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MARCO CARACCIOLO, A Walk Through Deep History

way in which expectations about the outcome of a story line fall into
a certain pa ern, with embodied image schemata—such as ‘path’ or
‘blockage’—structuring our understanding of the narrative. Such
schemata, along with the affective values that accompany them, fur-
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ther contribute to readers’ embodied involvement. When these
strategies are successful, embodied simulations become thick and may
result in full-fledged bodily feelings: for instance, a sense of ‘presence’
or immersion in a narrative that almost feels like a slice of reality; or
an empathetic bond with a character; or a feeling of absorption into a
plot, of ‘moving along’ with the narrative and its twists and turns.
William Golding’s The Inheritors deploys several of these embodied
devices, as we’ll see in the next section, through its experimental, and
at times disorienting, writing style. In that respect, Golding’s novel
goes further than many other, more conventional narratives set in pre-
history in its a empt to blend embodied responses and the deep time
of human evolution.

Resonating with Lok

Golding’s novel focuses on the experiences of a Neanderthal man, Lok,
as he and his group members come into contact with a new species of
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humans (Homo sapiens). Only the last chapter, with an abrupt per-
spective reversal, centers on one of our conspecifics, Tuami, and offers
an external viewpoint on the Neanderthal mind that had served as our
guide throughout the novel. Narratologically speaking, both minds are
depicted through internal focalization, but to vastly different effects.
Indeed, the interest of Golding’s portrayal of Neanderthal thought

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Michael Kimmel, “Analyzing Image Schemas in Literature,” Cognitive Semi-
otics 5 (2009): 159-188. See also Marco Caracciolo, “Tell-Tale Rhythms: Em-
bodiment and Narrative Discourse,” Storyworlds 6, no. 2 (2014): 49-73.
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My reading of Golding’s novel in this section expands on the argument I
advanced in Marco Caracciolo, “Literary Proto-Humans: Cognition and Evo-
lution in London’s ‘Before Adam’ and Golding’s ‘The Inheritors’, ” Orbis Lit-
terarum 71, no. 3 (2016): 215-39.

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