Day and night, acts of worship went on in the stink and half dark, where the candles illuminated nothing but close haloes of vapour; and the voices rose, in fear of age and death, in fear of weight and dimension, in fear of darkness and a universe without hope. (50)

I first read The Spire in my sophomore year of college. The course was ENGL 200 - "The Literary Experience" - in which we were to read a sampling of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama. The Spire was our example of a novel. The professor told us up front what the major metaphor/motif was: the church spire Dean Jocelin struggles to raise is a phallic symbol. It's a penis. We all giggled.

This was my first dedicated close read, and the class inspired me to change my major—out of Math, realm of predictable symmetry and the elegant proof, and into English, with all its accompanying mess of human life and emotion. For the first time I understood symbolism more deeply than "Piggy's glasses = civilization" and "the spire = a penis." In all my classes before, I had been taught that symbolism in literature followed a simple this-for-that substitution and could be boiled down nicely for multiple choice exams. But The Spire was different. Felt different. In this story of misguided ambition and sublimated desire, poetically written and shot through with evocative imagery, I felt moved, powerfully, by Golding's prose. For the first time, I really connected with a passionate expression of the human condition. As I grow older, I appreciate more and more Golding and his hoary old cynical persona. I've read Lord of the Flies a half-dozen times, and marked up the margins with notes and connections and asterisks and exclamation points. Golding has a way, for me, of moving beyond plot and into the murky depths of theme. And though I've revisited The Spire far less often, it only gains meaning as I grow older and experience for myself the passing of time, the loss of youthful virility, the frustration of childhood goals not attained.

5 stars out of 5. Perhaps it is not the most engaging story, but for me it marks my very first exposure to true literary art and the seed from which my pretentious reading habit grew.

Spoiler

Just some further quotes that resonate and illustrate the book's theme and potent language.

I have so much will, it puts all other business by. I am like a flower that is bearing fruit. There is a preoccupation about the flower as the fruit swells and the petals wither; a preoccupation about the whole plant, leaves dropping, everything dying but the swelling fruit. That's how it must be. My will is in the pillars and the high wall. I offered myself; and I am learning. (92)

I thought it would be simple. I thought the spire would complete a stone bible, be the apocalypse in stone. I never guessed in my folly that there would be a new lesson at every level, and a new power. Nor could I have been told. I had to build in faith, against advice. That's the only way. (103)

'I tell you, we guess. We judge that this or that is strong enough; but we can never tell until the full strain comes on it whether we were right or wrong.' (111)

'...D'you think you can escape? You're not in my net—oh yes, Roger, I understand a number of things, how you are drawn, and twisted, and tormented—but it isn't my net. It's His. We can neither of us avoid this work. And there's another thing. I've begun to see how we can't understand it either, since each new foot reveals a new effect, a new purpose. It's senseless, you think. It frightens us, and it's unreasonable. But then—since when did God ask the chosen ones to be reasonable? They call this Jocelin's Folly, don't they?'

'I've heard it called so.'

'The net isn't mine, Roger, and the folly isn't mine. It's God's Folly. Even in the old days He never asked men to do what was reasonable. Men can do that for themselves. They can buy and sell, heal and govern. But then out of some deep place comes the command to do what makes no sense at all—to build a ship on dry land; to sit among the dunghills; to marry a whore; to set their son on the altar of sacrifice. Then, if men have faith, a new thing comes.' (116)