Customer Reviews

Pincher Martin

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I cannot understand why this book is not better known. A Naval officer, apparently the only survivor of a torpedoed ship, struggles to survive on Rockall, a storm-lashed mid-Atlantic rock. Gradually we see him and his situation for what they really are. The book is stark, harrowing and terrible, but an unforgettable exploration of the fallen nature of man. With Lord of the Flies and The Inheritors, it is terrifying yet somehow beautiful.

I'm not complaining. I think man's dark potential is always a fascinating topic and Golding is probably the best modern explorer of this theme. Pincher Martin is not only a probing psychological study of an unrepentant man who clings to life with ferocity, it is also an examination of the nature of reality.

Golding employs an old, old narrative trick with skill, steeps the narrative in symbolism, challenges readers to see something admirable in his protagonist, and sets it all on a vividly drawn islet from hell.

Golding is an incredible wordsmith. With stark realism and deep insight, he probes one man's outer and inner struggles for survival after washing up on a rock in the mid-Atlantic. I found the psychological portrail wholly believable, but I had a difficult time sympathizing with this character. He's a womanizer, a self-centered egotist. With near-animal drive, he carves out meager existence on the rock. I found very little emotional connection with Martin, and read on primarily because of Golding's narrative power.

Essentially, Golding seems to say that, brought to our lowest common denominator in a fight for life, we are all self-centered, that greed takes over. I found the argument weak because we discover that Martin was this way already. I would've liked to see a selfless person's fight for existence and the consequences of his actions.

Or maybe that's Golding's point: Martin's self-centeredness eventually corrodes his ability to survive because the motivations run shallow. Numerous true-life accounts show the struggle of men and women to rise above their base needs and extend life heroically to others. Selflessness often leads to the survival of the group, it seems, but in this book we have only one character's survival to consider.

A second reading might reveal to me more of Golding's intentions in this story, but the fact remains: Golding knows how to build word upon word until you are trapped within the dwelling of his character's minds. That alone lifts this book above the volumes of so-called literature stacked on most shelves.

Based on Golding's own standards from his other books, I cannot highly recommend this as a great story, but only as a great example of powerful wordage and characterization. I think Golding sells us short here on the premise of survival. I finished the last page with little emotional or intellectual reaction. I felt, like Martin, only blank disillusionment.

Christopher 'Pincher' Martin is blown from the bridge of his navy ship and struggles in the tumult of the ocean for survival. The massive lashing force of the sea threatens to consume him, but he sights a spit of boulders, and clambers onto it. He comes to realise where he is - the tiny isolated rock in the North Atlantic that only appears on the weather charts. This rock is clearly based on the real islet of Rockall, which is one of the most isolated godforsaken places on earth. Miles and miles from the nearest land, with slender chance of rescue, Martin embarks on a survival mission. He drinks water from a tiny pool, eats weeds and sea anemones for sustenance, and talks to himself to keep his consciousness going. Piece by piece, he begins to construct the picture of who he is and what he has become. Martin is revealed to be an awful figure, an aggressive and selfish sexual predator who before his blast from the bridge was planning to kill a rival suitor. Golding writes Martin to be a throughly unappealing man, who nevertheless encapsulates a hard and bitter essence of our nature.

In hard packed, spare and salty prose, Pincher Martin is a supremely elegant and harsh short novel. Mingling themes of existentialism, psychology and survival, it is in the line of Robinson Crusoe literature that cuts us adrift from our self enclosed humanist bearings and forces us to inhabit a world we won't forget easily. The trick ending will surprise many, and force the reader to consider again Golding's big and portentous ideas about consciousness and human striving.

"Pincher Martin" might be any man who has sailed the seas or been in combat within 360 degrees of nothing. I've been a fan of Mr. Golding and recently revisited his "Pincher Martin". It is a book about struggle, and survival and perhaps the inevitable outcome of war but it is mostly about a man, one man, and his overwhelming need to live. I found, while reading the book for the second time, that the story has lost none of its vitality nor its ability to terrify. I felt the motion of the boat, the bite of the weather and the stark reality of the island. This book proved to me Mr. Golding is a master story teller. I recall, when first I read this book, wondering why it wasn't on the best seller lists. I still wonder about that.

This is one of those novels which, when you finish reading it, will leave you wondering: what happened? What does the ending mean? Which of two realities/possibilities occurred? Some people enjoy books and movies of this nature: they like the twist or trick, perhaps. Me, I hate books and movies of this nature. I don't like being left hanging. I like to know the answer to "What happened next?"

On top of not liking the ending (if you can call it an ending), I didn't find the main (only) character sympathetic, so I didn't enjoy spending the entire novel in his company. But Golding is a great writer, able to create a vivid, believable world and to show people trying to survive under the most dire of circumstances. Because of that I have to give this book three stars rather than one. And I note that others like this book, so for some readers it's a very good book. If you're considering reading this, I suggest you read several reviews of it beforehand.

Golding proves he is a master of probing man's psychology when in the greatest of danger. The plight of the stranded naval officer is vivid and frightening. Riveting, exciting and thoughful, the story displayes Golding's awesome and expansive imagination in such a confined environment. Take heed that the book is about the TWO deaths of Christopher Martin.

Reminiscent to a degree of Ambrose Bierce's AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE, Pincher Martin is cast into the sea when his ship is torpedoed, and the action of the novel takes place after his death in a purgatory-like land of myth and make-believe. It looks at first as if Martin has survived the shipwreck as he crawls up onto a barren rock in the sea. But as time goes by and the difficulties of survival mount, he begins hallucinating, reliving moments from his past (some of which are hard for the reader to figure out or follow), all in preparation for a final judgment by the Almighty. He encounters God, and when God bids Martin to give up his persistence to exist, Martin defies him. Pincher is turned into a lobster and disappears into the sea. Only in the concluding chapter is it made clear that Martin actually died very shortly after his ship was blown up. A strange novel, to say the least, and one that requires close attention by the reader. More than one reading is probably required to get the full impact of the book.