Darkness Visible by William Golding (1979)

On the surface, Darkness Visible tells two stories: In the first story, a child miraculously emerges from a fire "that is melting lead and distorting iron" during the London blitz. He is hideously burned on one side of his head and face, the burned side glowing white in the glare of the inferno, the unharmed side darkened. Given the name Matty by his doctor, he is predictably shunned by other children, only receiving what he mistakenly perceives as kindness from one of his teachers. Progressively consumed by the questions, "Who am I?," "What am I?," and "What am I here for?," as an adult he becomes a wanderer on the earth, seeking answers and visited by visions. In the second story, two twin girls, one light and one dark, grow up as symbolic orphans, with an absent mother and a emotionally absent father. The dark-haired one, Sophy, perceives a dark tunnel at the back of her mind that leads her, as a child, to kill a baby bird; as an adult, to achieve her first orgasm after stabbing her lover during coitus; and finally, to originate a kidnapping plot, which might or might not result in the victim's death from torture. Toni, the light-haired twin, seems to function more rationally, moving from religion, to transcendentalism, and finally to political terrorism. Matty's story and the twins' story come together in the suspenseful conclusion.

What this book is really about, however, is good and evil, the light and darkness within humanity. Golding constructs his message by blanketing the story under a dense layer of symbolism and religious imagery. Matty becomes a Christ figure, at one point even being symbolically crucified and castrated. (Evidently Golding believed lust to be a prime component of the darkness.) He enters and leaves the story in a blaze of fire. Freudian symbolism also enters in, with the twins perhaps representing the ego and the id. The dark twin, Sophy, certainly exhibits the Electra complex.

At times during my reading, my understanding became completely muddled under the barrage of allegorical messages. I am quite sure that Milton's Paradise Lost contains many clues, since Golding took his title from there, but I read that masterpiece so many years ago that I can hardly remember it. A reader must also have a background of Biblical knowledge to understand many of the references.

However limited my complete understanding, I believe I get the basic message, and it is an important one that has often been repeated in print and even in film: our job, as human beings, is to resist going over to the dark side.