Free Fall

Sammy Mountjoy rises from poverty to become an acclaimed visual artist.  He is then swept into World War II and somehow, somewhere, he loses his freedom. Is it his own doing? As a prisoner-of-war, through torture, and in a cell of total darkness, he has an experience which may be hallucination, may be a vision. He begins to realize what man can be and what he has gradually made of himself through his own choices. But have those accumulated choices also deprived him of his free will?

Free Fall was inspired by Golding’s experiences in World War II, and there are elements of Golding’s own life in this novel. In the novel he attempts to ‘bridge’ the gap between the two worlds – spirituality and science. He does not manage it, but there is just a hint in the book that another character may have done so. Golding faced the ‘greatest grief’ when writing the book – his father Alec died just after the first draft was completed. Golding re-wrote the end of Free Fall after Alec’s death, incorporating a scene recognisably drawn from his father’s final days.