Word: buildering
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Spellman is now a trifle slow of step and dim of sight, and he yearns to be remembered not as the good builder but as a good shepherd. His greatest consolation, he says, has been his annual Christmastide visits to the troops overseas, "which gave me a chance to do something pastoral. That has always been my ideal-to be close to the people. That is what the church has always done and always should...
...aging hero, Father Jocelin, sets out to capture his religious passion in a monumental new cathedral spire. Opposed to his zeal is the practicality of the Master Builder, who points out that the cathedral's foundation will not support a spire. Father Jocelin gets it built by sheer force of will, in the process destroying the builder's self-respect and trampling on his old colleagues--neglecting the portentous advice that a solid spire "goes down as far as it goes up." At the end as the spire totters, Jocelin comes to recognize the human cost his fervor has exacted...
...convenient metaphors to describe each of them, and continually sticks in these formulas to remind the reader of the character's place in the general scheme. Jocelin's ecstasy always burns like a flame, and an angel continually appears behind him to stand for his inspired will. The Master Builder and his wife "revolve around each other." And the urge which entangles the Master Builder in adultery with an innocent townswoman is "the net." This repetition does convey the rigidity of Jocelin's mind. But it is also boring, and has to be justified as a part of Golding...
Jocelin discovers his own sexuality with a jolt, in his passionate guilt toward the woman he had used to detain the Master Builder. He begins to question the pious motives which led him to marry her, his "daughter in God," to an important church sweeper. But even here some of the circumstances seem arbitrary. The spire's mysterious patroness turns out to have been the dead king's mistress, angling for immortality. The news that this woman also has supervised his rise in the church hastens Jocelin further into delirium...
...booted dictatorship. I've worked in Venezuela during the time of Perez Jimenez, in the Dominican Republic under Trujillo, in Argentina under Peron. There is no atmosphere of tension and fear. The idea is order, to build something." That is how Stroessner sees himself-as Paraguay's builder. His term expires in 1968, and constitutionally he is barred from running again. But in Stroessner's Paraguay, the builder can always reconstruct a constitution...