William Golding uses in his work words and aspects which carry mystic, religious, and also mythological meanings. All his novels are about annihilating civilization, the degeneration of the main characters and not only, but also about symbolic elements without which his work would not have come to life. These symbols are, most of all, objects, characters, but also immaterial symbols.
Golding himself, when talking about religion, states that the word “religion” is not enough to portray what he wants to communicate:
“I whish, for example, to promulgate religion; therefore, I will be religious or mystical about it.” (Jack I. Biles, 1970: 103).
The ideas that Golding puts forward show great similarities with views expressed by the mystics. Gunnel considers him “likely to abide to the Augustian verdict: <<…woe unto me if I do not speak of the things of God.>>”.
The mystic elements that occur most often in Golding’s novels are: the good and the evil, and symbols connected with these: angel – demon, light – dark, pride – humility, and also sun, sacrifice, snake, Satan, death, vision, tree, will, seven, and many others. The balance between good and evil is sometimes overwhelmed in the favor of the later (for example in Pincher Martin) but except the novel mentioned, good always makes it by the end even if not entirely as a winner. In this chapter we will deal only with symbols directly related with good and evil, all being religious, mystical or mythological, or all, some of them being only good, some only evil and some both or neither. This is the duality most frequent in the
mysticism. But we have also other dualities in other aspects that, all of them drive us to these two concepts: good and evil.
One of these is
Yin and
Yang symbol and duality. The Symbol (Yin-Yang) represents the ancient Chinese understanding of how things work. The outer circle represents "everything", while the black and
white shapes within the circle represent the interaction of two energies, called "yin" (black) and "yang" (white), which cause everything to happen. They are not completely black or white, just as things in life are not completely black or white, and they cannot exist without each other. Yin is made from yin which means “clouds”, “clouded weather” and fu meaning “hill”. Yang is made of yang, meaning “sun”, “sunny hill” and again fu. So, they refer to the dark or light side of a hill, and therefore the dark and light side of everuthing.
More reviews about the Mystical, Religious and Mythological Elements in William Golding