Pincher Martin is the third novel by the British writer , Nobel Prize winner in literature, William Golding , first published by Faber & Faber in 1956 . (Another version of the translation - "grabber Martin"). Criticism, praising the novel, classifies it among the most deep and complex works of Golding [1] . In the United States, the novel was published under the heading Christopher Martin’s Two Deaths: publishers feared that the American reader might not be aware of the slang meaning of the word “pincher” - “petty thief.”
| Thief martin | |
|---|---|
| Pincher martin | |
| Author | William Golding |
| Genre | Allegory , Robinsonade |
| Original language | English |
| Original published | 1956 |
| Publisher | Faber & faber  |
Content
- 1 History
- 1.1 Content
- 2 Criticism Reviews
- 3 notes
History
It is believed that with the publication of Gold’s third novel, the “primitive” period in his work ended. Nevertheless, “The Thief Martin” had common features with the first two novels: it again spoke about the struggle for survival. Revealing the allegorical meaning of the novel, Golding wrote: “I did everything I could to show in Pincher (“ Thieves ”) the most unpleasant of all possible people. I wanted to look at the critics who were talking that “we are all like that”. A thief has been a thief all his life. But then his hour came, and God called him to his name: Christopher. "
Golding added that his novel is a parable about a man who, at first, lost everything he aspired to so much in life, and then “accepted the challenge of his God with an act of free will” and entered into rivalry with him. “Such is an ordinary person: tormented and tormenting others, leading a brave battle against God alone,” the author wrote [2] .
Contents
Golding’s third novel, with the first two combined only with a storyline related to the human struggle for survival, tells the story of a crashed torpedo bomber named Christopher Martin, who, having gathered his last strength, climbs a cliff and takes his island. The hero, whom the author ironically compares with Prometheus , makes titanic efforts to save and demonstrates a seemingly heroic will to live. In the finale, it becomes clear that Martin died already in the first seconds of his stay at sea; further events developed only in his dying consciousness. Thus, the whole narrative is a symbolic depiction of Martin’s stay “in the purgatory of his conscience”: the hero, as it were, “holds the answer for what he has done in life - the life of an ordinary, in no way, wonderful person”, burdened with, nevertheless, complete a set of human vices [2] .
First, the author makes the reader sympathize with the heroic efforts of Martin, dictated by the will to live; then he acquaints him with the hero closer, and the first impression is replaced by an aversion to his tenacity, compared with the tenacity of Prometheus. The spectacular ending (when the sailors landing on the island conclude on some details that Martin died immediately after climbing up here) leads the reader to the idea that the petty struggle for life is ridiculous for a man whose “visible existence is like a voluntary purgatory, a refusal accept God's grace and die. ”
The narrative in the novel is intermittent, using “flashes” of reminiscences, which, as the Southern Review wrote ...
... work at different levels. Being, on the one hand, the result of the dying activity of a dying brain that scrolls the hero’s past life, on the other, they are in constant interaction - both with each other and with episodes of Martin’s illusory struggle for life ... In addition, they build a six-day structure of everything of this dying life experience: this structure, containing the timelessness in which the islanders' fictitious events take place, serves as a terrifying parody of the six days of Creation ...
- Southern Review on Pincher Martin
“What we are observing is a process of 'creation' in which a person tries to create himself as a god-in-himself; this process is accelerating every day, ”concludes the reviewer.
Criticism Reviews
The novel "The Thief Martin", which had some plot similarities with a number of works of the past (such as Odyssey , Robinson Crusoe , the story of Ambrose Beers, " The Case on the Bridge over the Owl Stream "), is a philosophical allegory designed to continue the study "The darkness of the human soul", begun in the first two works of Golding, " Lord of the Flies " and " Heirs " [3] . Many critics considered the novel as a kind of version of the modern myth of Prometheus , "a man who robbed the celestials and, as a punishment, chained Zeus to the rock" [2] .
Stephen Medcalf in the book “William Golding” came to the conclusion that Golding’s novel is the most autobiographical at that time: the author “entrusted” Martin with many events of his Oxford life, theatrical activity, a call to the fleet, and besides - a fear of gloom (which filled the space of the cemetery, which was located near the house where he spent his childhood); fear left with him all his life. “Darkness becomes for <the author> a universal symbol: it is the darkness of a creature lacking the ability to see itself ... the darkness of the subconscious, the darkness of sleep, death and death — heaven” [1] , - wrote Medkalf.
Notes
- ↑ 1 2 William Golding (link not available) . www.edupaperback.org. Date of treatment August 13, 2010. Archived March 2, 2003.
- ↑ 1 2 3 E.A. Lebedeva. The development of the literary quest of Golding . www.xserver.ru. Date of treatment August 13, 2010.
- ↑ A.A. Chameev. William Golding - writer of parables . www.philology.ru / Favorites: Novels, parable. - M., 1996. Date of treatment August 13, 2010.