the stag and the old man” (I
171).
The new people struggle and fight among themselves, they do not act as a family or a
consistent community. Men and women sleep separately in their huts. It is one of the most
prominent features that differs them from the Neanderthals, who are a tightly knit band, not
individuals.
They fear the unknown around them, in spite of the fact that they think more rationally
than the Neanderthals, know more about the world and are more advanced in technology.
They are frightened of the darkness and air. It is something that the Neanderthals cannot
understand: “There was a hysterical speed in the efforts of Tuami and in the screaming voice
of the old man. They were retreating up the slope as though the river itself were flowing
uphill. Yet the river stayed in its bed and the slope was bare of all but the new people. 'They
are frightened of the air.'” (I 199). They are frightened of the forest: “The new people are
frightened. They stand and move like people who are frightened. They heave and sweat and
watch the forest over their backs. But there is no danger in the forest. They are frightened of
the air where there is nothing” (I 196).
Fear is one of the most prominent symbols in the novel. The new people are led to the
murder by their fear of the unknown, of the devils from the forest. Their fear leads them to
unwise decisions and actions. The same fear may be traced in Pincher Martin where the hero
is afraid of a power above him (God). He does not want to be controlled by anything and this
decision leads to his inevitable destruction.
The portrayal of the new people resembles the modern, contemporary people.
However, the description is done through Lok's eyes: “There were white bone things above
his eyes and under the mouth so that his face was longer than a face should be” (I 96). The
new people seem strange to Lok because they are so different: “At last they saw the new
people face to face and in sunlight. They were incomprehensibly strange. Their hair was black
and grew in the most unexpected ways. The bone-face in the front of the log had a pine-tree of
hair that stood straight up so that his head, already too long, was drawn out as though
something were pulling it upward without mercy. The other bone-face had hair in a huge bush
that stood out on all sides like the ivy on the dead tree” (I 128). Again, as usual, Lok uses the
natural phenomena to describe the new people: the faces look like and are white like bones,
hair reminds him of bush and ivy.

42
 The way the new people move is also different from the Neanderthals. The
Neanderthals are portrayed like apes, who move on all their four legs. Lok is very surprised
by the way they walk: “The new people did not move like anything he had ever seen before.
They were balanced on top of their legs. They did not look at the earth but straight ahead.
Their movements, though they had in their bodies the bending grace of a young bough, were
dream-slow. They walked upright and they should be dead” (I 133).
The religion and rituals of the new people is very different from the religion of
Neanderthals. Virginia Tiger describes it in her study as “totemic stag cult” (89). They
sacrifice human beings and their religion and rituals is based on spilling blood of other living
creatures, even humans. They are also capable of a sacrifice of their own child, Tanakil: “The
old man had taken the teeth from his neck and stuck them in the face and finished them off
with the two great cat's teeth from his ears. There was a stick driven into a crack in the
creature's breast and to this stick was fastened a strip of hide; and to the other end of the hide
was fastened Tanakil” (I 205). The new people sacrifice Tanakil in order to get over the
waterfall and from the forest, which they fear because it is inhabited by the Neanderthals and
it is “dark”. They perceive the Neanderthals as “red devils” and they try to get from them as
soon as possible.
Their religion is violent and cruel, it corresponds with their wickedness; they created
“idols” – the Stag. Their offerings are full of blood and they offer them to the Stag: “The
shattering call of a rutting stag blared just under the tree. The flock left Lok's head. The men
had bent till their various heads of hair swept the ground. The stag of all stags was dancing
out into the clearing” (I 136). Lok and Fa watch the ritual with the stag with awe: “Then,
incredibly, a rutting stag belled by the trunks. The noise was harsh and furious, full of pain
and desire. It was the voice of the greatest of all stags and the world was not wide enough for
him” (I 118).

2. 2. 5 Christian symbols in The Inheritors

The most prominent symbols in the novel are the waterfall and the river, water in
general. The central and the most important symbol in The Inheritors is the symbol of the
waterfall. Golding told the Canadian critic Virginia Tiger that he stressed the evolutionary life
force which drives the new people up the stream of the river and over the waterfall “at a
higher level of energy” than the Neanderthals possess (Carey, 182). The waterfall is a

43
symbolic force. The new people are able to overcome it, they are able to travel upstream. On
the contrary, the waterfall and the river bring death to the Neanderthals. Ha's, Nil's and the old
woman's dead bodies are taken by the river downstream. Fa dies in the waterfall. Golding
refers to the waterfall as “the time stream” and “the second law of thermodynamics”:

The Satan of our cosmology is the Second Law of

Thermodynamics which implies that everything is running down and
will finally stop like an unwound clock. Life is in some sense a local
contradiction of this law... we should be cheered when life refuses to
submit to a general levelling down of energy and simply winds itself
up again. (Carey, 182)

Water of the river, which is passing over the waterfall from a state of high to a state of
low, is the illustration of the second law. However, the new people defy this law and move
their canoes up the hill to bypass the fall. On the other hand, the Neanderthals are swept to
their deaths by the river. It is their fate to be swept by “the stream of time”. Lok also
compares the new people to the river and the fall: “They are like the river and the fall, they
are a people of the fall; nothing stands against them” (I 185). He makes references to their
power. Moreover, he compares them to the fertility goddess of the Neanderthals, Oa: “They
are like Oa” (I 185). Intelligence of the new people wins over the sensitivity and innocence of
the Neanderthals.
Another strong symbol is crossing the river. When the Neanderthals come to the place
where they usually cross the river, they realize that the log is missing. The missing log is a
breaking point in the novel because it symbolizes the beginning of the Neanderthals' end. The
new people took it and it is the first encounter with them. The new people step in their world
and start to destroy it: “Fa and Nil shared a picture of Ha thinking. He had thought that he
must make sure the log was still in position because if the water had taken the log or if the log
had crawled off on business of its own then the people would have to trek a day's journey
round the swamp and that meant danger or even more discomfort than usual” (I 4). Safe
crossing of the river and reaching their cave is crucial for the Neanderthals. The log which lies
across the river also symbolizes how the Neanderthals depend on their old ways of living and
how this simple event can influence their life in the future. The new people indirectly cause

44
Mal's death because he falls into the chilly water. The Neanderthals are afraid of water and
the river: “the water was full of tinsel loops and circles and eddies of liquid cold fire” (I 33).
Water has several symbolical meanings in The Bible. One of them is that it symbolizes
troublesome times. For example, in Psalm 69:2, we can read: “I sink in the miry depths,
where there is no foothold. I have come into the deep waters; the floods engulf me”.
Moreover, there is also Psalm 69:14: “Rescue me from the mire, do not let me sink; deliver
me from those who hate me, from the deep waters”. The swamps and the river are serious
obstacles for the Neanderthals. Unfortunately for them, there is nobody who would save them
and nearly all of them die in the river or the river takes their dead bodies downstream. Their
fear of water also demonstrates that they are both humans and animals.
The Neanderthal's shelter and summer home is their cave. The cave symbolizes safety
from the water and wild animals. At the same time, it is their burial place because they bury
Mal's body there. The fact that they live in a cave and are not capable of building huts, as the
new people do, reflects their limited mental abilities. On the other hand, it demonstrates their
sense of belonging to somewhere. It is a place where they feel safe from water and wild
animals. Moreover, the fact that they just wander between two places (their winter home by
the sea and their summer home by the waterfall) shows that they are not capable of any
evolution and thus they cannot face the dangers that the new people inflict. Their survival is
not possible.
The new people's dwelling is the island, which is a symbol of something unknown and
dark for the Neanderthals. The island is described as something similar to a giant: “Lok
considered the giant's thigh as he might have considered the moon: something so remote that
it had no connection with life as he knew it. To reach the island the people would have to leap
that gap between the terrace and the rocks across water” (I 30). When Lok decides to follow
the new people, he has to get to the island. He describes the island as “dark” and the waters as
“deadly”: “A picture began to form in his head of the leap that had cleared this gap to land the
other on the rock, and then, leap by leap over the deadly water to the dark island” (I 69). The
darkness of the island also symbolizes the evil of the new people, who reside there. The island
is a symbol of danger and fall for the Neanderthals. However, Lok is strongly attracted to the
island and to the new people.
The new people, in comparison with the Neanderthals, are described as wicked and
sinful. They are not a group which cooperates; they are rather a group of individuals, who
have their chief – Marlan, who orders them what to do. They obey his orders unwillingly:
“The old man decided something. Lok could see how his hand came away from his face. He

45
clapped his hands loudly and began to speak. The men who were lying by the fire got up
unwillingly” (I 150). When they move their canoes uphill, the old man uses a whip to make
them work. It is something unimaginable among the Neanderthals: “The people consented to
the dead snake if it would call from their bodies, already so thin, the strength they could not
command themselves. There was a hysterical speed in the efforts of Tuami and in the
screaming voice of the old man. They were retreating up the slope as though cats with their
evil teeth were after them, as though the river itself were flowing uphill” (I 199). They are not
equal as people, some have more power, some are forced to obey and are treated as inferior in
the band.
They are jealous and quarrelsome. They even want to kill each other at one moment:
“Chestnut-head spat at the stag's head and the people shouted again, moving forward. The old
man lifted up his hands and began that same high, menacing speech but the people jeered and
laughed. Chestnut-head stood by the stag's head. They could see his eyes gleaming in the
firelight like two stones. He began to draw a twig from his waist and he held the bent stick in
his other hand. He and the old man watched each other” (I 158). They shout and argue all the
time: “The old man was shaking his head and shouting. The people turned inwards until they
were a knot of backs and they muttered to each other. Then they were at the old man again,
shouting. He shook his head, turned his back on them and bent into the overhang on the left.
The people swarmed round Tuami, shouting still. He held up one hand and they were silent (I
148). Tuami and the old man, Marlan, are rivals. Both of them want to be the leaders of the
group.
At the end of the novel, the point of view changes. Tuami, one of the new people, is
thinking back to the days when they left their tribe and set on a dangerous journey: “What a
fool Marlan was, at his age, to have run off with her for her great heart and wit, her laughter
and her white, incredible body! And what fools we were to come with him, forced by his
magic, or at any rate forced by some compulsion there are no words for! He looked at Marlan,
hating him, and thought of the ivory dagger that he had been grinding slowly to a point” (I
216). He is plotting against Marlan and intends to kill him: “Not long now, thought Tuami,
when we are safe and out of the devil's country I shall dare to use the ivory-point” (I 216).
Tuami is thinking about murder because he wants to become the chieftain of the new people.
The ivory blade, which he is sharpening, is the symbol of murder. The sin of murder is
something which the Neanderhals, who are not spoiled, are not capable of. The thought of
murder resembles an event in Pincher Martin where the protagonist is also considering this
sin and wants to kill his friend Nathaniel.

46
 The ivory dagger as a symbol of murder is one of many representations of violence,
which the new people cause. Another example is the sacrifice of Liku, the little girl from the
Neanderthals group. The new people perform a sacrifice in which they kill and eat the girl.
They do so because they are scared of the Neanderthals, the “devils”, and they want to cleanse
their way up the stream of the river and the waterfall. Fa and Lok watch the ceremony hidden
in the branches of a rotten, dead tree: “He could see her face and her eyes peering through the
ivy and unblinkingly open. So concentrated was she that even when he touched her leg with
his hand she did nothing but went on staring. He saw her mouth open and her breathing
quicken. She gripped the rotten wood of the dead trunk so that it crunched and crumbled into
wet pulp” (I 159). In fact, it is only Fa who watches the offering: “He tried to see what it was
that made her so afraid but when he struggled she held him close and all he could see was the
angle of her jaw and her eyes, open, open for ever, watching” (I 159).
The new people accompany the religious ceremony with dancing, drinking “bee-
water” and having sex. The ceremony turns into an orgy: “The man who had crawled round
the fire was lying on his face among the round stones that held the bee-water, and the hunter
who had been on guard was still standing by the thorn fence, leaning on a stick” (I 166).
Golding describes their sexual behaviour. The new people have sexual intercourse violently
and like animals: “Suddenly he grabbed her with both hands and pulled her against his chest
and they wrestled, gasping without speech. Tuami shifted his grip, got her by a hank of long
hair and dragged it down till her face lifted, contorted with pain. She stuck the nails of her
right hand into his shoulder and dragged down as her hair was dragged. Tuami thrust his face
against hers and lurched so that one knee was behind her. He shifted his his hand up until it
was gripping the back of her head” (I 164). There is blood when they have sexual intercourse
and when Lok is watching them: “he saw that Tuami was not only lying with the fat woman
but eating her as well for there was black blood running from the lobe of her ear” (I 165).
There is also a hint at alcohol, “rotten honey”, which the new people drink during their
religious ceremony: “The fat woman brought a curious bundle out of the cave. It was the
whole skin of an animal but it wobbled as if the animal were made of water. The people
brought hollow pieces of wood and held them under the animal which immediately made
water in them. It filled each, for Lok could see the water flash when it fell in the wood” (I
149). They drink and the alcohol makes them behave in a savage way: “All at once the
darkness of the clearing was full of people who fought and screamed” (I 174). Even the
children – Tanakil – drink during the religious offering: “The thin girl was back again. She
smelt different, sour, but she was cheerful” (I 149). The Bible and Christian religion does not

47
forbid drinking alcohol, however, it warns: “For you have spent enough time in the past what
pagans choose to do – living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing and
detestable idolatry” (Peter 4:3). For the new people eating constitutes gluttony, sex constitutes
orgies and promiscuity and drinking means alcoholic orgies.
The Neanderthals also taste the “rotten honey”, when the new people leave the
clearing. Especially Lok is attracted to it. Nevertheless, they suffer from hangover, which
emphasizes their unspoiled nature and innocence: “Hands not Fa's hands were gripped round
his head, producing a hot pain. He groaned and rolled away from the hands but they held on,
squeezing until the pain was inside his head” (I 195). The Neanderthals parody the orgy of the
new people, however, it ends with vomiting and oblivion. The new people are portrayed like
an infectious disease, which spreads among the primitive people and causes their destruction
and end.
Moreover, the new people are also capable of the sacrifice of their own child, Tanakil.
They try to sacrifice her to be protected from the Neanderthals because they fear them. They
tie Tanakil up to the terrace by the cave and want to leave her. They also paint a picture of
their god, idol, on the wall behind her in the cave. This is what the Neanderthals would never
do. The new people are more intelligent and inventive, however, they are capable of greater
cruelty, even to their own people: “There was a stick driven into a crack in the creature's
breast and to this stick was fastened a strip of hide; and to the other end of the hide was
fastened Tanakil” (I 205). They treat Tanakil with great cruelty: “Tanakil lay there, flat on her
back. She was not drained of life like Marlan but rather had life in abundance, a new life, not
her own. She did not move much and her quick breathing fluttered a scrap of dried blood that
hung on her lower lip. The eyes were neither asleep nor awake. Now he could see them
clearly he saw that the night was going on in them for they were sunken and dark,
apaquenesses without intelligence” (I 216).
The new people also shed blood of one of their own tribesman. They cut off one of his
fingers during the ritual. Their religion is cruel, bloody and evil. It is obvious that their
intelligence and more advanced technology bring evil, not only to their own tribe but also to
the Neanderthals. The Neanderthals are the victims of their evil deeds. Their logical thinking
reverts them not to good but to evil and savage nature. Their fall is symbolized by their
savage and aggressive behaviour. It seems that they evolved backwards. Their reason does not
help them be better people. Their use of weapons and rituals make them hopeless and it is an
example of Golding's irony in the novel.

48
 The same example of irony can be traced in Pincher Martin. The fall of the main
protagonist is also caused by his reason, tendency to use logical thinking and his confidence
in himself. He becomes corrupt and evil because he is not willing to admit that there is a
power stronger than he is. That is why he cannot be a decent man.
The new people caused a lot of evil and violence to the Neanderthals. In the last
chapter, Tuami is meditating about what has happened to his tribe in the last days: “In this
upland country, safe from pursuit by the tribe but shut off from men by the devil-haunted
mountains, what sacrifice would they be forced to perform to a world of confusion? They
were as different from the group of bold hunters and magicians who had sailed up the river
towards the fall as a soaked feather is from a dry one. Restlessly he turned the ivory in his
hands. What was the use of sharpening it against a man? Who would sharpen a point against
the darkness of the world” (I 221). He is reflecting on the moral crisis which his tribe
experienced in the last few days.
The symbol of blood is manifested in the Neanderthal's fear of hunting and killing
animals. They detest blood and try to avoid it as if it was a blame. When they find a dead doe,
they appreciate that it was killed by a wild cat: “A cat has sucked all her blood. There is no
blame” (I 43). We can compare this belief with Genesis 9:4: “But you must not eat meat that
has its lifeblood still in it”. There is also a mention about blood and life in Deuteronomy
12:23: “But be sure you do not eat the blood, because the blood is the life, and you must not
eat the life with the meat”.
Fa and Lok, who are the last surviving Neanderthals, resemble Adam and Eve in the
Garden of Eden. They want to save Liku and want to climb a dead tree, so that they can
observe the new people and their ritual with Liku. Fa wants Lok to climb the tree and it is an
allusion to the Tree of Knowledge from the Garden of Eden in Genesis. Mark Kinkead-
Weekes and Ian Gregor argue in their work William Golding: A Critical Study that the dead
tree is a symbol of the knowledge of good and evil (101). Fa is thus an allusion to Eve and
Lok symbolizes Adam.
The Neanderthals bring fire with them and it means a lot to them. It is a symbol of
safety or existence. In Christianity, fire also symbolizes light and God. The old woman carries
the coals of fire because she is the most respectable member of the tribe. Everyone is eager to
see the fire when the old woman tries to make it: “Mal quelled the cough that rose from his
chest, turned to the old woman and waited. She knelt in the overhang and laid the ball of clay,
smoothing and patting it over the old patch that lay there already. She put her face to the clay
and breathed on it” (I 20). On the contrary, for the new people the fire is different. It is a part

49
of their savage ritual in which they kill Liku. There are two different kinds of fire, one of
them is peaceful (the Neanderthals), the other is connected with the new people: “It was a coil
of yellow and white, the smoke that comes from wet wood or a green branch loaded with
leaves; no one but a fool or some creature too unacquanted with the nature of fire would use it
so unwisely. The idea of two fires came to him” (I 47).
The new people are afraid of darkness, which is also a prominent symbol in
Christianity. Darkness connotes everything which is against God because light is associated
with God. Darkness is a symbol of death, judgement and evil. Darkness is also everything
against man. The new people are frightened of the forest, which is dark for them. The
Neanderthals cannot understand this because in their unspoiled nature they cannot see the
contrast between the dark and light, evil and good. When Fa watches the new people, who try
to escape from the forest, she cannot comprehend their fear: “They heave and sweat and
watch the forest over their backs. But there is no danger in the forest. They are frightened of
the air where there is nothing” (I 196). Lok is also watching them: “They were retreating up
the slope as though cats with their evil teeth were after them, as though the river itself were
flowing uphill” (I 199). Tuami from the new people's tribe also mentions darkness at the end
of the novel when his tribe sails away from the island: “Tuami looked at the line of darkness.
It was far away and there was plenty of water in between. He peered forward past the sail to
see what lay at the other end of the lake, but it was so long, and there was such a flashing
from the water that he could not see if the line of darkness had an ending” (I 223).

50
Conclusion

William Golding shows in his work that Christian biblical symbols and morality are
deeply rooted in our civilization, that there are parallels between his novels and Christianity
and that people are aware of the symbols even though they are not practising Christians or
they deny to believe in God. Golding shows that Christian values are interconnected to our
thinking and conscience. What is apparent in his work is the fact that morality and the
principle of goodness cannot be just imposed by external authority, e. g. religion or
civilization. Moreover, he demonstrates that this authority cannot prevent a man from vicious
deeds and evil. He stresses that morality and ethical values lie in human minds. To put it
differently, he emphasizes that it is in our own hands to be good and not evil and that only
some critical situations like war, our own fear or state of emergency can test our goodness or
viciousness.
Golding's works were labelled as modern allegories or “myths” because he explores
the above mentioned topics, symbols and themes at the background of a story. He always
communicates a deeper message in his novels.
When we analyze the use of Christian symbols in William Golding's two novels, we
have to take into consideration that Golding was influenced by several experiences. It was his
education (mostly his concern with Greek culture and literature) and upbringing, his family
(his father above all) and his war experiences. All these factors shaped his viewpoints. The
central topic of the two novels, Pincher Martin and The Inheritors, is the fall of man and the
origins of evil in man.
In Pincher Martin, the anti-hero is tested in circumstances in which his life is in
danger. Although it is not obvious at the first reading, his struggle for survival is more
metaphysical than physical because he struggles for his soul and the struggle takes place in his
head. His tendency to be evil lies inside him even though he was given a lot of chances to be
good in his previous life. He is not able to realize how much evil he caused in his life and how
many people he hurt. He is not capable of realizing that he can choose between good and evil.
That is why he cannot choose to be good. Instead, he chose to follow his greed and personal
interests and he violated the Christian commandments and morality to fulfil his own pursuit of
happiness, pleasure and egoism.
Pincher Martin tried to preserve his self at all costs and he is not willing to accept that
there is a stronger power above himself, that there is God. Golding used a lot of Christian

51
symbols to accomplish this fact. One of the most prominent is the symbol of life after death,
the symbol of purgatory. However, many readers refuse this symbol and stress that the whole
story in the novel is set in a few minutes of Pincher Martin's dying. On the other hand,
William Golding always emphasized that it is the Pincher Martin's persona which has to be
destroyed in order to achieve peace of the soul. In other words, Pincher Martin's selfishness
causes dark, evil and his fall.
In The Inheritors, there is also an isolated hero who struggles for his survival.
Moreover, he struggles for the survival of his tribe and ways of living. By focusing on
individuals, Golding manages to draw our attention to the inner, mental life of the
protagonists. We can focus on their struggle in crisis situations. The struggle of Lok, the
protagonist from The Inheritors, is different from Pincher Martin. He is not obsessed with his
own self and importance, on the contrary, he uses all his efforts to save other members of his
family, especially the little Liku. In fact, his intelligence does not allow him to contemplate
about his own life and the past.
In spite of the fact that both protagonists strive hard to succeed in their struggle, both
novels end pessimistically about the humans' future because the protagonists die. On the other
hand, there is always a bit of hope in both novels. Pincher Martin did not suffer long when he
was dying because he did not even have time to kick off his seaboots. Lok dies isolated in the
cave, however, the little one from his tribe is taken by the new people and thus symbolizes
some hope for the future.
Symbols in both novels have their roots in the Bible and Christian religion. A typical
example is the name symbolism in Pincher Martin or a reference to some biblical events, e. g.
the creation of the world in six days, which corresponds to Pincher Martin's suffering on the
rocky islet. Similarly, there are references to the Garden of Eden in The Inheritors. In Pincher
Martin, we can also distinguish allusions to the seven deadly sins, e. g. greed, gluttony or
pride. Moreover, Golding uses different symbols differently. For example, the symbol of an
island is used in many different ways in both novels. In Pincher Martin, it has at least two
symbolic layers: it is a symbol of safety and at the same time it is a symbol of suffering. In
The Inheritors, the islands occupied by the new people is a symbol of the unknown, a symbol
of fear and danger.
Another feature that both novels share is the fact that there is always a tension and
duality between mental and physical world and rational and irrational elements. Nathaniel in
Pincher Martin is a mental counterpart of the main protagonist, who represents the physical
and secular world. Nathaniel represents religion, spirituality and God and at the same time he

52
is also a symbol of powers above us, something irrational. The same may be applied to Lok in
The Inheritors, who is a symbol of irrational and mental purity in contrast to the new people,
who are more advanced and rational and are a symbol of civilization. Ironically, their
behaviour is more savage, spoiled and vicious.
As it was indicated in the introductory part of the thesis, Golding never uses Christian
symbolism to moralize or to give lectures in his novels. Instead, he uses the Christian symbols
to provide a deeper message about the conflicts of good and evil, the fall of man or the origins
of evil in man. He does not provide ready-made solutions, on the contrary he provides space
for various interpretations, that is why his novels are so complex, provoking and sometimes
not easy to read. His novels may seem rather pessimistic for some readers, however, they
suggest that to strive for goodness is worth it.

53
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Carey, John. The Man Who Wrote "Lord of the Flies" London: Faber and Faber, 2009. Print.

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