Free Fall

Free Fall is the fourth novel of English novelist William Golding, first published in 1959. Written in the first person, it is a self-examination by an English painter, Samuel Mountjoy, held in a German POW camp during World War Two. Samuel Mountjoy, a talented painter but a directionless and unhappy man, is a prisoner of war in Germany during WWII. Recently some inmates escaped from his camp. A Gestapo officer, Dr. Halde, interviews Sammy in an attempt to find out about the escape organization; when Sammy denies knowing anything, Halde has him locked in a small store-room, awaiting possible... torture. Under the pressure of the darkness, isolation and horrified anticipation he gradually breaks down; in a series of long flashbacks, he wonders what brought him to his current state, and in particular, how he lost his freedom. As a very young child he was happy, despite living in a slum and never knowing his father. He was adopted by the local priest and attended day school and grammar school, where he was torn between two diametrically opposed parent-figures - the kindly science master Nick Shales and the sadistic Rowena Pringle, who taught religious studies.
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