The Two Pincher Martins: From Survival Adventure to Golding's Myth of Dying

Abstract

This paper is concerned to show the adaptation by Golding of the adventure-novel, first serialized in 'Chambers Journal' early in 1916, and then issued in an expanded form later in the same year as 'Pincher Martin, 0.D., A Story of the Inner Life of The Royal Navy'. It endeavours to show that Golding's third fictional work is also based on a specific literary source. (The two earlier stories were thesis novels, setting out to disprove certain traditional ideas about man and his place in the world.) It may also be shown that the third novel is a much revised version of the myth of courage, as presented in the First World War book by Commander Taprell Dorling. In private correspondence, Golding concedes that he probably read the earlier book and it has been ascertained from Golding's publishers that there was once a threat of libel by Dorling. Analysis of the two novels indicates that the dependence of the one on the other is considerable and that Golding was not merely correcting a false premise with his work, but rethinking an inherited plotted novel. The details of the island apart, almost every person and action in the Golding novel can be found to have a parallel or antithesis in the earlier novel, as the situation is recreated and both the myth and its heroism are probed and found to be unrealistic and false.