Although critics have acknowledged that the narrator of Free Fall, Samuel Mountjoy, must not be identified with Golding, they have failed to distinguish clearly between Mountjoy's purpose in writing his narrative and Golding's in writing his novel…. [Critics] have taken the wrong approach to Mountjoy's assumption that it is possible freely to relinquish one's freedom of will. It is only when we recognise that this assumption is not shared by Golding that novel and narrative appear in the proper perspective: the narrative as Mountjoy's confession cum self-justification, and the novel as Golding's parable of the abuse of freedom. (p. 73)

Rather than having lost his freedom, [Sammy] has abused it in behaving selfishly to Beatrice and in contributing, perhaps, to her mental breakdown. But because Mountjoy has acted not entirely on his own initiative, but instead, under the influence of characters like [his teacher and mentor] "Old Nick" (the schoolboys' nickname for him) Shales and cunning Philip Arnold, his sin is seen to be not entirely wilful, and mercy is extended—by Golding. Mountjoy is cast into the wilderness in a figurative sense, in acutely feeling the need to relieve his guilty conscience. Yet Golding grants him experience of two kinds of Paradise—both related to his being an artist.

For Mountjoy's narrative tells not only of his seduction and desertion of Beatrice, but also, of his rise to artistic success. As in the one, so in this other part of the story, Beatrice' role is significant. Mountjoy sketches her hurriedly one day in art class; she appears to him to be surrounded in metaphoric "light." He is as excited by the light as Dante is in the Vita Nuova at the sight of another Beatrice, and hopes to catch another glimpse of it in the act of drawing her again. (pp. 78-9)

[But] throughout his adolescence and young manhood, Sammy's artistic vision is blunted by the selfish, sensual element in his outlook on life. In adolescence he does not re-discover the metaphorical light that surrounded Beatrice the first time he drew her.

It is not until the war—not until Halde orders his brief solitary confinement in a darkened cell—that he undergoes the psychological conversion necessary to restore his "sight."… [After] he has been released from the cell, Sammy is aware that the "thing within" has perished. Walking through the grounds of the prison camp, he feels, though, like "a man resurrected" …: the world appears to him as "a burst casket of jewels."… Everything seems to irradiate the metaphorical light that had surrounded Beatrice' face years before. Moreover, he now appreciates that an ordered society depends heavily on the concern and compassion of man for individual man. The death of the "thing within"—clearly an aspect of Mountjoy's selfishness—has brought about the restoration of his artistic vision and a renewed and intensified concern for other people…. Beneath the shell of adolescent self-centredness is a fund of humaneness in Mountjoy: it is this that accounts for the intensity of his suffering over what happened to Beatrice.

Mountjoy's description of his restored aesthetic "sight" recalls not only Dante but Blake. "If the doors of perception were cleansed," the latter wrote, "everything would appear to man as it is, infinite and holy." The metaphorical door burst by the "thing within" is thus not only a door of death, but a door of aesthetic perception…. To his misguided, but nonetheless humane and therefore sympathetic character, Golding restores paradisical vision, enabling him to succeed as an artist and attain to a house in the fashionable district of Paradise Hill.

By palliating his character's suffering in this way, Golding diminishes the reader's sense that Free Fall is a purely naturalistic account of Mountjoy's psychological development…. Free Fall is the story of Samuel, a character who, like the Biblical prophet, is visited by spiritual revelation and is involved (as an artist) in confounding the philistines. But most important of all, it is the story of Mountjoy, the man who mounts his own joy above that of others, and suffers in consequence.

Mountjoy's narrative is a search for the moment of lost freedom, but the allegorical element in Free Fall clearly suggests that in Golding's view, Sammy has abused rather than relinquished free choice. (pp. 80-2)

Of merely incidental importance to [Mountjoy's] narrative is an aphorism he forges in reference to his love for his mother: "Love selflessly and you cannot come to harm."… The remark is irrelevant to his search for lost freedom; but it is the crux of Golding's novel/parable. (p. 82)