A review by whysoserious
Darkness Visible by William Golding

challenging dark emotional mysterious sad slow-paced

• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

SPOILER ALERT

What an epic piece of literature! Golding is concerned with questions of judgment, morality, community, and spirituality but does not seek easy answers. We explore the invisibility of the ghastly looking Matty, people avoiding his gaze and rarely mentioning by name. Golding paints the injustice of a beautiful soul being trapped within a deformed body whilst the twins despite being exquisitely beautiful are hideous creatures underneath.

The style of writing is poetic and contains some fantastic sections though can be overtly verbose. The scenes in which Matty experiences hallucinatory connections with spirits and the events in the Australian ‘outback’ though imaginative and vivid required attention. Despite the power and imaginary the reader can easily get lost in these extensive sections of fantasy.

The novel is complex, multi-layered and seems to allude to the intricate nature of the human condition and psyche. One was exasperated at the ambiguity of the novel, what is Golding getting at with this type of novel? What is the actual story behind the story? The ‘bad guys’ are given forgiveness from the ‘good guy’ – the child molester is given the chance yet ultimately fails in changing his ways.

There is a sense of small community ‘knowing’ of the abusive nature of a former teacher yet at no time does anyone speak out, preferring to give knowing glances and gently ushering their children away from the molester. Given the recent events in the UK with sex scandals it has power – possibly more so than when it was written.

“We’re all mad, the whole damned race. We’re wrapped in illusions, delusions, confusions about the penetrability of partitions, we’re all mad and in solitary confinement.”

I have always been interested in the psyche of the human species. Creating our own realities, our own delusional ways of thinking that are completely at odds with reality. Each and every person believes what they see is ‘true’ but with every religion, experience, culture and way of thinking comes the inherent risk of believing what we think, feel and see is fact. These two lines sum up with clarity what I have always believed… nobody is free from their own internal prison.

“We think we know”… “Know? That’s worse than an atom bomb, and always was.”

Final Thought: Parking the need to know what Golding’s message was to one side this is a strange novel. At times it was captivating. At other times it was a confused, chaotic, drawn out mass of words that left my head spinning with imagery. The characters were not characters I could related to; the angelic ‘Matty’ with the tormented facial scars, the nasty little girls growing up into sexualised, terror-seeking psychopaths and the hideous Mr Pedigree – child sex fiend extraordinaire – just didn’t garner my sympathies. If you liked Lord of the Flies you will probably be disappointed. This piece of work was the only one that Golding had a struggle sculpting and I can honestly understand why.