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nial oppressor he becomes the supporter of the liberation movement.

The following extract taken from Key to the Door shows

Brian's reflections after he has made his choice, and

allowed the Malayan partisan to escape;

.. Urian leaned against a tree screaming with lau hter, a mad hu­ morous rage tearing itself out. "And I let him go! Odgcson and all you bastards, I lei him go because he was a comrade! I didn't kill him be­ cause he was a man" The certain knowledge that he had been a bandit was a list that made him lie down in the soil, curl up and go on laughing, separate from himself yet unable to look on, roaring at the outcome of his own safely no maller what the man had been. The bastard though,

I should a pulled the rille up to my shoulder and pinned him to the soil

with a bullet like he would have done lome with his kriss if I'd given him hall the chance. He smoked a cigarette: I'd better gel hack and sec if the others have found the plane. But if any clever bastard says to me: "Why aren't yo' the army'" I'll give him lhl' biggest mouthful he's ever heard..

"What did you do in the war. dacP" "I caught a communist and let

him go. "What did you do that for then'" "Because he was a man. And not everybody'll look at me gone-out. "Brian, my lad, I'm proud o'you, the old man would say...

The description of hard living conditions and the re­ flection of the fruitless protest of the younger generation was not new in post-war English literature. Moreover, it became the leading feature of most works about the young generation. The innovation in Sillitoe's novel Key to the Door lies in the honest attempts of the hero to find his aim in life. his key to the door He finally achieves this and it opens for him a new way in life. The third novel of the trilogy about the Seatons is The Open Door (1989). It is equally autobiographical and it shows the problems a mod­ ern writer is faced with.

The hero of Sillitoc's other novels- The Death of

William Posters (1965), A Tree on Fire (1967) is a young worker from Nottingham, Frank Dawley who does not want

to live in conformity with bourgeois morals. What he hates most in people is the spirit of philistinism and compromise. He feels it in himself, too, and tries to overcome it. He leaves the country and joins the liberation movement in Algiers. Yet the evolution of Frank's outlook and, unfortu­ nately, that of the author himself, is not a straight and well-defined process, it is complicated and often coillradic­ lory.

After the novels of the 60s Sillitoe, a truly gifted writer, and excellent story-teller, began to be influenced by that very spirit of compromise which at first he had exposed. At times he still truthfully reflects the fighting spirit of the working people, as he docs, for example, in the story The Pit Strilw (1973). The striving for commercial success and conformity to the tastes of the bourgeois public are clearly seen in many of his works of the 70s: A Start In Life (1970), a picaresque novel, Travels in Nihilon (1971), a philos­ ophical one, are much weaker than those of the 60s.

In the autobiographical novel Raw Material (1971) as well as in The Storyteller (1976) Silliloe deals with the problem of corelalion of life and art.

SID CHAPLIN

(1916-1 986)

Sid Chaplin was the son of a miner and a miner himself. In 1948 he published his first collection of short stories The Leaping Lad, later the novels The Thin Seam (1951) and The Big Room (1960) dedicated to the working-class. But they were not a success. Only after the publication of his third novel The Day of Sardine (1961) did his name become well known at home and abroad.

The Day of the Sardine is the confession of a young boy

who has just started his independent life. Arthur is very lonely; he is eager to have friends, to be loved by others, but all goes wrong in his life. The fate of teenagers in society is the main problem of the novel. Sid Chaplin does not try to teach the reader, but the simple and realistic story of his hero strikes the reader with its truthfulness.

The title of the novel is symbolic. At the beginning of the novel Harry Parker, a worker living as a lodger at Arthur's house, tells him a short tale about sardine-fish­ ing. He speaks of small sardines which are caught in great numbers. Harry means the passive indifferent people, who do not want to fight for their future. The old worker warns Arthur against the danger of becoming such a sardine: "Don't be a sardine", he says,- "swim for yourself" These words of the old worker illustrate the basic idea of the author· the young people of England should be the makers of their own future. They should fight for it.

The action of Chaplin's second novel The Watchers and

the Watched (1962) is set in an industrial town in the North of England and the main character is a worker trying to

understand his environment and himself. Chaplin charac­ terizes this novel as "the book of working-class mar­ riages" But the real value of it goes far beyond this. First Tim Mayson tries to solve the problems of his private life. But very soon he finds this too simple to be his only aim in life and turns to social events. Tim gets involved in a local strike of protest against bad housing, then fights for the rights of coloured immigrants.

We cannot say that Tim Mayson is either a conscious

fighter for a better future or a revolutionary But the ideas of the "glorious proletarian traditions" of the past arc still alive in Tim's mind and they help him to find his aim in

I if e.

Chaplin's novel Sam in the Morning (1965), is no longer the story of a man with a working-class back­ ground. It is an exposure of the contemporary capitalist

world which favours people who achieve success by con­

forming to the laws of society, by following the principle of

non-committal. His last novel The Alabaster Mines

(197t) is a proof of the author's drifting away from the problems of his best novels; it shows his compromise with

society

STAN BARSTOW

(b. 1928)

Stan Barstow is another novelist whose name is connected with the development of the working-class novel. Like Sid Chaplin he comes from a miner's family, knows wor­ king-class liie and understands it perfectly. A Kind of Lou­ ing (1960) won immediate acknowledgement and was una­ nimously labelled by critics as a working-class novel.

It is a story about a young lad working at the office of a small factory. Vic Brown is not a worker like the charac­ ters of Sillitoe and Chaplin, he is a clerk. But his working­ class origin (Vic's father is a miner) brings him very near to the workers. The writer traces the process through which a working-class family becomes bourgeois. This, in the author's opinion, is one of the problems facing the modern English working class.

Vic Brown thinks neither of the future, nor of the ways to make it better He lives in the present, and the problems which worry him concern, mostly, his private life. We feel that Vic is not always happy, he is bored and lonely, his

dream of a great love is gone, he is dissatisfied both with his private life and with his work.

The main character of Barstow's next novel Asll me Tomorrow (1962) is Wilf Cotton, a writer He comes from a mining village which he soon leaves for a nearby city where he hopes to better understand man's nature and

develop his artistic talent.

He cannot yet find an answer to all the life-problems

but he is sure that "next year will be better than to-day, if

only you can get to the centre of it and find what you want", as he says to his friend. If Vic Brown takes every­

thing for granted, believes in all the official propaganda, Wilf Cotton very often feels doubts and tries to think for himself. His division of all writers into "creators" and "caterers" speaks of a serious and thoughtful approach to literature. "There are two kinds of writers broadly speak­ ing: the caterers and the creators, and they can be found at all levels... The caterers work to satisfy a ready-made market... The creators work to make their own market.

Some of them have a hard time at the beginning and a lot of them never make much money all their lives. But at least the people who know them and read them can trust them to give them a square deal"

We cannot say, however, that Wili Cotton found an­

swers to all the problems he faced but he is eager to find them.

In 1965 Stan Barstow wrote the novel The Watchers on

the Shore, which is a sequel to A Kind of Loving. The final

novel of the frilogy, with Vic Brown as the main character, is The Right True End (1976).

The novel The Watchers on the Shore, is considerably

weaker than A Kind of Loving. It does not raise the im­

portant social problems of the English working class,

neither does it touch on the problem of the search for per­

sonal happiness. This book is an example of a "well-made" novel without particular depth of thought.

The Right True End is, unfortunately, as weak as the second novel. Vic has become an engineer and has achieved personal happiness and financial security. The son of a miner joins the middle class, which he so longed to do.

Barstow has lost interest in the working-class theme, which was so important for him in his youth.

The working-class novel of the 50-GOs in England

united many writers besides those mentioned above. Here belong Raymond Williams whose novels Border-country

(1960) and Second Generation (1964) help to understand the development of the working-class novel to a greater extent; David Storey (This Sporting Life, 1960), David Stuart Leslie (In my Solitude, 1960) and others.

The rise of the working-class novel, which came about in the 60s, was followed by a period of relative decline in the 70s. The number of novels dedicated to the workers' theme grew smaller. Most of the writers turned their at­ tention to the past. One of the most interesting works of the decade is Saville (1976) by David Storey. The novel gives a detailed description of the life of a Yorkshire miner's family and draws true-to-life portr'aits of the workers. It also shows the conflict between the miners and the local bourgeoisie. Yet Saville can hardly be called a working­ class novel. The main character, Colin Saville, breaks his ties with the workers' community and goes in search of ideals which, however, are very vague and uncertain. The author also fails to depict the class conflict which has always been an essential element of a truly realistic social work.

The early 80s in England were marked by a sharpening

of class contradictions brought about by the economic policy of Margaret Thatcher's conservative government. The great strike of the miners (1984-1985) demonstrated their resolution to defend their rights as well as the sol­ idarity of the proletariat and the progressives of the whole world.

I. When did the working-class novel appear in English literature? Who was its initiator? 2. What is Sillitoe's novel Key to the Door about?

3. What is the main problem of S. Chaplin's novel The Dau of the Sar­

dine? 4. What process does Barstow trace in his novel A l(ind of Luuing?

5. Why c<Jnnot we call Saville a working-class novcP

I

THE PHILOSOPHICAL NOVEL

The political and social developments in the second half of the 20th century Jed the literary men of England to serious meditations on the future of mankind, the aim of

'llan's life, man's place in society. These problems are the

essence of the philosophical novel which came into ex­ istence in the early 50s. The most prominent represent­ atives of the genre are William Golding, Iris Murdoch, Colin Wilson and, to a certain extent, John Fowles.

Much of their work is influenced by the existentialist

philosophy of the French modernists Sartre, Camus and others. Subjective idealism lies at the basis of it. It dis­ regards the social preconditions of man's life. Human existence is considered by existentialism purposeless and absurd. According to the existentialists, society is a mere combin< tion of isolated individu< ls and each of them is free to act as he chooses. "Free choice" is one of the key moral concepts of existentialist philosophy.

None of the English writers followed the ide<Js of the French existentialists completely, yet existentialist moWs permeate their works. Their novels are marked by pes­ simism and fear Most of their heroes are lonely despairing individuals, powerless in a hostile and chaotic world. The

relations between people are usually characterized by indifference and alienation. Symbolism and allegory are the chief literary devices in the philosophical novel.

 

WILLIAM GOLDING

(b. 1911)

William Golding denies any links with existentialism, yet his ideas are close to it. His works are complicated, they are full of implication. In them modernistic elements go side by side with realistic ones, concrete pictures alternate with allegorical images. Golding himself called his novels fables, thus stressing their didactic nature. His aim, ac­ cording to the writer, is to record everything dark that he sees around, to show people the dark abyss into which they are, or may be thrown, to warn them against it and, if possible, to change their lives.

Golding was born in 1911 in Cornwall. He gra­

duated from Oxford University During World War II he served in the British Navy; later he worked as a school teacher in the town of Salisbury. The atrocities of fascists, the horrors of the war made him think of the nature of man and the future of mankind. All his novels, in one way or another, raise the problem of Good and Evil in man and society.

This problem has occupied people's thoughts for a long time. In the 18th century philosophers and writers thought that man was born good and virtuous and it was the ugly environment that could sometimes spoil him. Yet they believed in the ability of man's reason to defeat Evil. The complicated atmosphere of the 20th century, the two world wars, the moral crisis of society, violence and crime char­ acteristic of the modern world led some people, Golding among them, to see the cause of Evil in man's nature. In

his commentary on the novel Lord of the Flies (1954) he wrote: "He who has passed through the years of fascist violence and has not realised that Evil is inherent in man is either blind or insane" Like many others, Golding came to the pessimistic conclusion that evil was inherent in man, that man was born with a disposition to egoism, greed and violence

LORD OF THE FLIES

The novel Lord of the Flies was a result of the author's reflections upon fascism and its roots. It is an anti-utopian novel and was written as a parody of The Coral Island

(18.58) by R. M. Ballantyne, where three teenagers lead a happy and harmonious life on a Pacific island. In

Golding's novel a similar plot develops in an entirely different way A group of English children was taken on board a plane to a safer place because an atomic war had broken out. The plane crashed and the boys found them­ selves on an uninhabited island somewhere in the Pacific. The boys realised the necessity of rules that would regulate their life. One of the boys, Ralph, was elected Chief; they agreed to hold assemblies to discuss their problems. They gathered to the sound of a conch in his hands. Ralph sug­ gested building shelters and making a fire so that a ship sailing by might notice the smoke and come to their rescue, A group of boys with Jack at the head were to hunt for pigs, the others were to keep the fire burning. To make a fire the boys used the glasses one of the boys, Piggy, wore.

Gradually, the hunters grew more and more fierce. The

sense of their power, the smell and sight of blood and fresh meat brought out savage instincts in them. They painted

their faces and bodies, after the hunt they used to dance

imitating hunting scenes and singing "Kill the pig! Cut her throat! Spill the blood!" Once they put up the head of

a killed pig on a stick. Lord of the Flies- the ugly-looking head, covered with flies, became a symbol of their power As time passed, more and more boys gave up the tiresome job of building the shelters and keeping the fire and joined the hunters. Jack who had always been jealous of Ralph's authority did his best to establish his power over them. He skilfully made use of the boys' fear of the Beast which, as they thought, lived on the top of the mountain. Soon there

were only Ralph, Piggy and Simon to keep the fire burning.

One day Simon, a very shy, but intelligent and bright

boy, decided to find out whether there really was any beast on the island. He climbed the mountain and saw that the thing they were all so afraid of was nothing but the dead boby of an airman. Simon hurried down the mountain to tell the boys that they did not need to be afraid of the Beast. It was already dark, the boys were having a dance. Over­ come by fear and blood-thirst they mistook Simon for the beast and killed him.

One night Jack and the other hunters ruined Ralph's and Piggy's shelter, beat them and stole Piggy's glasses to make a fire for roasting meat. Some boys were sent to guard the hunter's camp against the enemy-- Ralph and Piggy. These two made an attempt to tell the hunters how unreasonable their behavior was, but the guard, on Jack's order, killed Piggy. The beautiful conch that Piggy was holding in his hands broke to pieces. Ralph had to hide himself in the forest. Jack and his boys hunted him. They set the wood on fire. Fortunately the smoke was noticed from a ship sailing by and Ralph was saved. To the grown­ ups the dramatic events on the island seemed no more than a children's game. But Ralph knew it was not.

Here is the last scene of the novel:

...The tears began to flow and sobs shook him. He gave himself up to them now for lhe first time on the island; great, shuddering spasms of grief that seemed to wrench his whole body. His voice rose under the black smoke before lhe burning wreckage of the island; and infected by that emotion, the other little boys began lo shake and sob too. And in the mid­ dle of them, with filthy body, matted hair, and unwiped nose, Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy...

Like the existentialists Golding believes society to con­ sist of isolated individuals and, since Evil is inherent in each of them, there is always a danger that the whole society will go vicious. The novel Lord of the Flies is a warning to people not to let fascism, the worst form of Evil, revive. The novel is full of allegorical images, the main ones being the conch and the head of the killed pig. The former is a symbol of beauty, democracy, the latter, Lord of

the Flies, embodies chaos, Evil and savage power.

In his next work- The Inheritors (1955)- Golding places the scene in the remote past. To the land inhabited by primitive men, Neanderthals, new people come. They are more civilised than the natives but they are cruel, merciless and cunning. They are a caricature of homo sapiens. They

kill the natives and revel in blood. Golding means that the evolution of mankind does not improve people's morals, that civilisation only makes people more vicious. It is a purely existentialist view of the perspectives of mankind's development.

Golding's other works are the novels Pincher Martin (1956), Free Fall (1959), The Spire (1964), The Pyramid (1967), Darkness Visible (1979), Rites of Passage (1981), The Paper Men (1984), and the long short stories Envoy Extraordinary (1956), Scorpion God (1971).

He often presents his characters- either isolated indi­ viduals or small groups- in some extreme situations which bring out every man's basic traits, or his identity. Thus, Sam Mountjoy (Free Fall), when thrown into a concentration camp. betrays his comrades. He traces back his whole life and realises that his moral fall is the result of the numerous wrong "choices" he has made in the course of it. Another character, Jocelyn, (The Spire) is obsessed with an ambitious desire to build a high spire above the church.

He stops at nothing, sacrificing his own life and the lives of other people, to accomplish his plan.

The scene of the novel Darkness Visible is laid in pres­

ent-day Britain. The characters are mostly abnormal peo­

ple- thieves, madmen, maniacs. It tells the story of Matti, who, as a child, became a victim of the Nazi bombing of the London docks. Matti is kind and noble but very lonely because his burnt, ugly face scares people. In despair Matti leaves for Australia. A still greater misfortune be­ falls him there, he goes half-insane. He returns to England thinking himself a prophet. Though Matti dies saving a kidnapped child from a fire he is not a positive character. He makes friends with an evil old man and commits a crime. Golding stresses that the evil side of man's nature can easily triumph over the good one.

The life of Matti is shown against the background of English social life. Economic decline, immorality, violence, terrorism are characteristic of it. An English critic called the novel "a picture of England in the surrounding darkness"

However pessimistic Golding's books are, they pursue a highly humanist aim- to helg_people do away with Evil. The writer himself compared his books to a street sign, warning people of danger. A pessimist, he says, would have never put up the sign.

For his contribution to world literature Golding was

awarded the Nobel Prize in 1983.

 

IRIS MURDOCH

(b. 1919)­

t'f'lq)

Iris Murdoch may well be considered the initiator of the genre of the philosophical novel. In her novels one can find the most typical examples of correlation between philos­ ophical ideas and life.

She was born in Dublin into an Anglo-Irish family She

graduated from Oxford University and after the war lec­ tured in philosophy both at Oxford and Cambridge. In her philosophical studies she followed Sartre, a famous French philosopher, and his existentialism.

The main problem in art, as Murdoch sees it, is the problem of man's personality The novel, in her opinion, should touch upon the complicated moral aspects of man's life and the enigma of his individuality. Philosophical truths, she thinks, should be presented not in the form of abstract ideas but through well-drawn portraits of charac­ ters. Yet her method of portrayal is far from realistic. Nor does she ever give a concrete setting to her novels, it is usually only some small detail that helps the reader realize the time and place of action. Her early novels are practical­ ly devoid of a coherent plot and consist of a number of disunited episodes, reflecting the chaos characteristic of the modern world.

All her novels have a more or less similar composition: they contain a set of five or six personages who intercon­ nect and interact with each other.

Murdoch values a romantic dreamer in man. Such is

Jake Donaghue in her first novel Under the Net (1954). The

novel tells the story of his wanderings about Bohemian London and Paris. Jake attempts to find his own way in life. He wants to get away from the net of conventional ideas and notions and work out his own mode of thinking. The author's attention is concentrated on the psycholog­ ical analysis of her hero's inner world, the world which is ruled not by laws but by man's strivings and aspirations.

In her second novel The Flight from the Enchanter (1956) the author deals with a different sort of illusion. All the characters are under spells and enchantments, they are

held in a kind of emotional captivity. The principal charac­ ter, Misha Fox, exercises a spell over other people, yet he feels no responsibility for the effects of his influence.

The title of the novel The Sandcastle (1957), like those of her other works, is symbolic. The love between a married schoolmaster and a young teacher, whose name is Rain,

cannot last; it is a castle of sand. Human beings are unable to build anything lasting out of their deceptive dreams, and the castles of their dreams either crumble or are washed

away.

In Murdoch's novel The Bell (1958) a group of people in a religious community attempt to place a bell on the

tower of the nearby abbey, but accidentally it falls into the lake. Thus, the bell becomes part of another illusion, the image of another unsuccessful human attempt to build some sort of happiness.

For the first time the author takes up a historical sub­

ject in her novel The Red and the Green (1965), which deals with the Easter Rebellion of 1916, a major event in the Irish

national liberation movement. However, we cannot call the

novel a historical one. All its characters are fictitious; the only real name is that of Patrick Pearse, a teacher and a poet, who was executed by the English after the Easter Rebellion. The author concentrates her attention on the psychology of the fighters, on their patriotism. Through their characters Murdoch shows the romance of the con­ temporary national liberation movement.

In the late 1960s there came a change in Murdoch's philosophical orientation. She took up the ideas of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato and tried to work out some positive ethical ideals. In her lectures as well as the novels of the period- The Nice and The Good (1968), Bruno's Dream (1969), A Fairly Honourable Defeat (1970)- Mur­ doch asserted that good deeds were the most powerful means to overcome one's loneliness. An illustration of this

6 AnrnHACKBR nJITefiiT}'PB 161

thesis is Diana's (Bruno's Dream) resolution to dedicate herself entirely to the care of her decrepit old father-in-law­ after her dramatic separation from her husband.

Another cornerstone of her nco-platonic philosophy is

the problem of love. Murdoch investigates different mani­ festations and aspects of this human feeling. She shows selfish and disinterested, passionate and rational love, love verging on hatred and self-sacrificing love. The most elevated form of love, m Murdoch's opinion, is the one that inspires man for artistic creation. Characteristic of the writer's preocupation with this theme is the novel The Black Prince.

THE BLACK PRINCE

The main themes in the novel The Black Prince

{ 1973) are those of love and chance. It seems that every­ thing in people's lives happens by chance, that there is something fatal that influences people's destinies. In the

author's opinion this fatality is created by the people themselves, by their passions, their deeds and intentions.

Bradley Pearson, the main character of the novel, is,

quite by chance, a person who influences the lives of all

other personages, especially, of the Baffin family. Arnold Baffin is a prosperous commercial novelist. His private life is one of routine. Rachel, his wife, once persuades herself that she has fallen in love with Bradley Pearson, who seems attached to her Very soon, however, Pearson understands that he loves Julian, Baffin's daughter

The action of the novel develops quite rapidly. Bradley and Julian have a few happy days together. Then due to her parents they are forced to separate. Bradley Pearson is unjustly accused of the murder of Arnold Baffin. He is put into prison and dies there. It is there that he creates his best novel, in which he tells of his life.

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