ABSTRACT
The silences in Eliot express something beyond the words on either side of them, the silences in William Golding signal a change from one kind of consciousness to another. The fact about the daimon is not a necessary one; in the film of Lord of the Flies a boy actor did what Golding's daimon avoided, made Piggy funny without changing the sense or diminishing the tragedy. The daimon of Lord of the Flies, the book, obviously does understand poetry: the grief, terror and wrath of that and all Golding's novels coexist with an enjoyment of the process of things and ecstatic apprehension of beauty. Yet with all that somewhere close to his surface, all that constantly appearing in his conversation, Bill has the humour which his daimon eschews. His conversation flows with pun, sardonically humorous anecdote, and a quite unsardonically humorous presentation of himself.
