Freedom Lost in William Golding’s Free Fall: Spring Water to a Stagnant Pool

Abstract

This essay investigates William Golding's use of freedom in his early novel, Free Fall. The idea of freedom Godling deploys closely connects to the human ability to choose in freedom. According to Golding, a choice made compulsively is not the consequence of an act of freedom; it is out of a 'mechanical and helpless reaction of one's nature.’ The main character, Sammy, recounts his story in the novel as a journey in which he is driven by his compulsive nature and exposed to the violence afflicting him by what one regards as sensible grownups. Golding intently presents these grownups as school teachers instructing religious education and people involved in religious institutes, who trigger momentum for him to abandon his freedom. His loss of freedom makes him shackled to his crooked instinct. It damages himself, his girlfriend, Beatrice and his wife, Taffy. This paper brings up that once freedom is lost, there is no turning back. Sammy, in this case, understands he has been away from being like spring water to a stagnant pool in which his compulsive instinct has controlled him. He has to come to terms with the fact that he is culpable and between being guilty and seeking absolution. He, at present, has to carry what is in the past.