"I have understood how the scar becomes a star, I have felt the flake of fire fall, miraculous and pentecostal. My yesterdays walk with me. They keep step, they are grey faces that peer over my shoulder."
My love for William Golding -- and particularly his master work, "Lord of the Flies" -- is well-documented. Far from a one-hit wonder, the author also created the strong "Pincher Martin," among other notable titles.
Golding's "Free Fall" is full of contradictions and weighty considerations, tackling the massive themes of poverty, war, pedophilia, religion, abuse, and misplaced love. Golding seeks the location of the bridge between the rational and mysterious worlds as part of a broader exploration of free will and "inexplicable good and evil."
"Cause and effect. The law of succession. Statistical probability. The moral order. Sin and remorse. They are all true. Both worlds exist side by side. They meet in me."
The book is described as fairly intensely autobiographical for Golding, and the questions he wrestles with resonate across the generations more than 50 years after publication.
That is not to see that humor doesn't abound ("monocular homunculus" is as funny a lewd reference that I've ever heard). In addition, the story serves as a primer on British slang of the 1950s.
The protagonist, Sammy Mountjoy, attempts to examine his life in pursuit of the moments that robbed him of free will, that subjected him to both good and evil, and that assigned blame or exoneration to his actions.
"I am not a man who was a boy looking at a tree. I am a man who remembers being a boy looking at a tree."
Sammy's desperate pursuit of Beatrice is beautifully rendered, before it devolves into a craven exploit.
"She had such clear eyes, such untroubled eyes, grey, honest because the price of dishonesty had never been offered to her. I looked into them, sensed their merciless and remote purity. She was contained in herself. Nothing had ever come to trouble her pool."
" ... now I saw the very water of sorrow hanging honey-thick in eyelashes or dashed down a cheek like an exclamation mark at the beginning of a Spanish sentence."
But the main question quickly becomes: how do we behold and view our protagonist? Should we pity Sammy? Dislike him? Alternately, he's a bully, communist, skeevy creeper, stalker -- and worthy of compassion. In a word, he's complicated, making him a quintessential Golding character.
"We were both deeply committed elsewhere and we both recognized without a moment's doubt that we should never let each other go. I cannot remember how much we said of this or how much we felt."
Is Sammy simply a product of his environment or has he nurtured immoral actions along the way? Is he redeemable or captive to his own fate? By virtue of his horrific childhood -- built upon mental, emotional, and physical abuse by nearly every authority figure he ever encountered -- was he ever afforded the possibility of overcoming a stumbling path?
"I was not an ordinary man. I was at once more than most and less. I could see this war as the ghastly and ferocious play of children who having made a wrong choice or a whole series of them were now helplessly tormenting each other because a wrong use of freedom had lost them their freedom."
These queries and more form the backbone of this novel, another entry into the canon of one of the English language's most notable writers.
"'An honest man. And you haven't found one.'"
"'No. Of course not.'"
"'What if you find one?'"
"Philip paused with the door open. There was darkness and a glint of rain. He looked back at me out of his raw eyes from a long, long way away."
"'I shall be disappointed.'"
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