Several other novels in Golding's canon deal with the theme of selfknowledge and the imposing of one's own will. In Pincher Martin (1956), the dead seaman pits his will against God's, refusing to give up. He learns that his will is no match. Sammy Mountjoy, in Free Fall (1959), looks back on his life to see where he lost his freedom. He finds that it was the moment he imposed his will on another and ruined her life. Like Sammy, Oliver, the protagonist in The Pyramid (1967), learns about himself in the course of the novel; but where Sammy wishes to overcome his dark side, Oliver is willing to live with it because the price to change is too great. An enigmatic combination of Sammy and Oliver, Edmund Talbot in Rites of Passage (1980) recognizes his failings and his role in another man's demise, but critics debate the degree of...