Philosophical novel. W. Golding, I. Murdoch.

                                                      THE PHILOSOPHICAL NOVEL

The political and social developments in the second half of the 20th century led the literary men of England to serious meditations on the future of mankind, the aim of man's life, man's place in society. These problems are the essence of the philosophical novel which came into existence in the early 1950s. The most prominent representatives 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. Existentialism is a view of the world that stresses the uniqueness and isolation of individual experience in an indifferent and even hostile universe. Human existence is meaningless and absurd, yet people somehow can and do control their destiny through freedom of choice. Thus, ultimately every person must take responsibility for whatever he or she does. When individuals realize that they are completely responsible for their decisions, actions and beliefs, they are overcome by anxiety. They try to escape from this anxiety by ignoring or denying their freedom. The existentialists criticize this flight from freedom and responsibility into self-deception.

They insist that individuals must accept full responsibility for their behaviour, no matter how difficult it may be. If a person wants to live a decent and meaningful life in the alien and absurd world one must become fully aware of the true character of the human situation and bravely accept it. None of the English writers followed the ideas of the French existentialists completely, yet existentialist motifs permeate their works. Their novels are marked by pessimism 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 (1911—1993)

William Golding denied any links with existentialism, yet his ideas are close to it. His works are complicated, they are full of implication. In them modernist elements go side by side with realist ones, concrete pictures alternate with allegorical images. Golding himself called his novels fables, thus stressing their didactic nature. His aim, according 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 graduated 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 characteristic of the modem 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 bom with a disposition to egoism, greed and violence.

He often presents his characters — either isolated individuals 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 present-day Britain. The characters are mostly abnormal people — 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 befalls 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 help 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.

    Golding's major work of the last period is the Sea Trilogy which consists of Rites of Passage (1980), Close Quarters (1987) and Fire Down Below (1989) set on an old ship bound for Australia during the Napoleonic wars. Like his other works the trilogy combines elements of several genres: a sea novel, a historical and a psychological ones. At the same time it is a profound philosophical fable dealing with such problems as man versus society and the contradictory prospects of human progress. For his contribution to world literature Golding was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1983.

                          IRIS MURDOCH (1919—1999)

   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 philosophical ideas and life. She was born in Dublin into an Anglo-Irish family. She graduated from Oxford University and after the war lectured 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 characters. 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 practically devoid of a coherent plot and consist of a number of disunited episodes, reflecting the chaos characteristic of the modem world. All her novels have a more or less similar composition: they contain a set of five or six personages who interconnect 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 psychological 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 ofemotional captivity. The principal character, 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 artist, 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 subject 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 contemporary 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) — Murdoch asserted that good deeds were the most powerful means to overcome one's loneliness. An illustration of this 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 neo-platonic philosophy is the problem of love. Murdoch investigates different manifestations 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, in Murdoch's opinion, is the one that inspires man for artistic creation. Characteristic of the writer's preoccupation 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 everything in people's lives happens by chance, that there is something fatal that influences human destinies. In the author's opinion this fatality is created by the people themselves, by their passions, 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 and love. The following short extract from the novel renders Pearson's, and, evidently, Murdoch's own idea of the present-day world and man's destiny in it:

      Since the 1970s Murdoch's novels such as A Word Child (1975), The Sea, the Sea (1978), The Philosopher's Pupil (1983), The Book and the Brotherhood (1987) and others have acquired a more definite social background. The construction of the plot has become less schematic, the characters have grown more life-like and their actions have become more socially motivated though therelations between the personages of her novels are as always complicated and entangled. Her last novels were The Message to the Planet (1989), The Green Knight (1994) and Jackson's Dilemma (1995).

   Murdoch is a contradictory writer. A search for moral values goes in her novels side by side with the assertion that the world is a place of continuous suffering where there is no room for any sort of lasting ties or relations. Alongside a truthful presentation of life she creates a mystical world. Her work is marked with an original endeavour to reflect the complicated relations between people in the world of today.