The Inheritors
by William Golding

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Book Reviews of The Inheritors

Book Review: Complex, but worth the effort
Summary: 5 Stars

The comment by a previous reviewer is worth taking up:"And now I have an even bigger reason to dislike this book. I happen to hate reading screeds that trash the author's own ancestors. I'm sure homo sapiens were not perfect, but please show me a race or culture of people who are." Well, I'd agree, strongly. But it's not as simple as that: the Homo Sapiens Sapiens in The Inheritors are not shown as deliberately and strategically wiping out the last Homo Sapiens Neanderthalus. Rather, they are terrified of them. They think they are defending themselves against horrifying demons - why do they submit to the discipline of the whip to drag the canoe up the portage? Plainly they are half out of their minds with terror, which the Neanderthals cannot comprehend. Further, the Neanderthals, though gentle and innocent, are plainly inadequate. The process of their replacement by the Homo Sapiens Sapiens, or Cro-Magnards, is cruel but it is not morbid. The Neanderthals, it is clearly demonstrated, are at a dead-end (they are only a vestige of a tribe at the beginning of the story). The survival of the Neanderthal infant means some of their gentleness and innocence may survive into the new world. It is actually a relief to get into the Cro-Magnards' minds in the final chapter after the limitation of having to see everything from a Neanderthal point of view. The Cro-Magnards are at one point called "the people of the fall" - in religious terms they are the people of the "Fall" indeed - Postlapsarian Man. Unlike the Neanderthals, they do have knowledge of good and evil, and we see at the end even the rudiments of conscience - which is not to say the end of the Neanderthals is not utterly tragic.

Like all Golding's earlier works, this is the exploration of difficult moral dilemnas. There are lessons there but they are not easy.

Summary of The Inheritors

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