BEYOND THE BINARY:

A STUDY OF THE FICTION OF WILLIAM GOLDING

BEYOND THE BINARY:

A STUDY OF THE FICTION OF WILLIAM GOLDING

Presentation

By

Dr. Prakash Bhadury

Chapter I: IntroductionChapter I: Introduction

A period between modernism and postmodernism.

Golding -the most difficult to fit into any particular categories.

Focus of this dissertation concerns how Golding's vision of the world and human being are unfolded by quite a few basic techniques of shifting point of view, differing symbols and metaphors as an unifying artistic genius. The thesis contends that the fiction abounds binary opposition(good and evil, rational and spiritual ) & there is beyond.

His view is essentially religious. In each fiction he explores a vision through a mythopoeia as he says that where there is no vision, the people perish

The specific structure of each novel involves two structures: pattern and counter pattern (ideographic structure).Point of view in each novel at the end is reversed. The reader moves from the protagonist’s to another character’s point of view on the same situation.

Central symbols are darkness, evil, void etc, and symbolic episode is nightmare world where character undergoes atavistic reordering

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TechniqueTechnique

• Techniques-Ideographic structure has 05 distinguishing features (V. Tyger):

• (a) Two narrative movements that ends with a coda ending with reversal of point of view.

• (b) Two different perspectives on the same situation(enlightened view).

• (c) Creates two contradictory perspectives on the same circumstance.

• (d) For, Golding, the two perspectives are apparently contradictory.

• (e) Drives the reader into paradoxes of existence and forces them to build the bridge

12–3

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1.Lord Of The Flies: Faber and Faber, 1954

2.The Inheritors(1955),

3.Pincher Martin(1956).

4.The Free Fall(1960)

5.The Spire( 1964),

6.Darkness Visible(1979).

7.Rites of Passage( 1980),8.The Paper Men( 1984).

9.Close Quarters(1987),10.Fire Down Below(1989).

11.The Hot Gates and Other Occasional Pieces(1965)

12.A Moving Target(1982),

13.The Double Tongue( 1995)

Fiction taken upFiction taken up

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Chapter II: Golding's Ontological SearchChapter II: Golding's Ontological Search

Ontology -philosophical concept -the study of being Human beings treated in abundant totality. The characters are set in difficult

historical or geographical settings like autocratic nature of vision, sea-tossed body, origins of man’s guilt etc. Visionary outburst of characters through fluctuating symbols and metaphors become conscious expression of metaphysical meaning of being & becoming.

Freud’s structural model of personality is reflected through symbols, Characters evolve.

• Confrontation -is the crystallization of the novel’s total structure and it brings the conjunction between the two worlds through fearful, yet purgatory experience- to encounter one’s own being; to unite trinity-head, heart & soul.

Explores the bridge between rationality & spirituality. Man in microcosmic world seeks a pattern and order and face a natural chaos of existence with the world and with the being.

Movement from fragmentation of experience to undifferentiated consciousness. ‘Existence to Essence’.

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Chapter III: ‘Theurgism’ in Golding’s Fiction Chapter III: ‘Theurgism’ in Golding’s Fiction

• Theurgy usually is the practice of trying to gain the knowledge and conversation of one's Higher Self, or Inner God .

• Golding, while showing the regression in the present day Godless world, ushers in the way to the transformation of the world via the individual souls to God’s timeless presence.

• Metaphors & symbols push the readers into encountering those experiences which conventional words do not reach, formulate or control the primacy of spiritual experiences..

• Darkness is the central symbol for contemporary man darkness holds promise & danger of wholeness as it transcends self-consciousness.

• Only the saints embrace darkness & discover its lighted center. At a communal level these saints play purgatory role. Their death release regenerative power.

• Mythopoeia is the spiritual concern to create a visibility through confrontational scenes. Simon before the head, Jocelin shrieks.

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Chapter IV: Golding’s Panoptic VisionChapter IV: Golding’s Panoptic Vision

Placing &inducing people in a state of conscious and permanent visibility. The root problem of the world is not the primordial chaos but the limited vision. Knowledge as power is exercised continuously in the very foundations of society, in the subtlest possible way.

Characters are in each case an embodiment of a proposition about human nature, rather than an individual. A perfect microcosm of the macrocosm.

Power of Theurgy creates a panoptic vision as the readers are the inheritors to form new conjunction which cannot be located in the fictional world except a wider view is constructed imaginatively.

In each novel -an evolutionary stage of religious impulse & a scape goat. They are the objectification of others’ fear as they show the dark cellarage of human mind, even though in many a cases they might fail to recognise the dark terror.

Panoptic vision is here that human beings abstracts from their evil and projects it as fear of demon which will destroy him. E.g. Inheritors-homo sapiens.

This is done through conscious myth making as through myth imaginative substance of religious belief is expressed, communicated and enhanced.

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Chapter V: Beyond the Binary Chapter V: Beyond the Binary

Binary denotes pairs of mutually exclusive signifiers in a paradigm set representing categories which are logically opposed and which together define a complete universe of discourse; e.g. white/black(colonialism),god/man(dualism), conscious/unconscious(Freud-human mind)etc.

Basic dialectic-rational& irrational elements dramatized experience in a moment of crisis in a fabulous setting.

Individual character unravels the mystery of life- either moves away or Subsume Human nature, explored, not in relation to a particular society, but to his / her

cosmic situation shows both good & evil or contradictions. Paradoxes of existence, for Golding, are symptoms of spiritual world Golding’s mythic and allegorical world while moving around binaries attempts to

find the root of the disease of evil. His central theme -a relationship of man to the universe and through the universe to God.

A close analyses of the characters show that all the protagonists cried for freedom Beyond the binary is beyond the reasoning bound in sensory organ or intellect.

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Chapter VI: ConclusionChapter VI: Conclusion

Structuralist Golding believed the inter relationship of the structural world but moved beyond the limitations. Neither he deconstructs to undermine his own philosophy.

The answer to beyond the binaries is: a continuous process of doing against undoing, knowledge against ignorance. Root cause of man’s fall - spiritual blindness; Delphic oracle-know thyself- hope for redemption.

Golding’s binary world has always put binary characters in sharp contrast only to resolve the dialectic through the tortuous journey and experiences of living, rather than a plain statement of synthesis.

Goes beyond the structuralism’s binary opposition to philosophical monism; dualism is on apparent level.

Golding has sprinkled fresh water on existing unity amid perpetual variations.

The process itself is a signifying system that has to move on and on in different cloak in different time toward a great chain of being.

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QUESTION?

-ANSWER

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THANK YOU ALL

MODERNISM &POSTMODERNISM MODERNISM &POSTMODERNISM

•High priests are Elliot, Joyce, Ezra, Woolf etc. Literature seems to be

experimental& innovative.

Both give great prominence to fragmentation as a feature of 20th C. but in a

different way. The modernist register a deep nostalgia for the past; represents

pessimism, lament & despair about the world. For the postmodernist

fragmentation is liberating, exhilarating phenomenon

Follows Baudrillard’s hyper reality. All is surface without depth.

Meta narratives(of progress& human perfectibility) replaces for the series of

Mini narratives(contingent, temporary & relative).

He follows Aristotelian concept of "Organic Unity" the idea that in any good

work of art each of the parts must contribute to the overall success of the whole.

good work explores psychological forces and the unseen "inner life" of persons.