The Spire: With an introduction by John Mullan

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I read this book years ago with the Guardian Reading Group and had a chance to ask Golding’s daughter a question at the end of the month. Many participants did not like the book because the protagonist is not likeable, but I thought it was a very sad and tragic story in the end. Jocelin acquired his job through a family connection and was otherwise completely ill-equipped for the role. He had neither the intelligence or the faith—the spire he sees as his purpose. (He came to mind often during the Trump Presidency.) Because the narrative is a very narrow 3rd person, every event and conversation is filtered through the Dean’s increasingly distorted, self-centred mind. The reader has to read past that to try to understand what is happening.(“The Inheritors” uses a similar technique.) urn:lcp:spire0000gold_n6f6:epub:fc2d5db0-824c-48a2-b99e-a4062f6bd9c2 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier spire0000gold_n6f6 Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t37186j2s Invoice 1652 Isbn 0571064922

Second readings are dangerous enterprises. Anything can happen. When I first read this novel, I thought the Spire, that gives the name to the title, stood defiantly by the end of the book. My attention was focused on the descriptions of how architects and builders managed to pull up the complex architectural structures that miraculously were built during the Middle Ages. I did not pay too much attention to the writing. At the time, my English did not have strong foundations, and it was as much a guess-work as the art & craft of the medieval masons. Or, in his perhaps more realistic moments, it is the realisation of Jocelin's extraordinary "will". It is what he has been able to force on the world through the power of his mind. It is a testament – as Jocelin himself frequently urges those around him to see it – to the power of faith. In this case, not a pillar, exactly, but a nose: "He stood, smiling round his nose, head up …", "so Jocelin felt a smile bend the seams of his own face as he looked round his nose at him." The nose stands for the obstacle of the self. Goody, who acts as an important object of love and lust, ultimately dies while giving birth. Jocelin initially sees her as the perfect woman. People best know this British novelist, poet, and playwright for this novel. Golding spent two years, focusing on sciences, in Oxford but changed his educational emphasis to English, especially Anglo-Saxon, literature.He opened his eyes and found that he was looking away from the tower and out into the world.... He could see over the bending workmen ... the valleys of the three rivers that met by the cathedral close opened themselves up.... You could see that all those places which had been separate to feet and only joined by an act of reason were indeed part of a whole.

Comparisons between Goody and Rachel, Roger Mason's wife, are made throughout the novel. Jocelin believes Goody sets an example to Rachel, whom he dislikes for her garrulousness and for revealing that her marriage to Roger remains unconsummated. However, Jocelin overestimates Goody's purity, and is horrified when he discovers Goody is embarking upon an affair with Roger Mason. Tortured by envy and guilt, Jocelin finds himself unable to pray. He is repulsed by his sexual thoughts, referred to as "the devil" during his dreams. The spire seems to me an enterprise equal in braggadocio and confusion to the construction of the Tower of Babel in the book of Genesis." Nothing William Golding wrote about is what Golding wrote about—he was a master of metaphor, and his 1964 novel The Spire is a good example (as was his masterful Lord of the Flies, still on many reading lists). What you can notice immediately about a novel like this is that it has nothing to do with today's shabby 'historical fiction' trend. Such books merely transpose today's sensationalism to a remote timeperiod; but deliver nothing more than the same tawdry potboiler intrigues we're familiar with from TV. This section possibly contains original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding inline citations. Statements consisting only of original research should be removed. ( July 2021) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message)Dean Jocelin is the character through whom the novel is presented. Golding uses the stream of consciousness technique to show his Lear-like descent into madness. The novel charts the destruction of his self-confidence and ambition. As the construction of the spire draws to an end, Jocelin is removed from his position as Dean and his abandonment of his religious duties is denounced by the church Council. Ultimately, he succumbs to his illness which he had personified as his guardian angel.

I have so much will, it puts all other business by. I am like a flower that is bearing fruit. There is a preoccupation about the flower as the fruit swells and the petals wither; a preoccupation about the whole plant, leaves dropping, everything dying but the swelling fruit. That's how it must be. My will is in the pillars and the high wall. I offered myself; and I am learning. (92) I thought it would be simple. I thought the spire would complete a stone bible, be the apocalypse in stone. I never guessed in my folly that there would be a new lesson at every level, and a new power. Nor could I have been told. I had to build in faith, against advice. That's the only way. (103) 'I tell you, we guess. We judge that this or that is strong enough; but we can never tell until the full strain comes on it whether we were right or wrong.' (111) '...D'you think you can escape? You're not in my net—oh yes, Roger, I understand a number of things, how you are drawn, and twisted, and tormented—but it isn't my net. It's His. We can neither of us avoid this work. And there's another thing. I've begun to see how we can't understand it either, since each new foot reveals a new effect, a new purpose. It's senseless, you think. It frightens us, and it's unreasonable. But then—since when did God ask the chosen ones to be reasonable? They call this Jocelin's Folly, don't they?'Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2021-02-10 14:01:07 Boxid IA40059022 Camera Sony Alpha-A6300 (Control) Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier Golding respects the way medieval individuals actually might have thought, felt, or spoken in their world --not in ours. He 'keeps faith' with them; even though this renders them awkward and unfamiliar to our eyes and ears. It is difficult material; but Golding conquered it in the writing and you must conquer it in the reading. That is the arrangement here. You keep up with him, rather than him pandering to you. It's refreshing in that respect. I have loved Lord of the Flies since we read it in English Literature class at school and have read it again a couple of times since. It occurred to me a few days ago that, despite my love of Lord of the Flies it has never even entered my head to try any other William Golding books. With this in mind, I bought Golding’s fifth novel The Spire.