William Golding: RITES OF PASSAGE

Told in two different points of view through the separate journals of an upper-class young man on his way to make a career in Australia and that of a clergyman, both on board of the stinking warship bound for Australia, Rites of Passage is an indictment of the hypocrisy in the society they inhabit. The young man, Mr. Talbot, is supposed to discover the world; he ends up discovering himself and transformed into an enlightened man after going through the 'rites of passage' the characters aboard the stinking ship have unknowingly forced him to experience.

Reading this book by William Golding is a diferent kind of experience despite that, a number of times, I got confused with the narrative. I still got the idea (in the end) though. This book won the 1980 Booker Prize. The author won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1983.

Rating: 3.5/5.0

{11 February 2010}