Back to Blog
The inheritors golding6/3/2023 Exactly how this transpires is left somewhat ambiguous, though the unknowability is the point. At times the tribe, so primitive that the concept of “family” cannot even really be applied to them, appear to convey “pictures” to one another telepathically, as a means of representing memories, symbols, or ideas. With little in the way of exposition, Golding successfully conveys the primitive form of consciousness experienced by a nomadic clan of Neanderthals, whose communication is dependent on images, or “pictures”, rather than verbal language as we know it. The plot of The Inheritors is less noteworthy than Golding’s remarkable skill in enabling readers to identify and empathize with creatures inhabiting a murky grey area between man and ape. Though not nearly as celebrated as LOTF, The Inheritors is far more more stylistically experimental, and for me at least, more evocative, haunting, and ultimately tragic. That mysterious vanished time, in which man was first discovering his capacity for language and abstract thought, is what drew me to The Inheritors, a 1955 novel by William Golding (of Lord of the Flies fame). The prehistoric era, specifically focusing on the emergence of early humans, is a topic I find incredibly fascinating, and one that is sadly underexplored in modern literature.
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |