William Golding
We are only seeking Man. We have no need of other worlds. We need mirrors. We don't know what to do with other worlds. A single world, our own, suffices us; but we can't accept it for what it is. We are seaching for an ideal image of our own world: we go in quest of a planet, of a civilisation superior to our own but developed on the basis of a prototype of our primeval past. At the same time, there is something inside us which we don't like to face up to, from which we try to protect ourselves, but which nevertheless remains, since we don't leave Earth in a state of primal innocence. We arrive here as we are in reality, and when the page is turned and that reality is revealed to us that part of our reality which we would prefer to pass over in silence then we don't like it any more.
Solaris
We did everything adults would do. What went wrong?
Lord of the Flies
Towards midnight the rain ceased and the clouds drifted
away, so that the sky was scattered once more with the incredible lamps of
stars. Then the breeze died too and there was no noise save the drip and tickle
of water that ran out of clefts and spilled down, leaf by leaf, to the brown
earth of the island. The air was cool, moist, and clear; and presently even the
sound of the water was still. The beast lay huddled on the pale beach and the
stains spread, inch by inch.
The edge of the lagoon became a streak of phosphorescence
which advanced minutely, as the great wave of the tide flowed. The clear water
mirrored the clear sky and the angular bright constellations. The line of
phosphorescence bulged about the sand grains and little pebbles; it held them each
in a dimple of tension, then suddenly accepted them with an inaudible syllable
and moved on.
Along the shoreward edge of the shallows the advancing
clearness was full of strange, moonbeam-bodied creatures with fiery eyes. Here
and there a larger pebble clung to its own air and was covered with a coat of
pearls. The tide swelled in over the rain-pitted sand and smoothed everything
with a layer of silver. Now it touched the first of the stains that seeped from
the broken body and the creatures made a moving patch of light as they gathered
at the edge. The water rose further and dressed Simon's coarse hair with
brightness. The line of his cheek silvered and the turn of his shoulder became
sculptured marble. The strange, attendant creatures, with their fiery eyes and
trailing vapours busied themselves round his head. The body lifted a fraction
of an inch from the sand and a bubble of air escaped from the mouth with a wet
plop. Then it turned gently in the water.
Somewhere over the darkened curve of the world the sun and moon were pulling; and the film of water on the earth planet was held, bulging slightly on one side while the solid core turned. The great wave of the tide moved further along the island and the water lifted. Softly, surrounded by a fringe of inquisitive bright creatures, itself a silver shape beneath the steadfast constellations, Simon's dead body moved out towards the open sea.
Lord of the Flies
Sleep is when all the unsorted stuff comes flying out as
from a dustbin upset in a high wind.
Pincher Martin
