The deep satisfaction we feel in reading and reflecting on William Golding's novels rises from his power to isolate, describe and make real to us moral problems that concern us all. The notable moralists of our day are novelists and poets. Philosophy is remote from the average intelligent person and the churches rarely command his allegiance, but for all that he is eager to come to grips with serious problems of morality. Much popular fiction offers him nothing but a reflection of the easy, fashionable despair of those who paddle timidly in the shallows of experience, but William Golding tackles moral problems head on, and wrestles them to the floor.

How does he do it? His mind possesses a coherent, compassionate but unsentimental attitude toward life and mankind, and his scale of values, though not inflexible, is firm. In the broad sense of the term it is a...