Pincher Martin Pincher Martin Pincher Martin (published in America as Pincher Martin: The Two Deaths of Christopher Martin), is a novel by British writer William Golding, first published in 1956. It is Golding's third novel, following "The Inheritors" and his debut "Lord of the Flies". The novel is one of Golding's best-known novels, and is noted for being existential and minimalistic in setting. The plot of "Pincher Martin" surrounds the survival and psychophysical, spiritual and existential plight of one Christopher Hadley "Pincher" Martin, a temporary naval lieutenant who believes himself to be the sole survivor of a military torpedo destroyer which sinks
The Spire is used towards the end of the novel, where Jocelin lies dying. Jocelin declares "it's like the apple-tree!", making a reference to the Garden of Eden and Humanity's first sin of temptation but also perhaps the pagan ideas that have been constantly threaded into Jocelin's mind as he spends more and more time up in the Spire, raised above the ground (and further away from his church and his role as God's voice on earth). Jocelin's degrading spine can be seen as a micro-macro analogy to the unstable spire. He believes the former manifests as the presence of his angel