714. Rites of Passage

Rites of Passage
William Golding
1980

Around 280 pages

Since Hemingway and Melville have exited the scene, we haven't had a lot of sea-faring stories, so I was happy to accompany Edmund Talbot on his nautical journey. This was an enjoyable novel and increased my respect for the breadth of Golding's work.

It's always fun to have a novel presented as a journal, although it's an outdated practice by this point on the List. Edmund shares his account of a six month voyage to Australia in the early 1900s. I don't really want to give anything else away here, but suffice to say the story deals with shame and the class system. 

Golding eases us into this narrative by starting with somewhat comical descriptions of the ship and its passengers, and then shifting into a more shocking tale. This tone change could have been too jarring in another writer's hands, so I was impressed by Golding's deftness here. And Edmund was a great choice for a narrator, as he begins the novel in a very stuffy, Eustace Scrubbs place and ends up somewhere entirely different. 

Edmund being our voice also prevented the novel from being heavily weighed down by nautical terms like other stories from this genre have been. Worth reading just to see how much more Golding has to offer than just Lord of the Flies.

RATING: ****-

Interesting Facts:

Won the 1980 Booker Prize.

UP NEXT: Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

497. Lord of the Flies

Lord of the Flies
William Golding
1954
Around 185 pages

This is another one that is often on school's reading list, although at least this novel features children, so its placement is more understandable than say, making us reading Antigone. And who doesn't enjoy a good survival story?

During a wartime evacuation, a plane crashes on a remote island in the Pacific, with the only survivors being young boys. Ralph is elected leader, and the boys use the glasses of an overweight boy called, sigh, Piggy to start a fire. In Flaubert's Parrot, Julian Barnes points out that Piggy's glasses wouldn't actually start a fire, because he was nearsighted, so the light would be diverged, not focused to a point. Everybody's a critic, I guess. Anyway, the boys come to be convinced that there is a beast on the island, and one of the boys, Jack, gains popularity by declaring his intention to kill it. Fortunately, Golding is better at wrapping up his story than the writers of Lost.

This novel always gave me Animal Farm vibes. Both authors are proving that no matter what the external circumstances are, human beings will always behave in a certain way that will end in their own destruction. Although I guess Golding was proven wrong when a group of boys did get marooned on an island in 1965 and were all rescued in good health. 

An allegory for fear mongering and dictatorship is never irrelevant, but it hits different in the aftermath of World War II. Very impressive, considering this is his debut novel.

RATING: *****

Interesting Facts:

"Lord of the Flies" is a direct translation of Beelzebub, one of the seven princes of Hell.

Initially had a cool reception, until E.M. Forster chose it as one of his novels of the year.

UP NEXT: Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan