As Golding lived in Salisbury for several years, the reader easily thinks of Salisbury Spire being in the author’s mind when he worked on the scaffolding of his book. But any Spire would do. One can also forget about spires since any other building, or enterprise, could play the role. For what this novel does is edify the process through which a fixation can absorb one’s mind. Firm obsessions can dissolve uneasily as perceptions shift and flounder. And Golding’s equivocal language captures splendidly the way a fleeting chimera can take over one’s life and one’s will until it can either triumph or destroy. There's never any doubt about the phallic symbolism of the spire – but there are variations in its meaning. At first it rises from the belly of the church as a fairly straightforward expression of Jocelin's pride and power. Yet the imagery becomes ever more dangerous and unpleasant. We see workmen waving models of it between their legs. It is the centre of the apparent rape of Goody Pangall. It then seems, for a while at least, to promise a kind of fertility, a hope of life and love, when Goody falls pregnant and has an adulterous affair with the master builder Roger Mason. But in this novel, such hopes breed death and madness. And afterwards, as the tower sways and looks set to fall, there is hopeless impotence.

I really can’t emphasise enough how visceral this experience is. Maybe it’s just me but I was completely swept up in Golding’s amazing writing. I don’t want to give the ending away, but those of you who only want to read books with happy endings should probably avoid this one. Unfortunately for virtually everybody involved, Jocelin believes he has been chosen by God to build this spire and refutes every logical argument and explanation by the master builder with the classic ‘it will stand because God wills it so’. The master builder’s problem, of course, is that he can’t refute this without being burned as a heretic (or whatever the punishment was for being a heretic in twelfth century England… I could look it up but sod it). Thus the erection of The Spire commences… And, similar to Isaiah, he sees the guarding angel by his side… Bu kez bir manastırdayız. Bir baş rahibimiz var. Adı Jocelin. Şahsi yorumumu şimdiden söyleyeyim. Bence bu adam delinin teki. Yaşlandıkça ve Hıristyanlık aleminde yükseldikçe kafayı yemiş. Bir meleği var. (Kim bilir hangi psikolojik rahatsızlıktan muzdarip. Yazık la kimin çocuğuysa...) Meleği sürekli sırtında. Ondan hiç ayrılmıyor. Konuşmuyor da. Sadece peşinde dolanıyor, sırtında ağırlık yapıyor hepsi bu. Dolayısıyla bizim başrahip "ben seçilmiş kişiyim" diye dolanıyor ortalıkta. Mark well: this style did not prevent Golding from winning numerous international literary prizes. Golding enjoys one of the finest reputations in English letters. Besides his audacious ideas, (their variety, their execution) his prose is considered one of his many strengths even taken at blank, face- value. This 'forceful' and torrential style of text has won him many fans. Lots of readers enjoy his narrative voice, no matter what type-of-scene Golding happens to be describing. But will everyone appreciate it? No.Workmen and Cathedral staff are fearful of what Jocelin has unleashed but in a further indication of his descent into hallucinatory irrationality, he sees only beauty. All this affirms the views expressed above that The Spire is, among other things, about the creation of something from nothing: buildings from empty space, gods from human needs, and books from thoughts. It's a fascinating, invigorating and challenging read." Interesting that again this presumably refers to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil that bore the forbidden fruit in the garden of Eden in Genesis. The 'apple' consumed by Eve introduced mankind to an inclination for evil. Other significant trees of the New Testament – the fig tree that Jesus curses or the sycamore that Zaccheus, the tax collector, climbs into are not within the scope of Jocelin's vision." The more I think about this brilliant novel the more it opens up questions. The ambiguity that I am sure has frustrated many a reader is, for me, the core of its power and strength as a work of literature."

Most of the length of the book we see the cathedral through Jocelin's eyes – and for him it is "the bible in stone", the realisation of an exalted vision, a tremendous prayer to his god made physical. What you can notice immediately about a novel like this is that it has nothing to do with today's shabby 'historical fiction' trend. Such books merely transpose today's sensationalism to a remote timeperiod; but deliver nothing more than the same tawdry potboiler intrigues we're familiar with from TV. Brennan, Clare (11 November 2012). "The Spire – review". The Observer. ISSN 0029-7712 . Retrieved 25 September 2020. Day and night, acts of worship went on in the stink and half dark, where the candles illuminated nothing but close haloes of vapour; and the voices rose, in fear of age and death, in fear of weight and dimension, in fear of darkness and a universe without hope. (50)The Spire was envisioned by Golding as a historical novel with a moral struggle at its core, which was originally intended to have two settings: both the Middle Ages and modern day. [4] Whilst teaching at Bishop Wordsworth's School, Golding regularly looked out of his classroom window at Salisbury Cathedral and wondered how he would possibly construct its spire [5] But the book's composition and eventual realisation of The Spire was not an easy process for Golding. According to his daughter, Judy Carver, Golding 'struggled like anything to write The Spire' and said that the novel 'went through many drafts'; this was perhaps owing to the fact that he had stopped teaching which, in turn, gave him more time to write. [6] I've tended to read Jocelin's folly as part of a profoundly human condition – the search for meaning, the construction of belief, even as exemplar of the novelist's ability to invent and elaborate. Nailing The Spire to Christianity works, but it limits or rather narrows our understanding of Art's capacity." This is the second time I’ve read The Spire. It’s so rich in imagery, symbolism and metaphor that it can be challenging to absorb in one reading. I understood the way Jocelin’s degrading spine connects to the instability of the spire and the significance of Goody’s red hair. But I’m still puzzled about the meaning of the mistletoe placed within the corpse of one character and which Jocelin scrapes off his shoes with disgust. The spire is also Goody Pangall, object of Jocelin's displaced sexual energy. But while the feared fertility sprouts in Goody, the spire remains pure and virginal." We can't be sure they are referring to Jocelin, except for the word "but" which begins this sentence: "But when the two deacons saw the dean looming over them, they fell to their knees."

As noted, removed as I am from the internet, I have no idea how much of The Spire is based on real events, how much of Jocelin's erection was actually built and how much remains. I do know there's still a spire on Salibsury cathedral. But I don't know if this was the one Jocelin is supposed to have built. Whether the one Jocelin built fell down and the current one replaced it. Or whether there was no Jocelin, there were no worries about the depths of the foundations and no drama about the construction. A priest builds a spire on a cathedral according to a spiritual vision, believing it to be the calling of God and dependant upon his will and faith to bring it to completion, destroying his congregation, vocation and sanity in the process.College students in the 1950s and 1960s gave the attention to Lord of the Flies, first novel of Golding; their attention drove that of literary critics. He was awarded the Booker Prize for literature in 1980 for his novel Rites of Passage, the first book of the trilogy To the Ends of the Earth. He received knighthood in 1988.