Resources

In Free Fall, Sammy Mountjoy meets Taffy at a meeting for the Communist Party in the late 1930s. Despite being engaged to Beatrice Ifor, Sammy is […]

The little Oa is a tree root carried by Liku in The Inheritors.

Pincher Martin Stranded on a rock in the middle of the Atlantic, Christopher Martin suffers from insomnia. Sleep represents both comfort and fear to Martin: […]

‘Clonk Clonk’ (From The Scorpion God) Typically in literature, the moon is associated with women, which makes it an important symbol in ‘Clonk Clonk’.

Sim Goodchild owns the book shop in Greenfield, London. He is a peripheral character in the first two sections of Darkness Visible, but he becomes […]

Golding visited Australia in 1975, and he was fascinated by the country, describing it as a place of ‘clear light and clean emptiness’. He was […]

Toni is the enigmatic twin sister of Sophy, who narrates the second section of Darkness Visible. The twins have a difficult relationship with their father, and […]

Marion Chumley appears in both Close Quarters and Fire Down Below, the second and third parts of ‘The Sea Trilogy’. Chumley is a passenger on […]

Reverend Robert James Colley appears in the first book of Golding’s Sea Trilogy, Rites of Passage, and is often mentioned in the following two volumes. He […]

Nick Shales appears in the final part of Free Fall in a memory from the protagonist Sammy Mountjoy. According to Sammy, Shales was ‘the best teacher I […]

Mary Lovell appears in Christopher Martin’s flashbacks of memory throughout Pincher Martin. Martin, a repugnant misanthropist, is obsessed with the idea of possessing her, but is […]

The Prince is the Pharaoh’s petulant son in ‘The Scorpion God’. He is reluctant to fulfil his destiny as heir to the throne and is […]