This document provides an overview of a dissertation titled "Beyond the Binary: A Study of the Fiction of William Golding". The dissertation examines how Golding's works explore themes and concepts that go beyond simple binary oppositions. It analyzes techniques like shifting points of view and symbols/metaphors. Each novel involves two narrative structures that end with reversing the point of view. Central symbols represent darkness and evil. The dissertation concludes that Golding seeks to understand humanity's relationship with the universe and God, and moves beyond structuralism's binaries to a philosophical monism.

1. 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

2. 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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3. 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 FictionChapter 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 BinaryChapter 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

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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

12. MODERNISM &POSTMODERNISMMODERNISM &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.