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.And, in his hour oftriumph, he looks down from his castle rock on the defeated Ralph andPiggy: Power lay in the brown swell of his forearms: authority sat on hisshoulder and chattered in his ear like an ape (185).On a bright day in Huxley s February 2108, a sailing ship, theCanterbury, flying the flag of New Zealand and carrying the men and womenof the Re-discovery Expedition to North America, approaches thecoastline near the ruined city of Los Angeles.New Zealand has been spared,and now radiation has diminished enough to allow this shipload of scientistsof all kinds to explore the remains of civilization.It is a ship of foolsrediscovering America from the west, and the biggest fool aboard is ourantihero, Dr.Alfred Poole, D.Sc. Poole is a parody figure of a man entirelyremoved from his bodily functions and his very soul, but he is the man towatch because Huxley (unlike Golding) builds into his dismal story a parableof redemption.But there is no redemption awaiting the city of fallen menand women.These survivors are deformed, regressive, bestial, and held incheck by a repressive dictatorship that combines the authority of church andstate.The gamma rays have effected a reversal or devolution in whichhumans, like the beasts, mate only in season and are incapable of enduringlove.Dr.Poole is taken prisoner by these decadent Angelenos.Throughouthis scenario, the narrator (Tallis) juxtaposes lyrical description of thesublimity of nature the dawn, the sunset, the stars, each an emblem ofeternity with scenes from the fallen City of the Angels, now only a ghost town, a mass of ruins in a wasteland (62) inhabited by a desperateand savage race.This second discovery of America is black irony in which wesee the ruination of a promised land, the paradise given at the outset to thebold pioneers.One recalls the tropical enchantments given to Golding scastaways and the burning island discovered by the naive naval captain whois incapable of rescuing the ragged survivors.The two fictional societies havemuch in common, and even the history leading to their downfall is strikinglysimilar: parliaments fail, a third world war devastates the earth, and a new 129Golding and Huxley: The Fables of Demonic Possessionreligion forms to recognize and honor the seemingly mysterious powermanifested in this sequence.The religion in Huxley s fable emerges with what its followers call the Thing. This is not simply a reference to the bioatomic catastrophe butalso to the psychopolitical dialectics that led to violent climax andapocalypse.The Chief, a rude master of the work crews that dig the gravesof Hollywood Cemetery in search of manufactured goods, explains to hisprisoner, Dr.Poole: The Thing.You know when He took over.& He wonthe battle and took possession of everybody.That was when they did all this (71).There s no need to struggle for recognition here, since the future willresurrect a familiar idol known generically as the devil, though it is capableof assuming an interesting variety of forms.In a catechism offered by a Satanic Science Practitioner the children respond: Belial has perverted and corrupted us in all the parts of ourbeing.Therefore, we are, merely on account of that corruption,deservedly condemned by Belial. Their teacher nods approvingly. Such, he squeaks unctuously, is the inscrutable justice ofthe Lord of Flies. (94 95)As the lessons continue we learn that woman is the vessel of the UnholySpirit, the source of deformities and therefore the enemy of the race (98).Annually, on Belial Day, mothers are publicly humiliated, punished, and theirdeformed babies killed.The purpose of this blood sacrifice is, of course, avain attempt to purify the race, but more broadly the catechism reveals, Thechief end of man is to propitiate Belial, depreciate His enmity, and avoiddestruction as long as possible (93).Similarly, the little Christian boys onGolding s island bow down before a ubiquitous fear and soon spontaneouslyinvent a blood ritual to purge this fear ( Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill hisblood! [187]) and a rite of propitiation to ensure their survival.The pig s headon the stick becomes a gift for the beast and an idol, an incarnation ofancient Beelzebub, Lord of Flies.Like Huxley s devotees they invert andparody the lost and more hopeful religion given to them by a forgottensavior.On the day of propitiation in 2108 crowds mass in the Los AngelesColiseum and we witness the groundless faith, the sub-human excitement,the collective insanity which are the products of ceremonial religion (108) asthe ritual unfolds and chanting is heard from a great altar.The chorus mournsthat all have fallen Into the hands of living Evil, the Enemy of Man : 130JAMES R.BAKERSemichorus IOf the rebel against the Order of ThingsSemichorus IIAnd we have conspired with him against ourselvesSemichorus IOf the great Blowfly who is the Lord of FliesCrawling in the heart & (109)The chorus curses woman, the mother, as breeder of all deformities who isdriven by the Blowfly, goaded Like the soiled fitchew / Like the sow in herseason (112 13).We know now that Lord of the Flies was not the title of the manuscriptof a novel Golding sent to Faber in 1953.In a charming essay, CharlesMonteith, who became editor of the manuscript, recalls the brief noteattached: I send you the typescript of my novel Strangers from Within whichmight be defined as an allegorical interpretation of a stock situation.I hopeyou will feel able to publish it (57).Reader judgments were largely negative,much revision was demanded, the title was rejected, and a new one Lord ofthe Flies suggested by another editor at Faber.Golding readily agreed, aswell he might have, for it was quite appropriate to give his devil a familiarname (Beelzebub, the fly lord, was present in the buzz of conflicting voicesat the parliaments on the platform rock), and his theme of submission to evilremained intact.The original title, nevertheless, was no doubt deliberatelychosen to reflect something built into the narrative progression the gradualeffacement of sane and civil behavior and the emergence of an alien power inthe consciousness of the boys.The theme of demonic possession was mostvital to Golding s purpose, and again it demonstrates the bond with Huxley.5When the Arch-Vicar delivers his talk on world history for Poole (all thewhile munching pig s trotters) he comes to a clear statement of his thesis onthe downfall of civilization:[A]t a certain epoch, the overwhelming majority of human beingsaccepted beliefs and adopted courses of action that could notpossibly result in anything but universal suffering, generaldegradation and wholesale destruction [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.And, in his hour oftriumph, he looks down from his castle rock on the defeated Ralph andPiggy: Power lay in the brown swell of his forearms: authority sat on hisshoulder and chattered in his ear like an ape (185).On a bright day in Huxley s February 2108, a sailing ship, theCanterbury, flying the flag of New Zealand and carrying the men and womenof the Re-discovery Expedition to North America, approaches thecoastline near the ruined city of Los Angeles.New Zealand has been spared,and now radiation has diminished enough to allow this shipload of scientistsof all kinds to explore the remains of civilization.It is a ship of foolsrediscovering America from the west, and the biggest fool aboard is ourantihero, Dr.Alfred Poole, D.Sc. Poole is a parody figure of a man entirelyremoved from his bodily functions and his very soul, but he is the man towatch because Huxley (unlike Golding) builds into his dismal story a parableof redemption.But there is no redemption awaiting the city of fallen menand women.These survivors are deformed, regressive, bestial, and held incheck by a repressive dictatorship that combines the authority of church andstate.The gamma rays have effected a reversal or devolution in whichhumans, like the beasts, mate only in season and are incapable of enduringlove.Dr.Poole is taken prisoner by these decadent Angelenos.Throughouthis scenario, the narrator (Tallis) juxtaposes lyrical description of thesublimity of nature the dawn, the sunset, the stars, each an emblem ofeternity with scenes from the fallen City of the Angels, now only a ghost town, a mass of ruins in a wasteland (62) inhabited by a desperateand savage race.This second discovery of America is black irony in which wesee the ruination of a promised land, the paradise given at the outset to thebold pioneers.One recalls the tropical enchantments given to Golding scastaways and the burning island discovered by the naive naval captain whois incapable of rescuing the ragged survivors.The two fictional societies havemuch in common, and even the history leading to their downfall is strikinglysimilar: parliaments fail, a third world war devastates the earth, and a new 129Golding and Huxley: The Fables of Demonic Possessionreligion forms to recognize and honor the seemingly mysterious powermanifested in this sequence.The religion in Huxley s fable emerges with what its followers call the Thing. This is not simply a reference to the bioatomic catastrophe butalso to the psychopolitical dialectics that led to violent climax andapocalypse.The Chief, a rude master of the work crews that dig the gravesof Hollywood Cemetery in search of manufactured goods, explains to hisprisoner, Dr.Poole: The Thing.You know when He took over.& He wonthe battle and took possession of everybody.That was when they did all this (71).There s no need to struggle for recognition here, since the future willresurrect a familiar idol known generically as the devil, though it is capableof assuming an interesting variety of forms.In a catechism offered by a Satanic Science Practitioner the children respond: Belial has perverted and corrupted us in all the parts of ourbeing.Therefore, we are, merely on account of that corruption,deservedly condemned by Belial. Their teacher nods approvingly. Such, he squeaks unctuously, is the inscrutable justice ofthe Lord of Flies. (94 95)As the lessons continue we learn that woman is the vessel of the UnholySpirit, the source of deformities and therefore the enemy of the race (98).Annually, on Belial Day, mothers are publicly humiliated, punished, and theirdeformed babies killed.The purpose of this blood sacrifice is, of course, avain attempt to purify the race, but more broadly the catechism reveals, Thechief end of man is to propitiate Belial, depreciate His enmity, and avoiddestruction as long as possible (93).Similarly, the little Christian boys onGolding s island bow down before a ubiquitous fear and soon spontaneouslyinvent a blood ritual to purge this fear ( Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill hisblood! [187]) and a rite of propitiation to ensure their survival.The pig s headon the stick becomes a gift for the beast and an idol, an incarnation ofancient Beelzebub, Lord of Flies.Like Huxley s devotees they invert andparody the lost and more hopeful religion given to them by a forgottensavior.On the day of propitiation in 2108 crowds mass in the Los AngelesColiseum and we witness the groundless faith, the sub-human excitement,the collective insanity which are the products of ceremonial religion (108) asthe ritual unfolds and chanting is heard from a great altar.The chorus mournsthat all have fallen Into the hands of living Evil, the Enemy of Man : 130JAMES R.BAKERSemichorus IOf the rebel against the Order of ThingsSemichorus IIAnd we have conspired with him against ourselvesSemichorus IOf the great Blowfly who is the Lord of FliesCrawling in the heart & (109)The chorus curses woman, the mother, as breeder of all deformities who isdriven by the Blowfly, goaded Like the soiled fitchew / Like the sow in herseason (112 13).We know now that Lord of the Flies was not the title of the manuscriptof a novel Golding sent to Faber in 1953.In a charming essay, CharlesMonteith, who became editor of the manuscript, recalls the brief noteattached: I send you the typescript of my novel Strangers from Within whichmight be defined as an allegorical interpretation of a stock situation.I hopeyou will feel able to publish it (57).Reader judgments were largely negative,much revision was demanded, the title was rejected, and a new one Lord ofthe Flies suggested by another editor at Faber.Golding readily agreed, aswell he might have, for it was quite appropriate to give his devil a familiarname (Beelzebub, the fly lord, was present in the buzz of conflicting voicesat the parliaments on the platform rock), and his theme of submission to evilremained intact.The original title, nevertheless, was no doubt deliberatelychosen to reflect something built into the narrative progression the gradualeffacement of sane and civil behavior and the emergence of an alien power inthe consciousness of the boys.The theme of demonic possession was mostvital to Golding s purpose, and again it demonstrates the bond with Huxley.5When the Arch-Vicar delivers his talk on world history for Poole (all thewhile munching pig s trotters) he comes to a clear statement of his thesis onthe downfall of civilization:[A]t a certain epoch, the overwhelming majority of human beingsaccepted beliefs and adopted courses of action that could notpossibly result in anything but universal suffering, generaldegradation and wholesale destruction [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]