When William Golding's Pincher Martin appeared in 1956, it was eagerly received by an audience well prepared for another survival narrative along lines of Lord of Flies and The Inheritors. At first glance new novel seemed to fit mould very well. It departed from others in having a nearly contemporary setting, being story of survivor of a torpedoed British destroyer during Second World War. The novel begins with eponymous hero struggling in icy Atlantic. Christopher Hadley Martin--like all Martins in Navy, called Pincher--had been on bridge at time of sinking. After a painfully rendered struggle he crawls up on an isolated rock in North Atlantic. The balance of novel is an account of his indomitable struggle to survive while awaiting rescue. So described, novel could take its place alongside such accounts of survival as Golding's own Lord of Flies, or prototype of them all, Robinson Crusoe. But Pincher Martin's so-called surprised and offended many of its early readers. The survival narrative concludes with Martin experiencing hallucinations as his ordeal appears to draw to a fatal conclusion. The last chapter is a sort of coda in which Captain Davidson (an entirely new character) retrieves corpse of unfortunate Martin from a Mr. Campbell who has found it. The trick is answer to Mr. Campbell's query about Martin's suffering. Captain Davidson comforts him by remarking--in very last words of novel, didn't even have time to kick off his seaboots (208). Only most inattentive reader would have forgotten that Martin kicked off his sea boots on page 10. On rereading novel after this ending, it is clear that Martin died on second page, but since story continues as a survival narrative after that point, readers invariably cross out his death, until forced to reconsider at novel's close. Arnold Johnston notes that reviewers assailed conclusion as another Golding gimmick, recalling Ambrose Bierce's 'An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge' (104). But even Bierce short story has proven to be a poor analogue for Pincher Martin, since by end of story it is clear that Bierce's protagonist imagines escape and flight in short moment between opening of gallows trapdoor and snap of his neck. A re-reading of Pincher Martin forces recognition that it is a post mortem narrative, and not a moment-of-death narrative.(1) Many of Golding's early critics were simply unwilling to entertain a belief in persistence of self and of consciousness after death, and were offended that Golding should expect it of them.(2) They tried all sorts of dodges to evade literal sense of this uncomfortable fable--including suggesting that Golding alter ending (Hilary Corke 80). Golding held firm. He told Jack I. Biles that Corke is, I suppose, a straightforward twentieth-century humanist, and this is not what I am, I don't think, and this isn't what book is about. No, I wouldn't change (Biles 70-71). Although most of his critics have now accepted undeniable fact that Golding is a writer who is interested in that most declasse of all religious topoi, life after death, some still object to Pincher Martin's ending. Don Crompton, in an otherwise very sensitive study, complains that in novel the poet in Golding was taking over from story-teller, poetic symbol [Promethean] from prosaic idea [Martin's evil nature], and all sorts of effects were being generated over which he had less than full control and whose complexity was steadily increasing (16). When asked about his intentions in Pincher Martin by Archie Campbell in a BBC interview shortly after novel's appearance, Golding gave a clear and unambiguous paraphrase of novel's theme: To achieve salvation, individuality--the persona--must be destroyed. …