The Spire / William Golding

RATINGS

Overall: 4 / 5 stars

Text Level: Hard

Entertainment: High

Self-Help: Medium

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Historical, Religion, 20th Century Literature

Page Count: 228

Is this book right for my inmate and me?

If you’ve spent life obsessing over satisfying temporary wants at the moment, even if it hurts those you love, justifying your bad actions, read this book.

Buy from: Amazon / Barnes & Noble

Review By: Blackbird (Inmate)

When a person ignores the warnings of obsessions driven by vanity everything that once mattered will be destroyed.

Big plans built upon weak ideas are destined to fail. William Golding writes The Spire asking the readers to question their own wants to see if they are built on unreasonable foundations towards their life goals.

In the story, we follow a priest driven by an obsession to build a spire for the church. Secretly vanity is the reason for building the spire and he will allow nothing to stand in his way. To outsiders and experts that question him about the success o the project, he uses faith and holiness to attack the concerns instead of reflecting on his own plan. Even when told that building this size of spire will ruin the church, he lets his pride stand in the way. In the end, because he is not able to accept the flaws of his original plan, the whole church is destroyed because it didn’t have the foundation to carry the weight.

One thing I learned through the story is as inmates, so many of us want numerous things in our lives to the point of obsession never spending the time to think, “is this the best for me"?” We often have found the damage it was doing to our loved ones. The jail is filled with people that pursued money, street cred, and drugs at all costs, leaving the lives of families destroyed in the process. Just like the priest in this story, when confronted with the reality o the flaws and damage, these choices have done, many individuals have chosen to blame others first to deflect the pain. The hypocrisy that numeours inmates have found themselves in as they steal and work to impress strangers as they work for a better lifestyle in their mind is not lost on them as time wasted. Through this story, we can see that one of the best ways to avoid this destruction is by building a life with a clear understanding of the moral foundation it is built upon.

Inmates must start by reflecting, asking themselves what a life of happiness is and what it means to them. Whether it is spiritually based or through family, a sound foundation of moral principles needs to be created for all future goals to be built upon. If having the goal in life is helping others, being a good parent, or holding a decent job, it must have a structure based on something life-changing for you. each person must determine what this moral foundation is for themselves in order to have life goals that don’t fall back to living for vanity and destruction of others.

Quote:

“For want of a nail, the shoe was lost,

For want of a shoe, the horse was lost,

For want of a horse, the rider was lost,

For want of a rider, the Kingdom was lost,

And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.”