Initially, the “beast” represents fear and the terror of the unknown. This is proven when the schoolboys begin to objectify evil, or “people the darkness of night and forest with spirits and demons,” (Doc. A).
Some of the smaller children, when they first land on the island, begin to dream about a “beast” that haunts them in the night. When this is brought up at an assembly, Ralph rejects it, as do the other boys. Simon pipes up and suggests it may be “only us”. After this idea is challenged by the boys, Simon tries to explain, yet he “became inarticulate in his effort to express mankind’s essential illness” (Page 89). The beast is metaphoric of the crude feral nature within every human, though naturally more prominent in those who act on it willingly. Simon later encounters the Lord of the Flies (a pig’s head on a stick that Jack left as a sacrifice for the beast) who “speaks” to Simon while he is having a brain clot. The Lord of the Flies tells Simon that it is the beast, that it’s inside of everyone. “Fancy thinking the beast was something you could hunt and kill!” (Page 143) it tells him, reminding Simon that to defeat the “beast”, or evil, within a person is impossible to physically accomplish. It’s as if everyone has a ticking time bomb of malevolence that is kept in check by our moral values and societal standards. When not kept in check, however, individuals with the tendency to act on said malevolence will slowly find the beast inside themselves surfacing. The dark part of every being can be instigated when provocative circumstances deem it so, and when encouraged by a group. We find comfort in numbers, and we tend to do things we wouldn’t normally find ourselves doing simply for the sake of the togetherness. Simon is killed through this very premise, when he stumbles upon the tribal dance of Jack’s hunters. During a storm that frightens the boys, Jack suggests doing their “dance”. What ensues is a ring of chanting and dancing, and the acting out of killing the “beast”, or in other cases, a pig. Simon
William Golding’s Lord of the Flies is an influential novel which reveals the darkness of mankind and evil inside of all humans. Lord of the Flies is set in the early 20th century, during a time when Europe is under attack and surrounded by war. For this reason, a plane carrying a group of British schoolboys is flown away from the chaos in hopes of bringing the boys to safety. Suddenly, the airliner is mistaken for a military aircraft and taken down. After all of the pandemonium the boys soon realize that they are the only survivors. Now stranded on an unknown island, the boys must govern themselves. Soon the burning desire for power overthrows their civilized approach of leadership as a deciding factor tears the boys apart. Golding effectively uses the symbolism of the conch, the beast, and painted faces to reinforce the theme of how difficult situations reveal the demons inside of everyone. Together these symbols are applied in order to lead the reader to the suspenseful end.
Choose a meal from a literary work and apply the ideas of Chapter 2 to this literary depiction
Lord of the Flies by William Golding is a book about a group of boys stuck on a deserted island who try to organize their own society which results in a series of events and disasters. This book portrays many different personalities and characters that are important parts of the book. One of the protagonists, Simon, has a plethora of fine qualities such as kindness, intuition, thoughtfulness, and virtue. These qualities shape Simon into a Christ-like figure. Simon is shown to be an image of Christ through his tender-hearted nature, prophetic-like qualities, and understanding of the beast within the boys.
Civilization means to be a part of a culture, to have a leader who takes power, and to be apart of orderly society. In the novel The Lord of the Flies by William Golding, Simon is the most civilized boy on the island because he has the most positive outlook out of every boy on the island, he is insightful of what and where the beast is, and, he is the first to realize most of the problems that occur on the island.
An imaginary“Beast”, haunting and terrifying. What does this “Beast” from Lord of the Flies? Lord of the Flies is a novel written by William Golding. The novel takes place on an unnamed island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. On that island, a group of school had crashed after having their plane shot down during World War Two when evacuating their school. The ever changing meaning of the intricate monster, a very controversial topic, includes the worst qualities and things that come with being a human throughout the book. As said by Samuel Hynes,”The meaning of the book depends on the meaning of the ‘Beast.’”
In William Golding's Lord of the Flies, there are many symbolic concepts within the novel such as the beast, and the pigs head. Golding uses these concepts to portray to the reader his idea that when humans are left without rules or organisation they will break from a civilised manner and become savages allowing evil to over take them.
Lastly the beast becomes savagery. In document E, Golding writes “maybe there is a beast… What I mean is… maybe it's only us.” Simon says this towards the beginning of Lord of the Flies when they first talk about what the beast is. Simon says that there isn't really a beast but only it is themselves. 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
The ¨beast¨ that they speak about is nothing more than a dead parachuter. But their fear for the beast makes them see a ¨furry¨ thing with ¨claws¨ and ¨wings behind its head¨ (page 100). What Golding means when he writes this, is that the beast is in fact human. While its only a human, the boys don´t realize that until chapter 9. It is Simon who stumbles upon the dead parachutist, and finds out that there was no beast. As he runs to the group in attempt to explain that there was no beastie, he is murdered by the boys because they confuse him with it. Their fear for the beast led them to the murder of Simon. After murdering one of their own in such a brutal way, itś clear that the beast is themselves, and like Piggy had said, they are who should've brought fear to each
The beast is first introduced to the boys early on in their time on the island when the crash acts as a scar to the boys and there is still a state of innocence in everyone. Piggy illustrates the boy with the mulberry-colored birthmark fears to the others (as he is too shy to speak on his own) his discovery of something else existing on the island to the entire assembly, “Tell us about the snake-thing...Now he says it was a beastie...Beastie?...A snake-thing. Ever so big. He saw it ... In the woods … He says the beastie came in the dark ... He still says he saw the beastie. It came to him and went away again an’ came back and wanted to eat him-- ...He must have had a nightmare” (35-36). Considering how innocent and civilized the boys are at
The Lord of the Flies demonstrates a wide variety of symbolism; from Christ to Satan the children are portrayed in an abstract manner to represent these religious beings, as well as a symbol of great strife for power. Two of the main symbolic devices are used in the form of a mystical Conch and a cumbersome Sow’s head perched atop a stake; however these symbols represent very different ideas. Next the Lord of the Flies demonstrates the burden and struggle of power in multiple ways. William Golding included within this novel the power of symbolism, using inanimate objects, characters, or even landmasses to represent ideals derived from basic human morals and Christian religion that has a major influence
The beast is an imaginative figure within each schoolboy. As time on the island prevails the beast’s control strengthens within each character. Ralph’s inner beast functions from the fear of being alone while Piggy’s beast functions
As it is known, a beast is frequently associated with fear. As the English boys are on the island that they have run away to, it is shown that they encounter things that petrify them. Found in Document A is that the boys externalize their fears into the figure of a beast. Also stated in Document A, is that a mother’s job is to “dispel the terrors of the unknown”. In other words,
Throughout the novel of Lord of the Flies, William Golding provides a profound insight into human nature. Golding builds on a message that all human beings have natural evil inside them. To emphasize, the innate evil is revealed when there’s lack of civilization. The boys are constantly faced with numerous fears and eventually break up into two different groups. Although the boys believe the beast lives in the jungle, Golding makes it clear that it lurks in their hearts. The message of inner evil is portrayed throughout the book by the destruction of the conch, terrifying beast, and character developments to establish the hidden message throughout the novel.