The duality of God, humanity and religion in William Golding's 'Darkness Visible' and John Steinbeck's 'East of Eden'

Abstract

This thesis is an examination of the duality of God, humanity, and religion as represented in William Golding's Darkness Visible and John Steinbeck's East of Eden. Particular attention is paid to the tendency of these two authors to explicate their themes through the juxtaposition, or doubling, of characters and ideas. In the first chapter, God is discussed in conjunction with the conventional separation of Old and New Testament identities, as well as the instances in these novels where the authors' and their characters' interpretations of the divine nature are differentiated. In the second chapter, the characters themselves, representing a fictional humanity, are discussed in relation to their dependence on their doubles for a complete evaluation. In many instances, there are single personalities with contradicting traits and behaviours, denoting a further duality within the individual. In the third chapter, religion, as the worship and attempted imitation of the deity, is given its own "identity" within these two rewritings of Biblical stories through the conjunction of different methods of praise and the often contradictory religious ethics of characters.