Table of Contents
- William Golding (His Life and Works)
- William Gerald Golding (1911-1993)
- “The greatest ideas are simplest.”
- Received the Nobel Prize for literature
- Booker Prize- Rites of Passage
- Mother World War II Post War
- Lord of the Flies EM Forster called it the outstanding novel of the year Readers- “forceful allegory about the EVIL inherent in the human heart.”
- Highly successful 1st NOVEL Sold over one million copies and has been made into a motion picture
The Inheritors
- Golding’s 2nd and favourite novel
- Has a similar theme- Lord of the Flies
- “Esoteric account written in simple, direct prose.”
- Of prehistoric men who think and communicate with one another by means of VISUAL images Companion novel to Lord of the Flies
- “Man is born evil and is destined to remain evil.”
- Lord of the Flies + The Inheritors
- Give clear evidence of the pessimistic view of man’s nature and his fate
- WW2 had a tremendous impression on Golding- “The war was overwhelming evidence that the evil in man could not be easily explained away…… a hell of a lot in the war that can’t be accounted for except on the basis of original evil..”
Pincher Martin- 3rd novel (1956)
- The story of a naval officer floating in the Atlantic Ocean after The ship has been struck by a torpedo The officer washes up onto a barren rock Where he eventually loses his mind and dies
Free Fall- 4th Novel
- Samuel Mountjoy- Nazis- black hole He dwells on the events of his past Interior monologue
The Spire- 1964
- The protagonist = dean of a cathedral
- The protagonist devotes himself to the erection of a GREAT SPIRE Which is criticized by others as a folly
- The Hot Gates and other Occasional Pieces (1965)
The Pyramid (1967)
- The Scorpion God (1971)- a collection of 3 long stories (each set in totally different historical period- Ancient Egypt, prehistory, the Roman Empire)
Darkness Visible (1979)
- Deals with the subject of entropy Entropy Golding’s personal life has been a quiet and stable one