Rites of Passage - William Golding

Edmund Talbot, a rather pompous aristrocrat, narrates the story on board a British warship. He is off to be Govenor of New South Wales and is writing in a journal given to him by his godfather who, we suspect, has sent him off to the other side of the world to get rid of him. The book has a familiar Golding theme: man’s reversion to savagery when he is isolated from his usual society and its rules. Here they are out at sea: in more ways than one. Another theme running through the story is class division and the assumption of higher status which is not deserved. Talbot is quite an enigma. Initially he feels above the Reverend Colley whom he dislikes and finds amusing but then he becomes a mediator between Colley and the Captain but this is through vanity. Talbot is a gossip and unlikeable. The story starts off in a superficial, quite comic way. Colley is initially absurd, especially his behaviour in the drunken incident but then the action darkens when he dies of shame and we realise why. The characters are generally an unpleasant lot. Golding’s early C19^th  prose is convincing. The reader gets a completely different picture of Colley from his journal which has touching elements and reveals the story as it goes on. An interesting read: in small doses for some!