Golding’s second novel, The Inheritors, is set in a similarly exotic location as Lord of the Flies, and, like it, traces the process of civilization and its disintegration. Unlike Lord of the Flies, however, it is set in the distant past rather than the near future, and it describes forces of both progress and dissolution.
Taking as his subtext the popular social evolutionism in vogue at the turn of the twentieth century, as exemplified by the work of H. G. Wells, Golding traces the demise of Neanderthal man in the face of the advent of Homo sapiens. To both species of humans, life is, in the words of Thomas Hobbes, “nasty, brutish, and short,” though in somewhat different ways. Golding questions whether Homo sapiens is the “fitter” of the two species.
The narrative is told from the viewpoint of a small group of Neanderthals, returning from their winter quarters in a coastal cave to their summer gathering grounds in a forest at the base of the mountains, by a lake and waterfall. The Neanderthals quickly discover a group of Homo sapiens encamped on an island by the waterfall. This is a species they have never encountered before. Instinctively, they seek their company as fellow humans. The Neanderthals are portrayed as simple, instinctive, intuitive, living in harmony with nature, and with a sense of the sacredness of life. They are afraid to kill any living being. They possess a...
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