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MARCO CARACCIOLO, A Walk Through Deep History

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asleep.” In the original, the question mark stands out even more,
being preceded and followed by a line break; it is a graphic device sig-
naling an indeterminate noise, which may (or may not) suggest pos-
sible danger. But just as the embodied warning does not register in
Lok’s consciousness, its exact meaning escapes readers—a highly ef-
fective way of strengthening the empathetic bond between readers
and Lok, because it suggests that readers are locked into the charac-
ter’s embodied awareness of his surroundings.
Other passages foreground not just perception but bodily move-
ment; we have to imagine them as a close-up evocation of Lok’s skill-
ful interaction with the environment. Here is an example: “Half-lying,
half-crawling, grinning all the time with fear [Lok] moved out over
the river. He could see the wetness down there, mysterious and
pierced everywhere by the dark and bending stems. There was no
place that would support his whole weight. He had to spread it not
only through all his limbs and body but be always in two places, mov-
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ing, moving as the boughs gave.” Lok seems to be climbing through
branches suspended over a body of water, and the quickness and agili-
ty of his movements are captured by the simplicity of the metaphorical
expression “be always in two places,” with the repetition “moving,
moving” directly reflecting the embodied logic of Lok’s climbing.
Golding’s prose is rich in such kinetic traces, which work like the effi-
cient brushstrokes of an impressionist painting: they create a com-
pelling picture of the protagonist’s embodied experience even as read-
ers struggle to understand his motivations in more cognitive terms, or
to recognize the objects around him.
Readers are thus encouraged to take on a Neanderthal’s body
through sensorimotor empathy based on rich embodied simulations.
This empathy is an equivalent of the immediate mimicry experienced
by Lok himself: “As the smell of cat would evoke in him a cat-stealth
of avoidance and a cat-snarl; as the sight of Mal to ering up the slope

28
Golding, The Inheritors, 33. A similar use of the question mark for the ears’
warning is on p. 94.
29 Golding, 97.

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