Summary of The Spire

Jocelin, doyen of a medieval cathedral, has had a vision which he believes reveals that he must add together a four hundred foot steeple to the cathedral. The decision is a controversial one, especially as the work proves disruptive and the accomplish builder, Roger Mason, discovers that the build lacks the requisite foundations to support the steeple. Jocelin is insistent that faith will be fitted and accuses the master builder of being timid, and of playing for time in browse to prolong himself and his men in employment. Jocelin is maintained in his belief that the spire will stand by the news that his bishop is sending a sanctum discover (from the crucifixion) from Rome to protect the spire.The cathedrals caretaker, Pangall, hates the disruption and the workmens mockery which he suffers. on that point are early hints that he is impotent. Jocelin is horrified when he notices that Roger and finesse, Pangalls wife, are sexually attracted to each early(a). However, he rea lises that, if he does not intervene, their adultery will observe Roger from leaving. Rogers wife Rachel reveals that she and her husband are boorless because she finds sex makes her laugh.Jocelin climbs to the roof to chatter the work and finds it exhilarating. However, he has what is eventually revealed to be tuberculosis of the spine, and this illness bit by bit becomes worse. He is also increasingly troubled by sexual dreams relating to his receive attraction to Goody.A pit has been dug in order for the master builder to look for foundations, and there is a crisis when the earth in it is seen to be creeping. The stones start to make a high-pitched whine and to splinter. Roger wants to stop work, but Jocelin forces him to continue. The result is that the anxious workmen become a mob and as exclusively later becomes apparent they pursue and murder Pangall, burying his body down the stairs the cathedral pavement as a cultural charm to keep the spire from falling.Jocelin becomes increasingly obsessed with the spire, shutting out all other concerns. However, he feels guilty about Goody and tries to speak to her. When she sobbingly rejects his approaches, he climbs the spire to seek solace. It is revealed that Goody is pregnant.Roger becomes increasingly sullen and unpopular and the render of the stones becomes worse, so that the master builder again begs Jocelin to halt the work. He paints a persuasive picture of the spires collapse, but Jocelin resists and makes him continue. Shortly after this, Jocelin climbs the spire and witnesses Roger and Goody having sex.A steel brace is made and fitted to the spire. While this is going on, Jocelin secures a place for Goody in a local convent. But when Rachel discovers Rogers infidelity, she attacks initial Goody, then Roger, and Goody dies in childbirth. Jocelin becomes more unwell and is tormented by remorse and sexual feelings, although he is relatively happy when helping the workmen. Roger becomes an s piritous and has a breakdown. At midsummer, Jocelin realises that the workmen have left their work to attend pagan festivities.More Summary of Devil at My HeelsThe spire nears completion as the Holy Nail approaches. Jehan, Rogers second-in-com adult maled, now in charge of the work, miscalculates and damages the spire. An semiofficial from Rome, referred to only as the Visitor, interviews Jocelin and relieves him of his authority. In a raging storm, Jocelin climbs the spire and hammers the Nail in place, after which he has two obscure visions of Goody.Jocelins aunt, Lady Alison, visits him and reveals that he was only appointed Dean thanks to her. The dumb sculptor, Gilbert, shows Jocelin that the pillars supporting the cathedral roof are not solid but filled with rubble. fix Adam reads aloud Jocelins sermon describing his original vision of the spire.The process of Jocelins disillusionment continues when Anselm Jocelins former teacher but now his junior as the Sacrist of the ca thedral denies that they were ever really friends. Jocelin goes to seek Rogers forgiveness, on the way having two mystical revelations inspired by an appletree and a kingfisher. He is briefly reconciled to Roger to begin with the master builder becomes angry and throws him out. On the street, Jocelin is set upon by a mob.Nearing death, Jocelin has his effigy sculpted, and finally has several intimations which seem to explain his past experiences, and perhaps the whole of life itself. His dying thought is of the appletree, but the priest tending him, Father Adam, chooses to believe that Jocelin was in his dying breath murmuring the take in of God.On one level this is a novel about the construct of a spire upon a cathedral, the foundations of which are nothing but marsh and brushwood. It is about the resilience of those foundations against all odds they hold a spire some four hundred feet high when, by rights, this shouldnt be possible.It follows the lives of a range of people involved in the building project, from the anonymous phalanx of labourers who do the actual work at one extreme to the man who believes that God has chosen him to bring this work to a conclusion at the other. The spire stands at the end of the novel but it has destroyed the lives of Dean Jocelin, whose vision was the inspiration for its building of Roger Mason, the master builder of Rogers wife, Rachel of Pangalls wife, Goody and the child she bears to Roger Mason.The reader is never confident whether the spire is the work of God or the work of the jaw what is clear is it is built upon human misery, upon argument and strife within the cathedrals community, and upon the deceit of Dean Jocelin who holds high office in the church. As the spire reaches upwards the Dean feels its weight upon his back until he ends curing double though he isnt aware of it, Jocelin suffers a crippling spinal disease tuberculosis of the spine which eventually violent deaths him. Throughout the buildi ng of the spire he believes that the early physical manifestations of his condition are the visitations of his own protector angel.The novel is also concerned with sexuality. It is about two mens confide for a simple woman who remains unaware of her own attractions one, the Dean, suppresses his desires and suffers because of it, the other, Roger Mason, fulfils his desires, gets her pregnant and also suffers by it. Goody Pangall dies in childbirth her husband is bullied pitilessly by Rogers men and finally driven cruelly to his death Roger tries to kill himself and ends his day in madness Rachel is left desolate, tending to her husband as if he were the baby they never had Jocelin dies in both physical and spiritual agony.Finally the spire is left, a symbol but a actually ambiguous one. Of the power of God to work miracles? Of a bargain with the devil? Or of the skill and endurance of man? Golding doesnt tell us.