Paper Details

Name: Rajeev Chandra Prasad Visala
Country: India

Year: 2025
Volume: Volume-12, Issue-1 (January-June)
Page Number: 37-41
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17826377

ABSTRACT
William Golding's novels interrogate the tumultuous interplay between conscience and chaos,
wherein ethical conflicts serve as crucibles for the forging, or fracturing, of the self. This
paper examines this dynamic across three key works, Lord of the Flies (1954), Pincher
Martin (1956), and Free Fall (1959), to demonstrate how moral dilemmas precipitate
identity's reconfiguration amid existential and societal upheavals. In Lord of the Flies, the
boys' descent into savagery pits nascent conscience against primal anarchy, yielding
fragmented tribal selves. Pincher Martin internalises this strife through the protagonist's
hallucinatory moral tribunal, exposing the ego's illusory coherence. Free Fall extends the
motif to historical trauma, where Sammy Mountjoy's ethical lapses catalyse a vertiginous
self-reckoning. Integrating psychoanalytic, existential, and ethical frameworks, the analysis
reveals Golding's vision of identity as emergent from conscience's chaos: a precarious
synthesis that, if unresolved, devolves into moral entropy. Golding's narratives, resonant with
post-war ethical voids, underscore the imperative of conscientious self-making to navigate
humanity's inherent discord.
Keywords: William Golding, Conscience chaos, Ethical conflict, Self-making, Moral
synthesis, Lord of the Flies, Pincher Martin, Free Fall