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No. 1

The identifications of God in W. Golding’s novels

Liberal Arts in Russia. 2015. Vol. 4. No. 6. Pp. 431-439.
Get the full text (Russian)
License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0
https://doi.org/10.15643/libartrus-2015.6.3
Shanina Yu. A.
M. Akmullah Bashkir State Pedagogical University
3a Oktyabrskoi Revolutsii St., 45000 Ufa, Republic of Bashkortostan, Russia
Email: shanina@agnytom.ru
Fedorov A. A.
Bashkir State University
32 Zaki Validii St., 45076 Ufa, Republic of Bashkortostan, Russia

Abstract

The comparative analysis of the W. Golding’s novels demonstrates that the identification of God is the central problem in the works of the famous English writer. Golding did not consider Divinity only in connection with Christian orthodoxy, rational view of the world. In his novels, God gets different embodiments according to the wide cultural tradition. The group of heroes is trying to determine Divinity by force of the religious ritual in such fables as Lord of the Flies (1954), The Inheritors (1955), Rites of Passage (1980), Double Tongue (1995), The Scorpion God (1971). The writer was convinced that the base of any religion is violence and triumph of mass consciousness, it can lead to tyranny, totalitarian system. The heroes of novels Pincher Martin (1956), Darkness Visible (1979) opposed God to the ego. To Cris and Sophy God became “the black lighting”, the death, the damnation. By the example of their fates, Golding revealed the cult of self-will and individual freedom as the main problem of the contemporary society. Paths to God of Golding’s saints (Simon, Nathaniel, Matty) are different and profoundly individual, they are far away of any standards. They believe in spiritual foundation of the objective reality, they can reach the theophany and spread their consciousness to the compassion of other people. However, saints are exclusion, that is why the author’s viewpoint is conveyed by the spiritual searches of Jocelin, Talbolt, Arieka. Each of them had come up the hard way from proud self-assurance to doubting and searching the truth. Golding supposed that the man cannot touch the ground of Divinity, but his aspiration for God is the root of human and morality. The author saw God as spiritual foundation of the objective reality that is becoming acquainted due to intuition, individual spiritual search and creativity.

Keywords

  • • 20th century
  • • British novel
  • • Christianity
  • • Divinity
  • • W. Golding
  • • hero
  • • religion
  • • ritual
  • • saint

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