Rites of Passage

Summary

Cast as the journal of a young aristocrat sailing to take up a colonial post in Australia, the novel follows the slow unravelling of a fellow passenger, a hapless parson, during the long voyage south. Golding contrasts his narrator's self-satisfied wit with the cruelty he records but barely understands, turning the ship into a confined moral laboratory. The book launched the To the Ends of the Earth trilogy and confirmed Golding's preoccupation with the darker undercurrents of civility.