THE NOVEL AGAIN
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and absolute end. When Coleridge objected to Wordsworth's "matter–
of-factness" and "accidentality" as contravening the essence of poetry,
he implied that these were the qualities of a writer of prose, a bio–
grapher or novelist. Golding's novels escape these strictures: so that
makes
him
more or a poet than Wordsworth, though less of a novelist.
Such are the uses of critical theory, and the usages of history.
Golding's first novel,
Lord of the Flies,
is
set on an imaginary
island in the South Seas at some unspecified time in the future; an
atomic war has begun and the inhabitants of the island consist solely
of boys who have been evacuated from England-their plane, we
gather, had crash-landed, killing only the crew. The action of the
novel concerns the way in which the boys go about arranging their
island life together; it describes in vivid, poignant detail how the
conventions, restraints, and taboos of civilized society are gradually
sloughed off. That the boys have just been saved from a world
destroying itself is a choice ironic background-and has the effect of
a silent, invisible Chorus of Furies. Inexorably the boys revert to
primitive habits of thought and belief, and to primitive, savage
customs, though there is no external necessity for their doing so. In
this connection it may be remarked that Golding is perhaps the first
English novelist to use with entire naturalness the findings and
doctrines of modern anthropology and psychoanalysis; they have been
thoroughly assimilated to his vision of experience. They function,
however, in poetic terms and not as ideas in the explicit sense referred
to at the beginning of this discussion; there seems no compelling
reason why they should.
At the end of
Lord of the Flies,
and after a number of dreadful
things have happened, the boys are rescued. The naval officer who
has arrived to take them off the island quickly grasps the situation
and, in a grave state of shock, mutters, "I should have thought that
a pack of British boys--you're all British aren't you?-would have
been able to put up a better show than that-I mean-" and he
trails off into inarticulateness. The extreme irony of this last page
shifts the focus of the novel and reminds us that the narrative has
been developing along several related lines of meaning. The con–
clusions of Golding's novels, in fact, like the conclusions of many
poems, turn our attention back upon the work that has just been
completed and present us with still another means of contemplating
