Martin Luther King a famous social activist once stated, “we must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love.” When referring to these words it is shown how forgiving we can be for people that we hate or dislike. In William Golding's book The Lord of the Flies his character Jack shows the actions of power, fear, and acceptance. People in power are more afraid of losing that power because it may show you as a failure, and to take control is much easier than taking responsibility for actions because there may be consequences, but most of all forgiveness is the hardest to do because it is just too hard to let go. Jack was a different type of leader than Martin Luther …show more content…
Simon is the first character in the novel to see the beast not as an external force but as a component of human nature. Simon does not yet fully understand his own idea, but it becomes clearer to him in Chapter 8, when he has a vision in the glade and confronts the Lord of the Flies.
Then everyone thought the beastie was real but us the audience knew the beastie was not real and so did simon. Simon was going to tell everyone but “There isn’t anyone to help you. Only me. And I’m the Beast. . . . Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill! . . . You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you? Close, close, close! I’m the reason why it’s no go? Why things are the way they are?” The Lord of the Flies says this to Simon in Chapter 8, during Simon’s vision in the forest. These words confirm Simon’s belief in Chapter 5 that perhaps the beast is only the boys themselves. This idea of the evil on the island being within the boys is central to the novel’s exploration of innate human savagery. The Lord of the Flies identifies itself as the beast and acknowledges to Simon that it exists within all human beings: “You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you?” The creature’s grotesque language and bizarre appropriation of the boys’ slang (“I’m the reason why it’s no go”) makes the creature appear even more hideous and devilish, for he taunts Simon with the same colloquial, familiar language the boys use themselves. Simon,
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He decapitates a sow and hangs the bloody head on a stick. Under Jack's leadership, Roger twists the spear in the rectum of the sow and the sow screams in agony "He slowly drives his spear into the anus of the sow, torturing it more than killing it” (Golding ) Jack and the other hunters laugh when they see where Roger's spear is located. They think it is funny. Jack has lost his good reasoning. His good senses are replaced with chaos, disorder, and evil. With jacks evil actions the his savagery is really starting to show us that he is getting violent. Jacks use of hunting turns him into the most savage out of all the boys. Everything he did after this point made him into the young savage that he was in the end of the book. “His mind was crowded with memories; memories of the knowledge that had come to them when they closed in on the struggling pig, knowledge that they had outwitted a living thing, imposed their will upon it, taken away its life like a long satisfying drink.” This quotation, also from Chapter 4, explores Jack’s mental state in the aftermath of killing his first pig, another milestone in the boys’ decline into savage behavior. Jack exults in the kill and is unable to think about anything else because his mind is “crowded with memories” of the hunt. Golding explicitly connects Jack’s exhilaration with the feelings of power and superiority he experienced in killing the pig. Jack’s excitement stems not from pride at having
The first time Simon mentions this concept is at an assembly. He began by saying, “maybe it’s only us,” but struggled to express his ideas on, “mankind’s essential illness,” (Doc F). The next time the boys’ inner evil is brought up is during Simon’s hallucinatory conversation with the pig’s head, when Simon discovers the “beast” is only a dead parachutist. He then, “sets off, weak and staggering, to tell the other boys that the beast is human,” (Doc E). There is a duel meaning behind Simon’s statement.
(Doc. F). At one point, Simon himself even claims “‘maybe there is a beast… What I mean is… maybe it’s only us,’” (Doc. F). The hostile behavior of the children themselves is demonstrative of the “beast,” showing how it symbolizes yet another concept.
Beast, devil, evil, corruption, the seven deadly sins, they all represent some form of evil within humankind. Lord of the Flies is the story of schoolboys that have crash landed on an unoccupied island, and go through many hardships as they fight for power and try to be saved. Throughout the story, however, they boys go from having a civilized structure to utter chaos, they struggle for their lives and grasp for survival from a darker creature on the island. Within chapter nine, Simon discovers the beast for what it really is; meanwhile Ralph and Piggy decide to join the other bigguns for a feast with Jack’s tribe. The boys play and dine, and circle together for a “dance” when Simon stumbles out of the forest to tell them of his discovery, and lands in the circle, which results in him being brutally beat to death.
Following the desperate chase after the sow, “Jack was on top of the sow, stabbing downward with his knife. Roger found a lodgment for his point and began to push...the spear moved forward inch by inch and the terrified squealing became a high-pitched scream. Then Jack found the throat and the hot blood spouted over his hands” (Golding 135). Unlike before, this scene conveys that Jack and the boys in his tribe are capable of killing and committing brutal acts. While Jack hesitates to kill a pig at the beginning of the book because of his fears of blood and death, he eventually becomes obsessed with hunting and violence, killing a sow by vigorously “stabbing downward with his knife” and slitting the sow’s throat.
When Simon first encounters the Lord of the Flies, he realizes that it is a manifestation of the boys' fear and savagery. He thinks to himself, "Fancy thinking the beast was something you could hunt and kill! You knew, didn't you? I'm part of you?" (Chapter 8).
Jack answers by saying Ralph is a doormat, "He says things like Piggy. He is not a proper chief." Jack and his hunters also kill a female sow who is being disturbed while nursing her piglets. Roger impales her" 'Right up her ass!'" (123) with a spear while Jack slashes her throat, brushing the blood from his hands onto Maurice's cheeks with laughter as if it is just painted.
“‘There isn’t anyone to help you. Only me. And I’m the Beast’” (Golding 143). Despite being one of the few boys who did not believe in the beast, the stress and fear still got to Simon as he began to see decapitated sow’s head as the Lord of the Flies.
Once they kill Simon it explains deeply about how they kill him and how cruel and brutal it was. They kill him by biting and clawing and acting like savages. Simon says that it's themselves that is the beast and it shows in the part of the story how they act savage and
Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill! . . . You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you? Close, close, close! I’m the reason why it’s no go?
Then, in Document F, Simon again comes to question what the beast really is. It states that Simon hesitantly says that “maybe the beast is us”. Meaning him and the other boys living on the island. When reading down further in Document F, there is a chant. “Kill the beast!
What ensues is a ring of chanting and dancing, and the acting out of killing the “beast”, or in other cases, a pig. Simon
As the novel develops, the boys are left to their own devices and morals to survive on the island. Golding implies that when this happens, people naturally revert to cruelty, savagery and a human evil that he believes is in everyone. When Jack kills the mother pig, he is in great triumph over outwitting a living thing. This shows that he has become a savage through his time on the island, and his inner evil has taken over him. It also shows that Jack has become more violent over time, as if killing pigs is normal to him.
The quote “‘Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill!’ said the head.” (Golding 164) expresses that the Lord of the Flies is divulging to Simon that the evil is not something that can be hunted or killed but is within the boys. Simon also learns that the beast of evilness was in the boys all along. The theme Inherent Evil of Man is displayed through Simon learning that evil is within the boys and that this was the beast. This shows how the evil action appears as a beast and the understanding of evilness by
Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill! You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you? Close, close, close! I’m the reason why it’s no go?
During Simon’s encounter with the Lord of the Flies, Golding reveals the central issue concerning human nature. Simon reaches the realization that they fear the beast because it exists within each of them. The Lord of the Flies tells Simon that the beast is inside each boy and cannot be killed. The boys go from behaving like civilized young men to brutal savages. “What I mean is…maybe it’s only us.”