Two narrative modes, two modes of perception: The use of the instrumental in Golding'sInheritors

‘Listening’ to the Neanderthals in William Golding’s The Inheritors : A sociopragmatic approach to fictional dialogue

“…Another set of voices in the dialogue on our encounter with the Neanderthal is the academic literature on The Inheritors. Many of the earlier studies I have discussed here (Adriaens 1970;Halliday 1971;Nelson 1986;Black 1993) saw in the novel a reflection of the Neanderthal-as-primitive discourse while later studies such as Hoover (1999) and Clark (2009) saw in this very same text challenges to that discourse. The re-reading offered here in this paper takes this challenge to the next level by listening to the Neanderthals in The Inheritors in a new way and suggesting a cognitively richer mental world for them, one much like our own.…”

“…Having defined theory of mind and intentionality and made the case for their use as analytical categories, we can now move on to the analysis and its implications. As noted earlier, much of the previous work on The Inheritors (Kinkead-Weekes and Gregor 1967;Adriaens 1970;Halliday 1971;Nelson 1986;Black 1993) concluded that the Neanderthal characters had only limited powers of cognition and understood the world primarily "through their senses" (Kinkead-Weekes and Gregor 1967: 48), remaining tied to the physical world in a perpetual present. Such findings would seem to indicate a largely first order awareness without theory of mind (Lok's I have a picture, 33; Liku's I am hungry, 21), suggesting that the Neanderthal characters remain trapped in a juvenile state of cognition.…”

“…Studies on The Inheritors (1955) are many and varied, encompassing divergent approaches and concerns. The novel has been evaluated for its engagement with the scientific record (DePaolo 2000), lauded as "a work of rare literary merit" (Carroll 2004: 162), employed as data in tests of Darwinian literary theory (Carroll 2004) and functional grammar (Halliday 1971), chosen for stylistic analysis (Black 1993;Nelson 1986;Halliday 1971;Adriaens 1970), analysed in Freudian terms (Sugimura 2002), read as a re-telling of the biblical Eden story (Kinkead-Weekes and Gregor 1967: 91-93;Clark 2009: 187), explored for its relationship to fantasy literature (Timmons 1996), claimed as science fiction (Elsbree 1999;Walker 1981) and, more recently, defined as one of the classic texts in the emerging genre of prehistoric fiction (Ruddick 2009: 76).…”

“…Log, for example, can mean fallen tree, bridge, or canoe (Black 1993: 41, examples hers), and the ears on a tree are for the Neanderthals literal ears, not a metaphoric description of the fungi growing on the bark (Sugimura 2002: 281;Black 1993: 45). Other characterisations of their language include a tendency to cast inanimate objects and body parts as such as stick or nose subjects (Halliday 1971: 349;Adriaens 1970: 19); the over-use of intransitive verbs (Halliday 1971: 349); a preference for expressing perceptions as noun phrases (the tightness of his skin) rather than actions (His skin felt tight) (Adriaens 1970: 23, examples his), and a limited use of instrumental expressions such as by means of a weapon (Nelson 1986). Halliday's (1971) conclusion on the language of the Neanderthal characters, while specific to his work, set the tone for much of the subsequent linguistic work on the text and can be taken to summarise the consensus view.…”