| This study investigates William Golding's concern with the fateful significance of archetypes in man's life and history. Rather than using a purely literary and intellectual approach to myth as outlined by Eliot and Frye, this study relies upon the non-literary theorists of myth, such as Jung, Neumann, Rudolf Otto, Eliade, Nietzsche and others. Recognizing that the archetypes do not originate in the consciousness of the artist, but irrupt from a source that is "holy," numinous and mysterious in nature, this study focuses on the non-rational and pre-cognitive content of Golding's works, manifested in complexes of symbols both creative and destructive. Defined generically as mythic narratives, Golding's works generate a sense of the "otherworldly," evoke sacred myths and icons, and demonstrate recurrence.;In Golding's narratives, the emergence of an archetype begins with the stirrings of a character's or a group's supernatural fear, the mysterium tremendum, a condition resulting in regression into sin, perversion and madness and the terror of judgment of the gods in the unconscious. The archetypal process is bipolar, embodying the dark as well as the light, malefic as well as benefic factors, and corresponds to the myth of the Fall and Redemption and the Eliadean notion of cycles of chaos and cosmos. Some of the archetypes present are: Beelzebub, Prometheus, Whore of Apocalypse, Great Mother, Dionysus, Christ of Incarnation, Hades, Shaman, and the Self. The last three narratives contain initiatory rites of purgation, individuation, and confirmation into mythic roles. |
