Pincher Martin

Christopher 'Pincher' Martin is blown from the bridge of his navy ship and struggles in the tumult of the ocean for survival. The massive lashing force of the sea threatens to consume him, but he sights a spit of boulders, and clambers onto it. He comes to realise where he is - the tiny isolated rock in the North Atlantic that only appears on the weather charts. This rock is clearly based on the real islet of Rockall, which is one of the most isolated godforsaken places on earth. Miles and miles from the nearest land, with slender chance of rescue, Martin embarks on a survival mission. He drinks water from a tiny pool, eats weeds and sea anemones for sustenance, and talks to himself to keep his consciousness going. Piece by piece, he begins to construct the picture of who he is and what he has become. Martin is revealed to be an awful figure, an aggressive and selfish sexual predator who before his blast from the bridge was planning to kill a rival suitor. Golding writes Martin to be a throughly unappealing man, who nevertheless encapsulates a hard and bitter essence of our nature. In hard packed, spare and salty prose, Pincher Martin is a supremely elegant and harsh short novel. Mingling themes of existentialism, psychology and survival, it is in the line of Robinson Crusoe literature that cuts us adrift from our self enclosed humanist bearings and forces us to inhabit a world we won't forget easily. The trick ending will surprise many, and force the reader to consider again Golding's big and portentous ideas about consciousness and human striving.

Reminiscent to a degree of Ambrose Bierce's AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE, Pincher Martin is cast into the sea when his ship is torpedoed, and the action of the novel takes place after his death in a purgatory-like land of myth and make-believe. It looks at first as if Martin has survived the shipwreck as he crawls up onto a barren rock in the sea. But as time goes by and the difficulties of survival mount, he begins hallucinating, reliving moments from his past (some of which are hard for the reader to figure out or follow), all in preparation for a final judgment by the Almighty. He encounters God, and when God bids Martin to give up his persistence to exist, Martin defies him. Pincher is turned into a lobster and disappears into the sea. Only in the concluding chapter is it made clear that Martin actually died very shortly after his ship was blown up. A strange novel, to say the least, and one that requires close attention by the reader. More than one reading is probably required to get the full impact of the book.

I'm not complaining. I think man's dark potential is always a fascinating topic and Golding is probably the best modern explorer of this theme. Pincher Martin is not only a probing psychological study of an unrepentant man who clings to life with ferocity, it is also an examination of the nature of reality. Golding employs an old, old narrative trick with skill, steeps the narrative in symbolism, challenges readers to see something admirable in his protagonist, and sets it all on a vividly drawn islet from hell.

One star taken away only because some of the material is dated. I'm an ex sailor and was enthralled from first page to last. I felt the motion of the boat, the bite of the weather and the stark reality of the island. This book proved to me Mr. Golding is a master story teller.

I cannot understand why this book is not better known. A Naval officer, apparently the only survivor of a torpedoed ship, struggles to survive on Rockall, a storm-lashed mid-Atlantic rock. Gradually we see him and his situation for what they really are. The book is stark, harrowing and terrible, but an unforgettable exploration of the fallen nature of man. With Lord of the Flies and The Inheritors, it is terrifying yet somehow beautiful.