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COPYRIGHT 2002 Modern Humanities Research Association
There has been no persuasive discussion of the nature and function of Oa the earth goddess in The Inheritors. Underplaying the role of Oa in this novel leads to neglect of the key concept elaborated by the author. Although this work is one of Golding's less well-known novels and the depiction of a Neanderthal people is based mainly upon the author's imagination, thus anthropologically untenable, his treatment of Oa the earth goddess is of unique value.
Oa appears as a huge ice block, the object of worship and awe by Lok's tribe. It happens to be of a maternal shape, and alternates between freezing and melting as the temperature fluctuates. Another representation of Oa is 'little Oa', a small mother-shaped doll that Lok's daughter Liku always carries with her as a talisman and a toy. The maternal figure projected both on the earth goddess and on the wooden talisman implies that Oa is regarded as the universal womb from which all things in nature are born. The distinction of the two phonemes 'O' and 'A' in the appellation of Oa, and the fact that they occasionally lose distinction and become the sound 'Aaaa', suggest not only that human language develops through the process of articulating the maternal by means of a signifying system of 'O' and 'A', but also that the maternal holds the power of repudiating the very articulation achieved by the signifying system.
In the following discussion, the dominant role of Oa is investigated from multilateral points of view, and it is suggested that the reciprocity between the two powers inherent in Oa is of great significance with regard to cultural, religious, and psychological aspects when we consider the human beings in this novel.
When Lok, accompanied by Fa, first visits the caverns of the ice women, Oa's sanctuary, to offer the goddess a parcel of meat as tribute with a view to curing his father Mal of disease, Fa's whisper 'Oa Oa Oa' bounds back from the ice walls and reverberates like 'A' or 'Aaaa' without articulation. At this, Lok suddenly feels sick and deserts the place, with Fa leading him out. (1) This fact does not simply show much the same kind of articulation employed by the signifying system as that observed by Sigmund Freud in a child playing with a wooden reel, it also refers to the resistant power against the articulation itself. Freud deals with a child who expresses his mother's departure and return by alternately throwing away and pulling back a wooden reel with a piece of string tied round it. In addition, the child cries 'o-o-o-o' ('fort') when the reel disappears and 'da' when it reappears. (2) While Freud interprets this compulsion to repeat as a reproduction of the mother's absence, and as the reproduction of pain, thus attributing it to 'the death instincts' (pp. 43 50) that override 'the pleasure principle' (p. 17), Anika Lemaire observes that this sequence of the child's behaviour is the incipience of acquiring the symbols and the language. 'The two phonemes O and A (ooh and da)', Lemaire explains, 'symbolize the disappearance and reappearance of the reel [...]. The child moves from the mother to the reel and finally to language. Such an experience may be considered the inaugural moment of [...] all metaphors and all language. (3) On the other hand, Julia Kristeva reinterprets Freud's term 'the death instinct' as 'le rejet', (4) or the drive of rejection. Not until the mother is rejected does the reel become a symbol, and not until the reel is repeatedly rejected does the incipient language present itself. 'Little Oa', which Liku always carries with her, is also a sign equivalent of the reel. Because it has the appellation of 'little Oa', the incipient language has already been acquired through this doll, although Liku is old enough not to show the obvious act of repeatedly hurling and pulling it back.
Yet the mother as flesh and blood, already rejected from the signifying system, may return at any moment to disrupt and take the place of the sign. If the articulation of 'O' and 'A' disappears and turns into the sound 'Aaaa', it means that the mother has returned to dissolve a sign, a symbol, or a code. She looms large as flesh and blood before Lok's eyes. Lok is frightened of being swallowed up in her womb. The sound 'Aaaa', in fact, reverberates when the mother-shaped ice block (a sign for the maternal body) threatens to melt. It also forebodes flood. Kristeva defines the sign/code system as 'the symbolic (order)', the sign/code-dissolving elements 'the semiotic'. She holds that the semiotic and the symbolic are inseparable and make for dialectic within the signifying process of 'natural' language. No signifying system of 'natural' language therefore can be exclusively semiotic or exclusively symbolic (Revolution in Poetic Language, p. 24). Lok's tribes may articulate 'O' and 'A', but are always affected by 'A' or 'Aaaa' the sign/code-dissolving, or semiotic, sound.
In contrast, the new people put undue importance on the articulation itself, and harshly reject the sign/code-dissolving force. Lok feels keenly the 'mechanical' trait of the articulation of their speech. From the fact that their usual shouting 'A-ho A-ho' begins with the murder of Lok's mother or the incarnation of Oa, the hyphen separating 'A' from 'ho', we could infer, makes a strong safeguard against the counterattack of 'A' or Aaaa' by making a deep cut in the midst of Oa. The new people inflict serious damage upon Oa, whereby they cause their language to degenerate into a mere tool of superficial communication devoid of the ever-abundant images, symbols, and living metaphors indispensable to any human expression. For where the semiotic and the symbolic interact, plentiful meaning is infinitely procreated. The crucial difference between Lok's tribe and the new...
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