Of Fireworks, Neanderthals, and Boats

William Golding’s “The Inheritors” may be historically (pre-historically?) inaccurate in its depiction of how the Neanderthals were superseded by Homo Sapiens, but that doesn’t stop it being an incredible novel. The narrative is simply wonderful. Because we can only see and hear what Lok and his tribe experience, we must work out - as they do what is happening. And, because their understanding of the world is so much less sophisticated than ours, we, too, struggle to comprehend. We are required to pause regularly and puzzle through events. Their perception and their thoughts and their understanding comes to us, but not without effort. We have to work for understanding.

There are three narratives. Most of the book is with Lok. We sit on his shoulder and see the world very much from his perspective. The penultimate chapter shifts to an omniscient narrator observing Lok, while the final chapter is told from the point of view of the New People (early humans). It is not a one-sided story.

Once we have come to love Lok’s simplicity, once we have come to understand the people’s proto-culture, with the beginnings of a religious belief, the emergence of natural hierarchy (not an oxymoron), and their fears, and their wonderful - almost telepathic - shared communication; once we’ve been initiated into the tribe, all but Lok (and the new one, the baby Neanderthal) are killed. We watch, desperately saddened, as Lok tries to fulfil the obligation of ritual burial for himself.

Only then do we learn that the New People, the humans, are desperately afraid of the Neanderthals, seeing them as forest devils. They are struggling to survive too. They are fleeing (perhaps from war). They are not the terrible and terrifying brutal killers we thought they were.

It is difficult not to draw parallels.

Because they look different and don’t speak or communicate in the same way, Lok and the tribe became hated and feared. They are hunted. They are persecuted. They are killed.

Tolerance of difference is huge. We may not understand. We may be fascinated, puzzled, even alarmed by difference. However, the red leaf among the green is not evil. It is merely different.

I want a snowflake to go back to being a feathery ice-crystal. If we wander through life seeking ways to be offended, of course, we are going to be offended.

Labour accusations of anti-semitism, Conservative accusations of bullying and homophobia, BLM and ALM, Boris and Brexit, and I’m not going to get into any cross-pond mud-slinging.

One of the classes that I’m lucky enough to teach this year has lots of differences. If there’s a TLA (three letter acronym) to ascribe a condition, it’s there. I know we’re not allowed favourites, but if we were, I think it would be my favourite class. Metaphorically, it’s a bit like minestrone soup, made up of all sorts, made in a hurry by someone who was in a stranger’s kitchen, improvising with whatever happens to be in the larder and fridge, using a blunt knife and a pot that’s a little too small and a gas hob that’s unreliable. The result, however, is glorious!

At the moment we have a broken collar bone, so the learner has to use a laptop. Actually, that’s a blessing, since his writing is challenging at the best of times.

There’s a reluctant learner who has neither coped well with Covid changes to school life nor with managing her diabetes. Catching up is doubly difficult when we can take only gentle baby steps.

There’s the learner who told me recently that the only way he’s likely to achieve a pass is if they start giving them out for staring into space not thinking about anything.

But they are glorious.

One boy said, yesterday, “But if you look at the context, the connotations are obvious.” It was a wee firework moment. I said ‘wow!’ It was clear from the expressions of the others in the class that they were equally impressed. But the thing that made it wonderful was that every single one of us knew what he meant. We were all able to recognise that this young learner was using the vocabulary of the class but putting it together in a new way, taking ownership of his learning and moving towards mastery.

This happened while another learner was stimming and making little cat-like noises.

The incandescence of iron with carbon produces the golden firework. To have a shower of golden stars, the heat generated needs to be hotter than produces red light but not so hot as to produce white. Too much sodium in the mix will produce only yellow.

Black powder (an expression with its own bewitching connotations) propels the firework into the air, while an internal fuse prepares to ignite the business end and create the magic.

Without the correct mastery of the precise chemistry, without careful preparation, without the required processes (and safety-checks) in place, there is no dazzling and awe-inducing, breath-catching moment of wonder.

So, it wasn’t by chance that Liam could put such an astonishing sentence together. But, neither was it really design. The circumstances and - crucially - the environment were ones which gave the learner the confidence to shine brilliantly.

I remember another class in another classroom in another school (practically a different life) where I was teaching “The Inheritors”. (Quite a few of them are now teachers themselves.) We looked at the acquisition and development of language. If these berries are poisonous, how do we - without language - communicate to our tribe-mate that (no matter how shiny and juicy the berries are) they should not eat them? This took us to the rudiments. We need nouns to name things. Then verbs for actions. Later, to distinguish between nouns, we need adjectives and, if chased by a sabre-toothed tiger (go with me) - “run fast” is far more useful than simply “run”! One could argue, of course, that the tone of our instruction can convey the necessity of speed; however, that’s for another time.

Once we had grasped these concepts, it was postulated that, more sophisticated vocabulary and constructions were needed to communicate more complicated ideas. This led to the introduction of ‘subordination’ and - inevitably - to the compound-complex sentence. All from a few poisonous berries. . .

Lok would say to his tribe, “I have a picture.” They would focus for a moment, they would place their hands on their heads, and they would share that picture. Often, they would smile.

Golding’s Neanderthals had more skill, but it is the same principle when a group of us get together and, in chatting, remember an event we shared. The time when David did a cartoon-esque slip, caught some air and then crashed to the ground on an icy Aberdeen street. When all of the band in the pit of Edinburgh’s Churchill Theatre sported gaffer tape moustaches for a performance of Billy Elliot. The family weekend away when we played Human Hungry Hippos on skateboards. When we are together and we remember, there is an undeniable shared glow. It may not be the type of telepathic sharing enjoyed by Golding’s tribe, but it is real. We relive, not the actual experience but the feelings generated by its memories.

I have a picture of a world where difference is not celebrated, where it is not remarkable enough for celebrating because it is simply part of life. I have a picture of a world where we don’t feel the need to identify as anything because everyone just “is” and everyone else is ok with that.

The end of Golding’s novel sees the homo sapiens sailing into the hopeful future in a small craft. They take with them the New One, the last Neanderthal child. They are going forward together. Whatever is ahead of us, I am in that boat.

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