Of course, seeing the building through Jocelin's eyes is dangerous. Not least because, as becomes increasingly apparent as the book goes on, Jocelin is a fool. Early on we may be prepared to accept his vision of "the bible in stone" as something extraordinary and profound – but as we come to understand that he can barely read and has hardly a clue about church law, we have to question that vision. There's also Jocelin's extraordinary vanity. In his abstract thoughts, he sees himself as a kind of saint, a man who thinks only of the work and the glory it brings to his religion. Yet the stone cold reality is that he has demanded that statues of himself be built into the tower.

If it is all a figment of Golding's imagination, and there was no Jocelin, or anyone like him, The Spire becomes a tremendous mental exercise. A great abstract symbol of folly that is itself insubstantial; a symphony of words, surrounding empty space in a manner even more flimsy than that cone of scaffolding and ladders wrapped around the air at the top of the spire. A conflict with the sacristan, father Anselm, the confessor of Jocelyn, who does not want to oversee the construction, is immediately outlined. Under the pressure of Jocelyn, he still goes to the cathedral, but Jocelyn feels that their long-standing friendship has come to an end. He understands that this is the price of a spire, but he is ready to make sacrifices. Another metaphor for the spire that Golding proposes is Jocelin's late exclamation that 'It is like an appletree!' He was laughing, chin up, and shaking his head." It reads at first like third-person impersonal, authorial prose, but as the paragraph proceeds, we become aware that the narrative isn't impersonal: it is focalised for Jocelin. It emanates from his point of view. It isn't free indirect speech – a clearer indicator that we are privy to a character's thoughts. An example from Jane Austen: "The comfort of such a friend at that moment as Colonel Brandon – of such a companion for her mother – how gratefully was it felt!" You can hear Elinor Dashwood's voice, her emotion. Focalisation gives us not the character's voice, but the timbre of their thought. And this is crucial to The Spire because, for most of the narrative, the reader is trapped in Jocelin's subjectivity, in Jocelin's solipsism. We find it difficult to judge him – his motives, his purity, his corruption, his ambition, his vanity – because the view of him is restricted. As in a theatre, where the seats are cheaper because a pillar interferes with the view of the stage.Live webchat with Judy Carver on The Spire by William Golding – post your questions here". the Guardian. 24 April 2013 . Retrieved 1 December 2022. I have so much will, it puts all other business by. I am like a flower that is bearing fruit. There is a preoccupation about the flower as the fruit swells and the petals wither; a preoccupation about the whole plant, leaves dropping, everything dying but the swelling fruit. That's how it must be. My will is in the pillars and the high wall. I offered myself; and I am learning. (92) I thought it would be simple. I thought the spire would complete a stone bible, be the apocalypse in stone. I never guessed in my folly that there would be a new lesson at every level, and a new power. Nor could I have been told. I had to build in faith, against advice. That's the only way. (103) 'I tell you, we guess. We judge that this or that is strong enough; but we can never tell until the full strain comes on it whether we were right or wrong.' (111) '...D'you think you can escape? You're not in my net—oh yes, Roger, I understand a number of things, how you are drawn, and twisted, and tormented—but it isn't my net. It's His. We can neither of us avoid this work. And there's another thing. I've begun to see how we can't understand it either, since each new foot reveals a new effect, a new purpose. It's senseless, you think. It frightens us, and it's unreasonable. But then—since when did God ask the chosen ones to be reasonable? They call this Jocelin's Folly, don't they?' This is Golding describing dust. The cathedral of stone is being dismantled and added to – creating a cathedral of dust, a phantom, a twin. In Seeing Things, Seamus Heaney evokes "a pillar of radiant house-dust". Here is Golding's creation of not one pillar, but several: "Everywhere, fine dust gave these rods and trunks of light the importance of a dimension. He blinked at them again, seeing, near at hand, how individual grains of dust turned over each other, or bounced all together, like mayfly in a breath of wind. He saw how further away they drifted cloudily, coiled, or hung in a moment of pause, becoming, in the most distant rods and trunks, nothing but colour, honey-colour slashed across the body of the cathedral … He shook his head in rueful wonder at the solid sunlight." So, as temporary as a mayfly and a serious rival and replacement. Solid sunlight. Dust definitively described by a master. Indeed, this is quite a novel of our age. First, build a barely adequate church with a minimal foundation and then try to make it rise to the heavens like a ghetto retelling of the Tower of Babel.

Meanwhile, the master, Roger the Mason, is trying to determine the reliability of the foundation and is personally convinced that the existing foundation can hardly withstand the cathedral. What to speak of a spire four hundred feet high! In vain, Jocelyn convinces Roger to believe in a miracle: he says that now it will be difficult for him to force the workers to build a spire. Joslin decides the true intentions of Roger: he wants to wait until a more profitable job appears, and then leave without having started construction. Here Roger Rachel's wife, “a dark-haired, dark-eyed, assertive, stupidly talkative woman”, who does not like the abbot, approaches the men. She tactlessly intervenes in the conversation of men, teaching the holy father. Letting her speak, Roger promises to erect the spire as much as he can. “No, how dare you are,” Jocelyn objects. Golding respects the way medieval individuals actually might have thought, felt, or spoken in their world --not in ours. He 'keeps faith' with them; even though this renders them awkward and unfamiliar to our eyes and ears. It is difficult material; but Golding conquered it in the writing and you must conquer it in the reading. That is the arrangement here. You keep up with him, rather than him pandering to you. It's refreshing in that respect. Dean Jocelin is the character through whom the novel is presented. Golding uses the stream of consciousness technique to show his Lear-like descent into madness. The novel charts the destruction of his self-confidence and ambition. As the construction of the spire draws to an end, Jocelin is removed from his position as Dean and his abandonment of his religious duties is denounced by the church Council. Ultimately, he succumbs to his illness which he had personified as his guardian angel. Golding can scorch us by the immediate heat of his sentences. But sometimes he chooses the slower narrative burn. The first chapter begins with Jocelin holding the model of the spire and laughing: "He was laughing, chin up, and shaking his head. God the father was exploding in his face with a glory of sunlight through painted glass, a glory that moved with his movements to consume and exalt Abraham and Isaac and then God again. The tears of laughter in his eyes made additional spokes and wheels and rainbows. // Chin up, hands holding the model spire before him, eyes half closed; joy – "I've waited half my life for this day!"' Roger Mason, a medieval Master Mason is, in direct contrast to Jocelin, physically powerful and a rationalist. He is associated with the imagery of a bull and a stallion. Roger contends with Jocelin, arguing that the cathedral foundations are insufficient to support the spire. He is forced to continue with the project because Jocelin makes it impossible for him to work elsewhere. After the death of Goody, Roger becomes an alcoholic. In a moment of clarity, Jocelin visits Roger and we eventually learn of his suicide attempt.Nu știu exact care e miza autorului, nici nu prea mă interesează. Lectura a fost iar potrivită, având în vedere ultimele "bârfe". Nu condamn construcția de biserici și edificii:)). Poate că pe parcursul istoriei unii capi de biserică au fost mai preocupați de ziduri decât de oameni, fie și așa. Nu sunt oare atât de frumoase?! Bine că le-au făcut! Să nu ne plângem, se preocupă Hristos de noi și noi unii de alții. stars out of 5. Perhaps it is not the most engaging story, but for me it marks my very first exposure to true literary art and the seed from which my pretentious reading habit grew. Obviously a crudely simplistic 'Freudian' reading might see the spire as a symbol of both his writing – he aspired to create something of greatness, against some hostility, but worried that it was built on shaky foundations; and it is also a phallic symbol of course – again on shaky foundations." Nothing William Golding wrote about is what Golding wrote about—he was a master of metaphor, and his 1964 novel The Spire is a good example (as was his masterful Lord of the Flies, still on many reading lists). The Spire at Salisbury Playhouse". William Golding. 20 November 2012 . Retrieved 25 September 2020.

Second readings are dangerous enterprises. Anything can happen. When I first read this novel, I thought the Spire, that gives the name to the title, stood defiantly by the end of the book. My attention was focused on the descriptions of how architects and builders managed to pull up the complex architectural structures that miraculously were built during the Middle Ages. I did not pay too much attention to the writing. At the time, my English did not have strong foundations, and it was as much a guess-work as the art & craft of the medieval masons. Harford, Tim (8 December 2017). "The Brexit monomania built on blind faith". Financial Times . Retrieved 25 September 2020. Throughout the Dean's language is centred on glorifying the cathedral, but as the novel progresses it is clear that his motivations are more confused and complex. At one moment the Dean has a vision of his spire reaching up into the heavens casting an ever longer shadow across the countryside. Visible from further and further afield more distant travellers and traders turn their feet towards his cathedral. He sees the routes and roads shift to centre on to his town as the new spire becomes a major landmark. How many completely inadequate people do we see promoted to positions beyond their ability in business, politics, the church? How much madness lies behind religious or creative vision? We have many great works of architecture, art or literature created by the efforts of individuals as driven and destructive as our poor dean. In that end what does this tell us about Golding's desire to make sense of his creative efforts in the context of his personal demons?Golding could describe things. Incomparably. And he could describe anything, judging by the range of subjects in those quotations. So could James Joyce and John Updike. Vladimir Nabokov and Saul Bellow. And Elizabeth Bishop. The critic and novelist, DJ Taylor thinks that in the case of Bellow, the good writing is only there to show us all "how good a writer he is" – being, in a word, "literary". And Taylor piously hopes that "the first casualty of the next 10 years of novel-writing will be literariness". No more writing. Especially no more great writing. Because that is just showing off. Eccentrically enough, I daresay, I find myself out of sympathy with Taylor's position. I like great writing. Jocelin may have been named after Josceline de Bohon, Bishop of Salisbury from 1142 to 1184, who is buried in Salisbury Cathedral.