Darkness Visible

Darkness Visible begins in the London blitz, with the miraculous emergence of the child Matty from a burning bombsite. His mysterious religious quest is woven with the lives of twins Sophy and Toni – with their dark story and its impossible end.

  • “What had seemed impossible and therefore unreal was now a fact and clear to them all. A figure had condensed out of the shuddering backdrop of the glare.”
  • “I asked them at once, Are you both true servants of OUR LORD? At once they held up between them the great book with HIS NAME in shining gold.”
  • “The light brightened over the downs. Suddenly she knew it was her own fire, a thing she had done, a proclamation, a deed in the eye of the world – an outrage, a triumph!”

Darkness Visible opens at the height of the London blitz, when a child steps out of an all-consuming fire. Miraculously saved yet scarred by his burns, Matty suffers and survives, in search of some unknown redemption. His destiny is woven with that of twins Sophy and Toni – exquisite but loveless — and all three reach a fiery reckoning.

The publication of Darkness Visible marked the end of a difficult period in Golding’s life. In his journals from the 1970s, he reflected on what he called his ‘crisis’; when writing another novel seemed impossible, and he struggled with a number of health issues. The earliest version of the book, in short story form, dates from 1955, but political events of the 1970s, particularly in terms of international terrorism, had the most significance for the finished narrative.

You might like Lord of the Flies

Golding famously refused to discuss Darkness Visible, but he described Matty as a ‘saint’, like Simon in Lord of the Flies. Read (or re-read!) this book next to explore the comparison.

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