In the William Golding canon, his first novel Lord of the Flies (1954) remains his most famous, and his third Pincher Martin (1956), his most controversial. Both are concerned with castaways and their fight for survival.

When Lord of the Flies opens, nuclear war has broken out in Europe and a school from the English Home Counties has been evacuated by air to an unknown destination. On the way there, they are attacked, the crew killed, but the ‘passenger tube’ released so that it can crash-land on the jungle below. At the moment of impact, a fierce storm is raging and only a number of boys manage to scramble out of the ‘tube’ before the wind sweeps it out to sea. Those who do, scatter in the forest undergrowth. They are castaways —though it is some time before it dawns on them that they are marooned and consequently ‘island castaways’.

The island itself is never named. But the description of its coral reef, beaches and fruit trees that bear all the year round, suggests that it might be one of those lying south of Sumatra or Java. The ways in which the boys adapt to their new tropical background is the book’s main theme, and ‘interpretations’ of it depend largely upon a reader’s own particular preoccupations. Freudians, for instance, have already noticed how the boys’ behaviour fits the theory that if parental, state, or Church authority is taken away, children will evolve their own gods, totems, and taboos. Others have found the story a parable of man stripped of the sanctions of custom and civilization.

I begin with a number of propositions, which I shall try to develop in detail:

First, that allegory and symbolism are modes of analogy, that both present one thing or concept in terms of another thing or concept, even though the ways in which they do so have been contrasted and seen as vitally different.

Secondly, that the novel is, as a literary form, generally characterized by realism, and that realism as a literary technique would appear to be opposed to analogical modes.

Thirdly, that this opposition is only apparent because all literary discourse (and in a sense all language) is analogical, in so far as it is meaningful: and that this is confirmed by critical practice.

Fourthly, that the development of the novel therefore reveals a continuing compromise in which overtly analogical modes are allowed to permeate the apparently non-analogical mode of realism in the interests of meaning.

Fifthly, that in the modern period the value of realism as a technique begins to be called into question, and consequently the point of the compromise begins to be called into question, with significant repercussions on the form of the novel.

In putting forward these ideas, particularly the last one, I have been much influenced by The Nature of Narrative (1966), by Robert Scholes and Robert Kellogg. Surveying the whole range of Western narrative literature, they suggest that the primitive oral epic was a synthesis of two antithetical types of narrative, one which they call empirical, whose primary allegiance is to the real, and the other fictional, whose primary allegiance is to the ideal.

I am old-fashioned enough (of course I really mean orthodox enough) to hold that every word of the Bible is true, to use a rather loose figure of speech. But I am also rational enough, I hope, and just modern enough to concede that a pretty good case can be made against the Bible being totally true, and it can be made in the name of history, and with the accusation of mythology.

Each of these words has a different bearing on the truth of the Bible. History is a very respectable word, and if I say that the Bible contains history, that it gives an account of salvation history, or that Christianity is a historical religion, the reader will doubless accept the statement as true, if trite. But mythology is still rather a disreputable word, and if I say that the Bible not only contains myth but presents us with a salvation myth, and that Christianity is a mythological religion, some of my readers may be tempted to wish me burned at the stake. Yet I am prepared to say so, with qualification, and still to maintain that the Bible is totally true. In fact, I think the mythology charge against it is easier to meet than the charge of containing bad, or false, history.

In any case, it is clear that a defence of its truth will involve us in a consideration of the meaning of these two words ‘history’ and ‘mythology’, not to mention the word ‘truth’, as well as requiring us to examine the facts in the shape of biblical texts. The neatest way to proceed would doubtless be, first to say what I mean by these words, and then to look at the biblical evidence in the ligfit of my clear definitions.

‘Europeans say’, I remarked to Cosmas Daudu, ‘that a man with several wives cannot bring up his children properly.’ ‘That is not so’, he retorted, ‘my father had eight wives. In the evening, he would gather us round the fire, and begin to ask us what we would do, if things happened in this way or that. If we just tried to agree with him, he would not be pleased with us. He wanted us to think everything out carefully.’ I did not offer any more of the empirical and ill-informed wisdom of Europe. Some time later, I heard Gosmas himself defending monogamy, ‘For in the beginning God made one man and one woman in the garden there.’

Now, on reflection I think Cosmas had the better of the two arguments, and the main object of this article is to claim that many of the difficulties with which Catholic moral theology finds itself occupied just now can be solved only (by ‘solved’ I don’t mean neatly weighed and measured, but rather made meaningful in a wider context) by adopting Cosmas Daudu’s approach, which seems to me not a precedent-seeking fundamentalism, but rather an awareness of the essentially symbolic nature of Christian ethics, and their orientation to the unity of mankind in the love of God. Or, to put it a little differently, Oscar Wilde’s witticism about the Bible beginning beautifully with a man and woman in a garden but ending with the Book of Revelations is really quite sound exegesis, since the end of the Book of Revelations does take up the theme of marriage, presented by Genesis as at the root of the bliss and woe of Everyman and Everywoman, and show it as the transcendent sign of reintegrated mankind at the wind-up of history.

As a result of the changes inaugurated by Vatican II our eucharistic experience is now very different from what it was a few years ago. But what about our experience of the sacrament of Confession? Here the shift during these same few years has rather been simply from experience to non-experience. Though statistics are hard to come by and motivation difficult to establish, it seems certain that the number of confessions has fallen.

Now this is not a shift inaugurated by Vatican II. The Council reaffirmed the value of this sacrament and reiterated the principle laid down in Canon Law that priests should ‘show themselves entirely and always ready to perform the office of the sacrament of penance as often as the faithful reasonably request it’ (Presbyterorum Ordinis, c. Ill, Abbott translation, p. 561). It seems clear that this does not mean merely the provision of regular times on Saturdays and on the eves of feasts but also urges that priests should respond unhesitatingly to a spontaneous request to hear a confession. Beyond this the Council did not go except to recommend a revision of the rites and formulas of the sacrament—a revision that has not yet been carried out. The falling number of confessions has been brought about, therefore, by the decisions of individuals. This growing feeling within the Church that the sacrament need not be received so frequently must be recognized and respected. It must also critically examined. Is it a development, orthodox and legitimate, of the Church’s experience of divine mercy? Or, on the contrary, is it an aggressive, individualistic deviation from the sound tradition of the Church? Rather than rush to any such sweeping judgments we must first ask what it is that this sacrament celebrates and what is the previous experience of the Church in this matter.