Biblical and Classical Metaphor in Darkness Visible

Abstract

When Rites of Passage won the Booker prize as best British novel of 1980, it was as though the wheel had come full circle. Not only was a Golding novel heading the best-seller list, but, for the first time since Lord of the Flies, he had written a book which had won wide acclaim and was clearly a great popular success. And Golding in person was there to see it on its way, giving interviews to the press, appearing on TV, and speaking at length in his simple, direct, slightly self-deprecating way about all his most recent published works. All, is to say, except Darkness Visible, the work had appeared in print only a few months before Rites of Passage. On this earlier novel, Golding was saying nothing. fact of the matter is, he wrote to one critic, that for a number of reasons Darkness Visible is the one of my books I have refused to talk about: and the more I have been pressed, the more stubborn my refusal has become. Such reluctance is not uncommon in writers, but when it is as determined as this, there is at least a hint to the reader of a complexity great enough to inhibit a simple response. Golding once said he knew about symbols without knowing what he knew; he had never heard of levels of meaning but he experienced them.1 In none of his previous books is the evidence of this clearer than in Darkness Visible. Yet, as in most of his works, the clues as to how it is to be read are there right from the beginning. It is immediately clear, for instance, the boy Matty, who so miraculously walks from the fire in war-time London in the first chapter, is no ordinary boy. The first response of the fireman is incredulity, not only because small children do not normally walk out of fires are melting lead and distorting iron,2 but because children had no reason