The Spire

infobox Book |
name = The Spire
title_orig =
translator =


image_caption =
author = William Golding
cover_artist =
country = United Kingdom
language = English
series =
genre = Novel
publisher = Faber and Faber
release_date = December 1964
media_type = Print (Hardback & Paperback)
pages = 223 pp (hardback edition)
isbn = ISBN 0-571-05802-7 (hardback edition)
isbn = ISBN 0-571-22546-2 (paperback edition)
preceded_by =
followed_by = ::"For the sculpture, see Spire of Dublin."

"The Spire" is a 1964 novel by the English author William Golding. "A dark and powerful portrait of one man's will", it deals with the construction of the 404-foot high spire of Salisbury Cathedral; the vision of the fictional Dean Jocelin. In this novel, William Golding utilizes stream of consciousness writing with an omniscient narrator.

Plot

Jocelin, the dean of the cathedral, directs the construction of a towering spire funded by his aunt, Lady Alison, a former mistress of the King. The project is carried on against the advice of many, and in particular, notwithstanding the warnings of the master builder, Roger Mason. The cathedral has insufficient foundations to support a spire of the magnificence demanded by Jocelin, but he believes he has been chosen by God to erect a great spire to exalt the town and to bring its people closer to God. As the novel progresses, Golding explores Jocelin's growing obsession with the completion of the spire, during which he is increasingly afflicted by pain as a result of tuberculosis in his spine. Jocelin interprets the burning heat in his back as an angel, alternately comforting or punishing him depending on the warmth or pain he feels. Jocelin's obsession blinds him to reality: he neglects his duties as a dean, fails to pray and ignores the people who need him most.

Jocelin also struggles with his attraction to Goody Pangall, the wife of the crippled and impotent cathedral servant, Pangall. Jocelin seems at first to see Goody as "his daughter in God" and "as a woman should be". However, as the novel progresses, and Goody's husband is tormented and ridiculed by the bullying workmen, Jocelin becomes tormented by sexual attraction, usually triggered by the sight of Goody's "red hair".

Comparisons between Goody and Rachel, Roger Mason's wife, are made throughout the novel. Jocelin believes Goody sets an example to Rachel, whom he dislikes for her garrulousness. However, Jocelin overestimates Goody's purity, and is horrified when he discovers Goody is embarking upon an affair with Roger Mason. Tortured by envy and guilt, Jocelin finds himself unable to pray. He is repulsed by his sexual thoughts, referred to as "the devil" during his dreams. After masturbating while fantasizing over the thought of Goody, "working at the building" (a metaphor for his penis) he punishes himself by self-flagellation. The lives of the people around Jocelin are disrupted because of the intractable problems arising from the construction of the spire, but Jocelin continues to drive his dream to its conclusion. His visions and hallucinations mark his descent into irrationality. As the true costs, financial and spiritual, of the endeavour become apparent, the story moves to its tragic conclusion. Pangall disappears, although his fate is never made clear as events are seen from Jocelin's increasingly irrational point of view; Goody Pangall dies in childbirth, bearing Roger Mason's child; Roger becomes a drunkard; Jocelin dies of his illness after after receiving the humiliating information from his aunt that his appointment was due only to her influence, not to his merits. The spire is incomplete at the end of the story, and there is a growing sense of impending disaster due to the instability of the over-ambitious structure. Jocelin has lost his faith at the time of his death but begins to appreciate the suffering he has caused to others by his pride and grandiosity.

Characters

Jocelin

Dean Jocelin is the character through whom the novel is presented, Golding utilizing the stream of consciousness technique. The novel charts the destruction of his self confidence and ambition - "my place, my house, my people... I know them all". As the construction of the spire draws to an end, Jocelin's is removed from his position as Dean and his abandonment of his religious duties is denounced by the church Council. Ultimately, he succumbs to his illness which he had personified as his guardian angel.

Roger Mason

With a "swarthy face”, “thick neck” and “cropped bullet head", Roger Mason, a medieval cathedral builder is, in direct contrast to Jocelin, physically powerful and a rationalist. He is associated with the imagery of a bull and a stallion. Roger contends with Jocelin, arguing that that the cathedral foundations are insufficient to support the spire. He is forced to continue with the project because Jocelin threatens to make it impossible for him to work elsewhere. After the death of Goody, Roger becomes an alcoholic and is seen to be “mooing, drunk, scuttling like a crab”. In a moment of clarity, Jocelin visits Roger, and we eventually learn of his failed suicide attempt.

Rachel

Roger's wife, Rachel reveals to Jocelin the reason why they cannot have children - as attempts at sex result in fits of Giggles.

Pangall

"Why must they make a fool of me?" Pangall is mocked because of his impotency by the "army" of workmen. Eventually, he suffers as a result of their pagan beliefs and is sacrifically buried beneath the crossways with mistletoe "between his ribs".

Goody

Goody, who acts as an important object of love and lust, ultimately dies while giving birth. Jocelin initially sees her as "entirely woman".

Father Anselm

Anselm is largely critical of the developments concerning the spire, arguing that it is "destruction". Jocelin had been prepared to lose his friendship with Anselm as part of the cost of the spire, but we learn by the end of the novel that they appeared not to have a friendship in the first place.

Father Adam

Father Adam is dubbed by Jocelin as "Father Anonymous", who sees him to have "no face at all". Until the end of the novel as Father Adam becomes Jocelin's carer, he is largely a minor character who is surprised by how Jocelin was never taught to pray, and he does his best to help him into heaven.

Lady Alison

A wealthy mistress of the King, we learn of how the money funding the spire was a result of this affair. With the appearance of a “tiny woman”, “not much larger than a child” being plump and pale, wearing a black dress, hair, eyes, make-up but she has largely small features. Her wealth is presented through her pearls and perfume and she takes care of her appearance - “carefully preserved and tendered her face”. While she is old, she has smooth skin with fine lines and she keeps her eyebrows thin.

ymbolism

Paganism

The workmen are referred to as "an army" and Jocelin is confronted numerous times by those who disagree with the disruption they cause. Pangall is their eventual sacrifice, buried "beneath the crossways" with mistletoe between his ribs. The mistletoe can be viewed as a metaphor in terms of horror and the word “obscene” occurs several times. (The Druids' idea that the berries were the semen of the Gods may well contribute to Jocelin's revulsion) “The riotous confusion of its branches” is alarming as well as is Jocelin's disgust at the berry on his shoe. Golding weaves the mistletoe as a pagan symbol into the naturalistic treatment of it as a sign of a physical threat to the spire. Mistletoe grows on living oak trees – if the wood is used in the building is unseasoned, it will continue to grow, revealing a scientifically explicable danger.

Imagery

Goody's "red hair" can be seen as symbolic for a number of things. Sexual dreams, female sexuality, the devil, lust and desire being some of the possible ideas around it. Constant animal symbolism between Roger and Goody (referred to as a bear, a bull and a stallion or a roedeer at various points in the novel) are also a possible indication of Jocelin's lack of social awareness, his childlike qualities and his naivity. However, Goody is said to wear a green dress, which contrast's Rachel Mason's red dress - the green can perhaps symbolise nature (a recurring paganistic theme in the novel) and the red represents Rachel's undesirable "fiery" personality. Goody is portrayed as a quiet "good woman" by Jocelin (whose view is the platform for this novel) and Rachel is not. The irony being that Goody's unfaithfulness is hidden by her hat, and only occasionally do we spot her flame red hair (and infidelity).

The spire Jocelin wishes to raise in itself can be seen as a phallic symbol, as Jocelin initially views the model of it as a man lying on his back.

Religious imagery is used towards the end of the novel, where Jocelin lies dying. Jocelin declares "it's like the apple-tree!", making a reference to the Garden of Eden and Humanity's first sin of temptation but also perhaps the pagan ideas that have been constantly threaded into Jocelin's mind as he spends more and more time up in the Spire, raised above the ground (and further away from his church and his role as God's voice on earth).

Further reading

The Spire is subject to critical analysis by Steve Eddy in the York Notes Advanced series and reviews by Frank Kermode and David Skilton are included in "William Golding: Novels 1954-1967".

Don Crompton in "A View from the Spire: William Golding's Later Novels" analyses the novel and relates to its pagan and mythical elements. While more recently, Mark Kinkead-Weekes and Ian Gregor cover all of William Golding's novels in "William Golding: a critical study of the novels."

Reception

"A most remarkable book, as unforeseeable as one foresaw, an entire original... remote from the mainstream, potent, severe, even forbidding" - Frank Kermode, New York Review of Books, 30 April 1964.