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.
At one point in the book Simon brings up an interesting point regarding the beast. He begins to realize that there really isn’t a physical, “beast”. The thought comes to him, which leads him to believe that they are the beasts; the beast is inside of human beings. When Simon says, “What I mean is… maybe it’s only us. ”(Golding, 158)
Simon's tendencies to go off alone make the other boys think he's a tad odd, but, for the reader, Simon's credibility as a visionary is established when he prophesies to Ralph "You'll get back to where you came from." Simon reaches an understanding of mankind's innate evil nature and unthinking urge to dominate as "mankind's essential illness." When Simon tries to visualize what the beast might look like, "there arose before his inward sight the picture of a human at once heroic and sick" — Golding's vision of humanity as flawed by inherent depravity. Golding gives this knowledge to an outsider like Simon to reflect the place visionaries and mystics/yogis typically hold in society: on the fringes, little understood by the majority, and often feared or disregarded. Like other mystics, Simon asks questions the other boys cannot answer.
The boys thought SImon was the beast emerging through the bushes within the island. The boys had so much fear present; they couldn’t think of anything else other than
(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.
Golding says “The boys broke into shrill, exciting cheering” (41) in the beginning of the novel, then at the end of the novel says, “A great clamor rose among the savages” (164). William Golding who wrote The Lord of the Flies changes his word choice from “boys” to “savages” to emphasize the fact that the boys change into savage creatures. Three symbols represent civilization and change into chaos over the course of the novel. The three symbols representing change are Piggy’s glasses, The fire, and the conch. These figures demonstrate the important theme that the calm civilization will soon break out into disorder.
This gets him nowhere among the boys, and he stays a follower. Since the boys are split up, Simon is the only one to believe there is no beast, and he dies attempting to preach there is no beast. Jack’s ruthless hunters attacked him when he was “crying out something about a dead man on a hill” (Golding 152). This shows Simon is a smart guy, but his lackadaisical attitude leads him to his demise, which ends up being his most significant failure, costing him his
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
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!
Only Simon is able to recognize that the beast is not a monster or the pig's head, it is the evil that lives inside all the boys and the others on the island do not understand that.
Everyone will face evil at some point in their lives, but the way the evil is embraced or deflected will differ among every man. In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, symbolism is used to communicate the theme of Understanding the Inhumanity/Inherent Evil of Man as represented through the double ended spear, the fire, and the Lord of the Flies. The spear represents the evil inside of humankind and the perception that killing and hurting each other out of anger is acceptable. Fire symbolizes the evil act of stealing to achieve a human wants. Lastly, the Lord of the Flies symbolizes the Inherent Evil of Man through demonstrating that a boy understood that the evil is within them instead of around them, and is not something that could be killed
This shows that the boys are only afraid of themselves, because they are their own worst enemy. He is the first to figure out that the beast is not an actual beast, and how it is only the boys becoming savage, and starting to be afraid of one another. As Simon began to explain this to the doubtful boys, he was the only one who died knowing the
. . maybe it's only us... Simon became inarticulate in his effort to express mankind’s essential illness” (89). As Simon realizes that “maybe it’s only us”, this reveals that the beast is not necessarily something that exists outside in the jungle. Rather, it already exists inside each boy’s mind and soul, the capacity for savagery and evil that slowly overwhelms them.
William Golding's Lord of the Flies, shows us young boys stranded on an island and what is needed to survive. In chapter nine betrayal must have been the first thing Simon thought, When his only friends were the ones to take his life. The ones closest to you may be the ones to betray you. Golding uses dramatic irony to show how unlucky simon was, Due to the fact that he was killed by his friends yet they did not know who he was.
This novella implements a lot of irony and symbolism throughout the entire work. Lord of The Flies shows many examples of irony. One example is when the boys think the dead pilot is the” Beastie”, which is the imaginary monster that all the kids fear. This is clear to the reader that the pilot is not “beastie” making this dramatic Irony.
