Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 47-48). Also available in print.

This thesis examines the ministerial call in three novels by William Golding, specifically The Spire, Darkness Visible, and Rites of Passage. The central character of each novel, a Christian minister, has a vision, or series of visions, which dominates his life. The call and vision(s) of Golding's ministers are examined in light of Jacques Ellul's The Humiliation of the Word, a work examining the differences between the word and the image. The ministerial call, in this thesis, is linked to Ellul's ideas about the word; the vision, in this thesis, is linked to Ellul's ideas of the image. As a result of following their vision(s) rather than their call, the ministers fail, and their lives end in despair and ruin.

<p>Summary</p><p>One important theme in William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies is power. The boys in Lord of the Flies copy the behavior of their parents: competing, fighting and even killing each other for power. They form two groups, each following a different power system, the democratic system on the one side and the totalitarian system on the other.</p><p>My aim in this essay is to examine the complexity of these power systems in Lord of the Flies, revealed in the two layers in which they appear in the story, the boys on the island and the adults in their world. Moreover I want to show how Golding contributes both positive and negative traits to both systems, never falling into the habit of giving a black and white picture of either of the power systems. Overall I will focus on two boys, Jack and Ralph, exemplifying through them how the two systems gain their power, develop their structures, which methods they use to keep power, and how the systems handle crisis. At the end of my essay I then will shortly illustrate how Golding connects the adult world and their behavior to the boys’ story.</p><p>My conclusion is that Golding shows very clearly that the desire for power and the will to fight and kill for it exists in both adults and children. Overall his attempt is to illustrate that it is difficult to have an absolute, perfect and ideal power system. There are always things that can be criticized and improved. However, he does indicate that certain systems are more dangerous than others. The totalitarian power system can escalate much easier into savagery than the democratic system. So, Golding prefers power systems that benefit the community rather than only the leader himself.</p>

Summary One important theme in William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies is power. The boys in Lord of the Flies copy the behavior of their parents: competing, fighting and even killing each other for power. They form two groups, each following a different power system, the democratic system on the one side and the totalitarian system on the other. My aim in this essay is to examine the complexity of these power systems in Lord of the Flies, revealed in the two layers in which they appear in the story, the boys on the island and the adults in their world. Moreover I want to show how Golding contributes both positive and negative traits to both systems, never falling into the habit of giving a black and white picture of either of the power systems. Overall I will focus on two boys, Jack and Ralph, exemplifying through them how the two systems gain their power, develop their structures, which methods they use to keep power, and how the systems handle crisis. At the end of my essay I then will shortly illustrate how Golding connects the adult world and their behavior to the boys’ story. My conclusion is that Golding shows very clearly that the desire for power and the will to fight and kill for it exists in both adults and children. Overall his attempt is to illustrate that it is difficult to have an absolute, perfect and ideal power system. There are always things that can be criticized and improved. However, he does indicate that certain systems are more dangerous than others. The totalitarian power system can escalate much easier into savagery than the democratic system. So, Golding prefers power systems that benefit the community rather than only the leader himself.

Scholars have not adequately explained the disparity between Arthur Golding's career as a fervent Protestant translator of continental reformers like John Calvin and Theodore Beza with his most famous translation, Ovid's Metamorphoses. His motivations for completing the translation included a nationalistic desire to enrich the English language and the rewards of the courtly system of patronage. Considering the Protestant opposition to pagan and wanton literature, it is apparent that Golding was forced to carefully contain the dangerous material of his translation. Golding avoids Protestant criticism of traditional allegorical readings of pagan poetry by adjusting his translation to show that Ovid was inspired by the Bible and meant his poem to be morally and theologically instructive in the Christian tradition. Examples of Golding's technic include his translation of the creation and the great deluge from Book One, and the story of Myrrha from Book Ten.

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<p>In William Golding’s Free Fall, the novel ends without its protagonist, Sammy Mountjoy, receiving the atonement he seeks. As a consequence, the novel ends in an unresolved manner, leaving Sammy in a state of suspension. Despite having a metaphysical awakening in a Nazi POW camp, the consequences of his enlightenment do not reflect the way the Sammy retrospectively narrates the tale of his life. The existentialist theories of Danish thinker and writer Søren Kierkegaard offer a solution to the dilemma. Kierkegaard’s theories concerning the aesthetic, ethical and religious spheres of life, as well as his concept of ‘existential dread’, may be used to show that Sammy is able to make a ‘leap of faith’ from the aesthetic to the ethical sphere. However, because of his inability to make the last leap into the metaphysical sphere of life, he does not attain the insight he needs, namely that he is ‘a child of the finite and infinite’. The essay relates the ways Sammy Mountjoy fits into the Sartrean and Kierkegaardian expressions of existentialism, soon moving on to describe the details of Kierkegaard’s thought concerning the three spheres of life and the concept of ‘dread’. Sammy’s preoccupation with the present, his focus on the exterior rather than the interior and his inability to commit himself to people or situations fit neatly into the criterion for the aesthetic sphere of life. This, in turn, leads him to a state of dread, which reaches its climax in the dark cupboard. When released from his imprisonment Sammy has reached a state of awareness concerning the “vital morality” between people, previously a foreign concept. However, Kierkegaard points out that also the ethical sphere is flawed, leaving the religious/metaphysical sphere as Sammy’s ultimate destination. By failing to make the final ‘leap of faith’, due to a misguided conception of the boundaries between the ethical and the Absolute, Sammy falls short of the resolution he desires and the forgiveness he seeks from the three people that have influenced him the most. Thus an explanation is proposed to the unresolved manner in which Free Fall ends.</p>

In William Golding’s Free Fall, the novel ends without its protagonist, Sammy Mountjoy, receiving the atonement he seeks. As a consequence, the novel ends in an unresolved manner, leaving Sammy in a state of suspension. Despite having a metaphysical awakening in a Nazi POW camp, the consequences of his enlightenment do not reflect the way the Sammy retrospectively narrates the tale of his life. The existentialist theories of Danish thinker and writer Søren Kierkegaard offer a solution to the dilemma. Kierkegaard’s theories concerning the aesthetic, ethical and religious spheres of life, as well as his concept of ‘existential dread’, may be used to show that Sammy is able to make a ‘leap of faith’ from the aesthetic to the ethical sphere. However, because of his inability to make the last leap into the metaphysical sphere of life, he does not attain the insight he needs, namely that he is ‘a child of the finite and infinite’. The essay relates the ways Sammy Mountjoy fits into the Sartrean and Kierkegaardian expressions of existentialism, soon moving on to describe the details of Kierkegaard’s thought concerning the three spheres of life and the concept of ‘dread’. Sammy’s preoccupation with the present, his focus on the exterior rather than the interior and his inability to commit himself to people or situations fit neatly into the criterion for the aesthetic sphere of life. This, in turn, leads him to a state of dread, which reaches its climax in the dark cupboard. When released from his imprisonment Sammy has reached a state of awareness concerning the “vital morality” between people, previously a foreign concept. However, Kierkegaard points out that also the ethical sphere is flawed, leaving the religious/metaphysical sphere as Sammy’s ultimate destination. By failing to make the final ‘leap of faith’, due to a misguided conception of the boundaries between the ethical and the Absolute, Sammy falls short of the resolution he desires and the forgiveness he seeks from the three people that have influenced him the most. Thus an explanation is proposed to the unresolved manner in which Free Fall ends.

This thesis analyzes William Golding&rsquo / s Rites of Passage using a detailed examination of the Bakhtinian concepts of heteroglossia, polyphony and the carnivalesque to investigate the points of mutual illumination and confirmation between Bakhtin&rsquo / s ideas and Golding&rsquo / s novel. Therefore the method of analysis is divided between a close study of Rites of Passage and an equally close examination of Bakhtin&rsquo / s ideas. The Bakhtinian concepts studied in this thesis are central to his idea of language and theory of the novel and their analysis in Rites of Passage reveals that while these concepts shed light on the stylistic, structural and thematic complexities of the novel, the novel also verifies the working of these concepts in practice. Moreover, the results of the analysis indicate two main points in which Golding&rsquo / s novel and Bakhtin&rsquo / s ideas confirm and illuminate each other. The first point is related to Bakhtin&rsquo / s celebration of the novel genre for its capacity to include diverse elements, a celebration that find its counterpart in Golding&rsquo / s novel due to the novel&rsquo / s heteroglot nature, polyphonic structure and inclusion of the carnivalesque. The second point is related to Bakhtin&rsquo / s notion of dialogism which emerges as a relational property common to his mentioned concepts. As this thesis shows, Golding&rsquo / s Rites of Passage is a dialogic novel in this regard, with its foregrounding of dialogic relations between heteroglot languages, characters&rsquo / voices and social classes. This thesis ends with a discussion indicating postmodern aspects of Bakhtin&rsquo / s ideas and Golding&rsquo / s novel, which include intertextuality, the problematization of truth, and the blurring of boundaries between opposites.

Thesis (D.A.)--Illinois State University, 1982. / Title from title page screen, viewed April 11, 2005. Dissertation Committee: Robert Duncan (chair), Stan Renner, Glenn Grever, Walter Pierce, Niles Holt. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 239-250) and abstract. Also available in print.