The Inheritors by William Golding

First published: 1955

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Allegory

Time of plot: Paleolithic period

Locale: A mountainous, wooded countryside not far from the sea

Principal characters

• Mal, the old leader
• The Old Woman,
• Ha, the wisest of the younger people
• Nil, a young mother
• The New One, Nil’s baby
• Lok, the people’s clown
• Fa, a young woman
• Liku, a child
• Marlan, the leader, called “the old man”
• Tuami, his successor
• Vivani, Marlan’s woman, called “the fat woman”
• Tanakil, a child
• Twal, Tanakil’s mother, a servant

The Story:

Each spring, Mal leads his small tribe, the last of their kind, from their winter quarters by the sea to a terrace and overhang above a waterfall, which is their summer home. The way to their summer homeland leads over a river that divides around a rocky island. The people fear water and never consider going to the island. When they discover that the log by which they always cross the river disappeared, they are confused until Mal imagines, in the form of a picture, a past time when wise members of the group took the original log and used it to bridge the water. These pictures of the imagination are an embryonic thought process: They serve as memories and ideas. The pictures are rarely consecutive and fade as soon as the need for them passes because they are an instinctual and not a rational function. The people can share their pictures without words or express them in simple sentences.

The people retain the strong senses of animals, but they also develop their own human rituals concerned with food, fire, and burial. The old woman always carries the fire from the winter to the summer home. When women arrive and the smell of smoke comes to Lok from the island, he is bemused and, tricked by his senses into following the familiar scent, he almost falls into the river. The rest of the people do not catch the faint scent, so Lok cannot communicate his picture. This second indication that something is changed is forgotten in the people’s eager journey to the security of the overhang. Lok almost recaptures his experience while guarding the people that night, but the picture fades before he can fully recapture it.

The people’s failure to retain ideas not relevant to day-to-day life makes their survival impossible when faced with the challenge of the others. Their lack of the knowledge of evil also makes them powerless to combat it. This is one of the main themes of the novel. When Ha disappears, although the people can tell by the scent that he encountered another, their emotions are grief at the loss rather than abiding fear. What happens next reveals Golding’s grim assertion that the meek do not inherit the earth.

After Mal’s death and Ha’s disappearance, Lok is the only surviving adult male; it is his task to seek out the others. These others are true Homo sapiens, with the power of reason. Their senses are weaker and their artifacts far more sophisticated than the people’s. They use animal skins for covering, and they have bows and arrows, canoes, and crude alcohol. They also know sexual jealousy. They are near famine because they cannot eat the bulbs, slugs, and fungi that sustain the people (who never kill for food) and because hunting is poor.

When the others capture Liku and the New One on the people’s side of the river, Lok hears Liku’s screams and tries to reach her. He thus exposes himself to the others’ arrows. These weapons merely interest him, although he senses danger when he smells the poison on the barbed heads. Lok’s apprehensions of danger are lulled at various times by the others’ obvious hunger and by his sympathy for them.

Finally, only Lok and Fa remain; the old woman is drowned and Nil is slain. Lok rejects Fa’s suggestion that they escape and survive. Lok insists on trying to rescue Liku and the New One. The others move their camp from the island to the people’s side of the river to hunt for deer. The new camp is made by a hollow tree, where Lok and Fa hide from the others. From this tree, the two Neanderthals witness an incomprehensible day of ritual and night of debauchery that includes, while Lok sleeps, the killing of Liku. The only communication between the people and the others was Liku’s growing friendship with Tanakil, a girl of her own age. They were able to exchange names, and Liku fed Tanakil fungus when Tanakil was hungry. This deed, together with the others’ need for a sacrifice to make their hunting successful, causes them to kill her.

In an attempt to snatch the New One from the camp, Lok becomes separated from Fa and, believing that she is dead, he mourns for her. Although he believes that he is the last of his people, his hope is still sustained by the presence of the others, and at that moment he reaches his furthest point of comprehension, which he does not have the power to retain. Fa finds Lok again, but during a last effort to recover the New One before the others can take him upstream with them, she is stunned and swept away in the falls. After the final disappearance of Fa and the departure of the others, Lok is alone; his humanity leaves him.

Solitary, Lok reverts to an anthropoid state. In a coda passage before the reversal of viewpoint in the last chapter, the first complete physical description of one of the people partly explains the others’ destructive terror. The only human aspect remaining to Lok is the tears on his face as he lies down to die on Mal’s grave.

In the final chapter, in a reversal of point of view, the others are named. Tuami is the younger leader. The old man is Marlan; the most important woman, who suckles the New One, is Vivani. As Tuami steers the boat toward the open plains, away from “the devils,” he and all the others are overcome by grief and bitterness. Tuami cries out to ask what else they could have done. The people are quite human and understandable; their murderous actions against the Neanderthals are dictated by the twin evils of fear and ignorance. Some grace, however, goes out of their lives forever; their slow-moving boat is a point of darkness between the light of the sky and the water as they flee what they perceive to be devil-infected mountains.

Bibliography

Dick, Bernard F. William Golding. Rev. ed. Boston: Twayne, 1987. The chapter on The Inheritors views it primarily in the light of Golding’s recurring theme of the Fall. Includes selected bibliography and index.

Gindin, James. William Golding. New York: Macmillan, 1988. Contains an excellent introduction and a full yet economic reading of The Inheritors. Gindin sees the novel achieving something of myth but ultimately having a unique status of its own. Includes selected bibliography and index.

Kinkead-Weekes, Martin, and Ian Gregor. William Golding: A Critical Study. 3d rev. ed. London: Faber, 2002. A new edition of one of the standard critical accounts of Golding that features a biographical sketch by Golding’s daughter, Judy Carver. Contains a perceptive essay on The Inheritors. Discusses the technical problems facing Golding.

McCarron, Kevin. William Golding. 2d rev. ed. Tavistock, England: Northcote House/British Council, 2006. Introductory overview to Golding’s life and works. Includes bibliography and index.

Oldsey, Bernard S., and Stanley Weintraub. The Art of William Golding. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1965. Early introductory study on Golding, with a chapter on each of the early novels. The chapter on The Inheritors focuses on the concept of evolution.

Redpath, Philip. William Golding: A Structural Reading of His Fiction. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1986. Takes a structural approach to The Inheritors, seeing the novel’s structure as circular, moving away from any simplistic good-bad antithesis.

Tiger, Virginia. William Golding: The Unmoved Target. New York: Marion Boyars, 2003. An examination of Golding’s novels in which Tiger draws upon her conversations and correspondence with the author to describe how these books explore themes of human destiny and vision. Devotes a chapter to an analysis of The Inheritors.