THE SHAPE OF THE UNIVERSE IN PINCHER MARTIN
DR
A. RAMAKRISHNA RAO
In
Mr. Golding's Lord of the Flies, hailed
as a masterpiece in the academic circles on both sides of the Atlantic, there
is one revealing authorial statement that “the greatest ideas are the
simplest.” All his fictions more or less seem to confirm the truth of the
statement. But Golding, if one is permitted to say, whole-heartedly believes in
the critical “bull” of our academic patriarchs that modern literature is
obscure. Therefore, Golding’s simplest ideas which are no doubt the greatest
are inserted like his Pincher Martin into
a trench which is dug with an enormous imaginative power. His novels from Lord of the Flies to The Pyramid are brainteasers.
Unlike
most modern writers Golding has, as an artist, a program. He told an
interviewer:
In
all the books I have suggested a shape in the universe that may, as it were,
account for things. The greatest pleasure is not–say–sex or geometry. It is
just understanding. And if you can get people understand their own
humanity–well that’s the job of a writer.1
Precisely.
A shape in the universe does account for things and drives home the truth about
ourselves. And what attracts a sensitive reader in Golding is the way the
inspiring basic idea gets realized in and through the situation, character and
language. This basic idea may be called (in relation to what Golding himself
said about his program) a metaphysical idea in as much as it takes up the
problem of the individual in relation to his universe in which he is placed.
And a study of Golding’s fiction, therefore, involves a study of the structure
which embodies the idea and the verbal contraption wherein it is realized. In
other words, the structure and texture must be taken together. In this paper
the focus is on the contraption with the hope that it may lead to the structure
and the central idea.
Pincker Martin (published
in the U. S. A. as The Two Deaths of
Christopher Martin) presents the groping consciousness of a
sailor, from a torpedoed destroyer, floating in the Atlantic. The novel opens
with a breathtaking account of the sailor’s struggle in the sea.
He
was struggling in every direction, he was the centre of the writhing and
kicking knot of his body. There was no up or down, no light and no air. He felt
his mouth open of itself and the shrieked word burst out. “Help”! 2
In
these sentences the word “center” is important. It is the key word in the book.
Here a subtle distinction is made between “the body” and “the centre.” “He” is
identified with “the centre.” Significantly, we are not told the name of the
owner of “the body” because it has to serve a purpose, later, in chapter V. It
is easy to notice that the centre has no control over the body because “he”
identified with “the centre” felt his mouth open of itself. The form of the
narrative has centripetal and centrifugal movement. The novel has fourteen
chapters. The first eight chapters are centripetal in movement: the center
draws the body towards itself and establishes successful control over its
various members. The next five chapters are centrifugal in movement: the centre
loses control over the body and the body is reduced to its various members.
Chapter XIV is an odd twist in which we are explicitly told that the body is
dead even before the centre tried to control it.
That
the centre has no control over the body in the initial stages of the struggle
is made evident by the fact that “both books had left him.” The face becomes a
“snarl.” The center has no control over the face. But it controls “the snarl,”
implying that the attitude of the groping consciousness is connected with the
centre.
The
snarl thought words to itself. They were not articulate, but they were there in
a luminous way as a realization. Of course. My lefebelt.
“Lifebelt” by the
process of association leads to the present state. The snarl endures and the
centre thinks in an incoherent way:
Presently
it will be daylight.
I
must move from one point to another.
Enough
to see one move ahead.
Presently
it will be daylight.
I
shall see the wreckage.
I
won’t die.
I can’t die.
Not
me.
Precious.
Though the sentences
are simple declaratives, they contain in an embryonic way the shape of things
that explains the novel’s universe. “The Centre” likes to endure. But it is
afraid of darkness. “Daylight” helps identification so that things may be
brought under control and control affirms sense of existence. The body must be
kept in motion and motion reinforces the sense of existence. The centre cannot
die because it means nihil. The waves propel the body towards a rock and the
centre immediately clings to the rock.
His
mouth was needlessly open and his eyes so that he had a moment of close and
intent communion with the three limpets two small and one large that were only
an inch or two from the face.
“A
moment of close and intent communion with three limpets” is ironically
suggestive. The word “communion” has hieratic overtones, when it precedes
number three. In various contexts the number recurs with the objects: Three
rocks, three limpets, three mirrors. The Holy Trinity is replaced. The Holy
communion becomes a communion with parasites and distorters.
The
centripetal process starts with an “experiment” of moving the limbs. This is
followed by an attempt to think:
He
had a valuable thought, not because it was of immediate physical value but
because it gave him back a bit of his personality. He made words express the
thought, though they did not pass the barrier of his teeth.
Two ideas emerge from
this passage. One is that thoughts are inseparable from “personality.” The
other is that the centre shapes the personality. When the shaping centre melts
there is personality. The centre does not insist on the nature and quality of
“thought.” It wants mere “thought.” Movement exhausts the body. It falls and
snores.
But
inside, where the snores were external, the consciousness was moving and poking
about among the pictures and revelations, among the shape-sounds and the
disregarded feelings like an animal ceaselessly examining its cage. It rejected
the detailed bodies of women, slowly sorted odd words, ignored the pains and
insistence of the shaking body. It was looking for a thought. It found the
thought, separated it from the junk, lifted and used the apparatus of the body
and gave it force and importance.
“I
am intelligent.”
In
this passage the emphasis is on the word “apparatus.” The centripetal process
is an “experiment” conducted by the centre with the body-apparatus which yields
a good result. It demonstrates the intelligence of the centre: another
unimpeachable proof of the emerging personality. But the image of “the animal
in the cage” unobtrusively de-glamorizes the triumph. We shall review “the
junk,” from which the idea of intelligence is isolated, in a minute. In six
days the process is complete. The centre establishes the identity of the body
from the disc tied to the neck. The owner of the body is Christopher Hadly
Martin. It creates personality, identity, health and intelligence. The center
also creates a globe with windows to survey the outer world. The process of
acquiring food and shelter immediately follows. Names are given to the various
parts of “the estate” round the rock. Naming things suggests control, control
over things guarantees the influence of personality, the use of intelligence
and education. But from the various verbs employed to describe the moment of
Martin’s body round the rock the reader can infer that he exists like a machine
which is electronically controlled. His body is “dragged”, “hauled”, “huddled”,
“hutched” and “inserted.” But the verb “hauled” occurs in the narrative many
times. Only logs, waggons and machines are hauled. That this computorized
existence is a regression towards a lesser state than an animal is made obvious
by the following images:
The
centre began to work …… It lifted the luminous window under the arch, shifted
the arch of skull from side to side like
the slow shift of the head of a caterpiller trying to reach a new leaf.
He
lay flat on his stomach and began to wriggle weakly like a snake that
cannot cast its skin.
The
oilskin was hard and he backed with innumerable separate movements like a
lobster backing into a deep
crevice under water.
I
must dry the seaweed and line this crevice. I could be as snug as a bug in a rug.
(italics mine)
Let
us make a short review of what “the junk” contains. It contains the rapidly
changing scenes of his past, from an actor to a lecher, Christopher Martin,
(the names are significant) in a
morality, plays the role of a greed, one of the seven deadly sins. As a lecher
his activities are too nasty to be mentioned. Whatever may be the job he has,
He takes the best part, the best seat, the best
money, the best notice, the best woman……He’s a Cosmic case of the bugger who
gets his penny and someone else’s bun.
He is appropriately christened as Pincher. In slang
“to pinch” means to steal, convert others’ property to one’s own use. This is
linked with his monomania to eat all things. He patterns his life on a diabolic
will to possess and inflict himself on others. But “the junk” also contains two
crucial incidents: one is his association with Nathaniel and the other is his
childhood dream in which he descended into the cellar where coffins were kept.
These two remind him of darkness and death. Nathaniel (comes from Hebrew Nathan
– he hath given, and means gift of God) is the very opposite of Pincher.
Pincher refuses to learn from Nathaniel the selfless act of dying into heaven.
He hates Nat and at one time thinks of killing him because he marries Mary whom
Pincher tried to rape. These two aspects of his past merge in creating fear of
isolation and dismemberment of the body. The centrifugal process has already
started. He is on the verge of insanity. But insanity may be the result of
sickness and food poisoning. He feels,
I am poisoned. I am in servitude to a coiled tube
the length of a cricket pitch. All the terrors of hell can come down to nothing
more than a stoppage. Why drag in good and evil when the serpent lies coiled in
my body.
He thinks of having an enema as a desperate remedy
which only aggravates the disease in a different form. In spite of the heroic
bluff to brave death and insanity, (Martin), the centre becomes aware of the
hopeless situation. “The Blacklightning” which Pincher Martin identifies with
Nat’s dying into heaven threatens the centre which prefers insanity to sanity
to ward off the lightning. Because he accepts insanity, he thinks that
lightning is a hallucination. Immediately the hallucination appears in the form
of Nat and asks him to revise his decision to exist. But Martin persists and
the body is reduced to a pair of claws and the centre clings to the rock which
disintegrates under the rays of lightning.
Now
we perceive the shape of the universe as Pincher Martin viewed it and as
presented in the novel. Like God in Genesis
Martin created a universe of which his diabolic will is the centre. In the
narrative the myth is displaced so as to suit the context. The idea of heroic
struggle is parodied to hammer home the truth of man’s place in the universe
which he himself created. But this universe is meaningful only in terms of
things which are the objects of human knowledge and intelligence. When Man
becomes the measure of things, the creator also becomes a part and parcel of
“thinghood.” When the roles are reversed, when the creature usurps the role of
the creator, all things acquire the value the creature gives to things.
Personality, identity, intelligence and other slogans of progress are hollow because
the human ego that suffuses the abstractions is hollow at the core. If the ego
thinks that it can create a heaven, it may resemble the one which Martin
created.
1
T. L. S. Essays and Reviews
from The Times Literacy Supplement. 6.
(O. U. P., London 1968) p. 109.
2.
Pincher Martin (Faber and Faber, London, 1965), p. 7. (All subsequent
quotations are from this edition)