34 pages • 1 hour read
William GoldingPincher Martin
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1956A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaThemes
Survival as a Product of Toxic Impulses
Most survival stories frame the hero’s attributes that enable survival—endurance, courage, and a will to live—as praiseworthy, and early on, this is true in Pincher Martin. Golding initially embraces survival narrative conventions, as Martin goes to great physical and psychological lengths to find food, water, and shelter in one of the planet’s most forbidding environments while subduing or compartmentalizing the extraordinary pain he suffers. Dating back to the title character of Robinson Crusoe, audiences have elevated the protagonists of survival narratives as paragons of strength and virtue.
Therefore, Pincher Martin unsettles readers by slowly revealing that the man whose survival they’ve admired and rooted for in the early chapters is guilty of moral and criminal offenses, some merely dishonorable and others unspeakable. An adulterer, rapist, and aspiring murderer, his misanthropy leaves no room for remorse. In addition, Golding implies that Martin’s toxic soul may even be an advantage in his efforts to survive on the rock.
Because bodily appetites almost entirely drive Martin’s behavior, he attacks the critical task of securing food and water with special zeal. In the book’s most comical moment, he thinks of himself as an operatic hero as he takes on the mission to empty his bowels, imagining the bombast of Tchaikovsky and Wagner playing while he fashions a makeshift enema.
Moreover, Martin’s love of conquest in his civilian life—clear through such actions as raping Mary and attempting to murder Nathaniel—is another tool he draws on to survive. His high opinion of himself, which he justifies only under adversarial circumstances, compel him to cast the rock as an enemy that he must conquer. At one point, he addresses it by saying, “I don’t claim to be a hero. But I’ve got health and education and intelligence. I’ll beat you” (64). Even his decision to name different parts of the rock stems less from a silly or bored impulse than from a colonial attitude of conquest: As Martin says, he is “netting down this rock with names and taming it” (72).
From one perspective, this theme weakens in the context of the twist ending, which reveals Martin’s survival narrative as a figment of his imagination. However, the fact that Martin’s subconscious chose such a narrative to play out in his final moments only strengthens the connection between survival and self-obsession as two sides of the same coin—and calls into question Western audiences’ centuries-long love affair with survival fiction.
Rejection of God and Heaven in Favor of Ego
Relatively early in the novel, Martin’s brain revisits a memory of Nathaniel explaining his upcoming philosophical and theological lecture. Of its thesis, Nathaniel says, “Take us as we are now and heaven would be sheer negation. Without form and void. You see? A sort of black lightning destroying everything that we call life” (57). At this point, Nathaniel’s thesis may make little sense to readers. Also unclear is why, of all the memories that invade Martin’s psyche, this is among the longest and most prominent.
However, in the book’s crazed climax—and particularly in the final reveal—this characterization of heaven gains resonance. Although death is the negation of the self, heaven exists for those who prepare themselves for it. Still, if one refuses to destroy one’s ego by embracing a rich spiritual life, heaven will be nothing more than a storm of “black lightning” that obliterates consciousness. Interpreting this revelation within either an implicitly or explicitly Christian context, the rock may represent purgatory—a waystation between life and death.
Rather than seize the opportunity to dwell on his sins and mistakes, however, Martin clings to his material self and its appetites. He resists introspection when he recalls raping Mary or attempting to murder Nathaniel, making it impossible for God—or the reader—to forgive him. The closest Martin comes to self-examination is when he remembers with terror the childhood trauma in the cellar. However, he represses the details of that trauma. Moreover, his focus on his own trauma, rather than the trauma he inflicted on others, shows that he’s stuck in the mode of blaming others.
Martin takes this a step further by actively rejecting heaven in favor of self-preservation. When a hallucination of Nathaniel appears and tries to convince Martin that he is dead, Martin refuses to accept it, even as his delusion crumbles before his eyes. He’s so obsessed with his ego that he feels compelled to assert it in the face of black lightning raining down from heaven. He seems constitutionally incapable of killing his ego to embrace God’s compassion—or any spiritual life at all—and therefore rejects both life and the afterlife, screaming to the skies, “I shit on your heaven!” (184). However, as revealed in the final chapter, this assertion of the self is a mere fiction in the face of death—the only reality Martin will ever know again.
The Life of a Misanthrope Who Lives Only for His Appetites
Martin’s spiritual emptiness is a product of a life lived selfishly fulfilling bodily appetites. The narrative presents the ugly reality of Martin’s existence by setting all but the final chapter firmly in the character’s head, as he continues his appetite-driven life on the rock. Readers must endure the discomfort of identifying with a man who reveals a proclivity for crimes, from adultery to rape to attempted murder. However, largely because of the novel’s structure, Martin never seems inhuman, even if he views most fellow humans as little more than objects to manipulate to suit his ambitions and desires.
Thus, the author invites readers to consider why Martin is the way he is—and whether he’s capable of changing. His childhood trauma, which may relate to his mother, is clearly a factor. Martin says as much when he screams to the pile of Dwarf rocks which stand in for the “old woman” in the cellar, “That’ll teach you to chase me out of the cellar […] all the days of my life” (177). In addition, a brief flashback indicates that, at one point, Martin did not drink or smoke because of his mother, suggesting perhaps that she was religious. In the context of Martin’s maternal trauma, his rejecting spirituality—in favor of appetites he once denied himself—makes sense.
Those appetites, however, come to outweigh his relationships, as his many sexual trysts with his friends’ and colleagues’ partners reveal. His hedonism curdles into full-blown misanthropy. He begins to relish turning other men into cuckolds, as when he allows Alfred to walk in on him and Sybil in bed. His self-worth comes to rely on besting others, a point he voices when bemoaning that to endure he must view the rock and gulls as enemies: “There were the people I got the better of, people who quarrelled with me. Here I have nothing to quarrel with” (118).
Martin’s actions turn from shameful to unforgivable when he rapes Mary after threatening to murder her. As disturbing as this revelation itself is the glib way Martin recalls it. Even after committing the crime, he describes Mary as “demoniac” and “terrible.” Furthermore, he says the only reason he didn’t kill her is that it wouldn’t make him feel better. On the other hand, killing Nathaniel would satisfy him, perhaps because it would allow Martin to become the ultimate “victor” in their relationship, which he inevitably views as a contest. In short, he must “beat” Nathaniel, just as he must “beat” the rock.
At the novel’s conclusion, Martin has no grand epiphany about his sins; he appears to regret nothing. He lives by the tenets of selfishness and rapaciousness, and his imagined time on the rock is no different. Not even death ends this cycle, as the selfishness endures on some metaphysical plane even after Martin is lying dead in the ocean.
