Pincher Martin

Lieutenant Christopher Hadley Martin of the British Navy yells for help as he struggles to stay afloat in the dark cold waters of the North Atlantic. Golding writes, “He was struggling in every direction, he was the centre of the writhing and kicking knot of his own body” (4). At one point Martin screams “Moth—,” as if crying out for his mother, before the waves rushing over his head cut him off.

Martin kicks off his heavy seaboots to help stay afloat. Remembering his lifebelt, he blows into a tube to inflate it. Martin looks for other survivors or bits of wreckage from his ship, which sank after a German U-boat attacked it, but everything around him is black. He recalls standing watch during the attack and calling out orders—ten seconds too late—to steer hard to starboard. Martin cries out for his friend and shipmate Nathaniel.

Comforting himself with the thought that it will be daylight soon, Martin thinks, “I won’t die. I can’t die. Not me” (10). However, his grip on reality is already in question, as the author also writes, “His mind inside the dark skull made swimming movements long after the body lay motionless in the water” (12).