(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.
What is the definition of the“beast”? After World WarⅡ, a group of boys become stranded on an island. With their pilot (the only adult) dead, they immediately construct an authority order along with a system of rules. Throughout the story, Lord Of The Flies, the boys believe there is a beast, the question here is “what is the beast?” One of the meanings of the beast is fear itself.
In the text it states “Kill the Beast, Cut his throat, Spill his Blood”(Doc E). They go on to chant this three times and when the so called “Beast” comes out they savagely killed the “Beast” but in the end it turned out to be their good friend Simon. To explain in further detail they are chanting to kill the “Beast” and in turn they end up savagely biting, kicking, scratching, and violently beating their good friend Simon and yet they didn't take one second to even think about stopping and asking why do we need to kill this thing we call a “Beast” what if it's friendly and wants to help us. According to the Text, the author states in Document F,”... Maybe there is a beast...
Usually, when the term “beast” is mentioned, negative connotations are developed. In Lord of the Flies, the meaning of the entire story is determined by the symbolic definition of the “beast”. Lord of the Flies surrounds a group of boys stranded on an island. The presumed idea of a beast materialized and spread amongst the group.
Lord of the Flies “What are we? Humans? or Animals? or Savages? (Golding 91). ” In this quote, Piggy is trying to explain how the lack of authority has turned the boys into unrecognizable people.
(52). When the boys chant these words, they are unified and extremely dangerous. The boys begin this chant once again and become so absorbed in their fear of the “beast” that they end up killing Simon. Simon is a “Christlike” figure who is trying to tell the boys that the “beast” does not exist, rather it is an internal evil within them. “At once the crowd surged after it, poured down the rock, leapt onto the “beast,” screamed, struck, bit, tore.
That’s when Simon proposes a deeper insight that maybe it’s not something you can kill or run away from; it is a part of them. He was the one who met with the Lord of the Flies because he was one of the few boys who was skeptical of the Beast. He already had this idea of the Beast, and in reaction to his skepticism, he hallucinated the meeting with the Lord of the Flies. You could even say he’s braver that the other boys. He was the only person on the island who could confront the Beast.
When people are left alone they do not know what to do so they turn to cruelty, savagery and bullying. They create an enemy for themselves and become obsessed with it. In this novel they create the beast, an enemy that only exists inside their minds and was caused by a man that they only felt but did not see inside a dark cave they were exploring. A pig’s head which they managed to kill is then placed on a stick as an offering to the beast so it would not attack them. Jack so strongly believes that there is a beast that he kills Simon, mistaking him as the beast attacking.
Quite a few readers of the “Lord of the Flies” share controversy over the question “what does the beast represent?” Although it changes throughout the plot, the “beast” has three basic meanings. The creature symbolizes the fears of the boys on the island, the war that caused them to be stranded, and the savageness of the humans causing the
When considering the beastie in the Lord of the Flies, Piggy and Simon's comments reveal that the boys' fear of the beastie could just be their own fears. Or, in other words, the beast on the island is them. Piggy first builds on this idea, saying that "I know there is no fear... Unless we get frightened of people" (Golding 84). Simon addresses this topic in a similar fashion to Piggy.
The lord of the flies admits to Simon he is inside all the boys, he is the savagery and the evil that has a hold on them. “Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could kill!” The more wild and deviant the children act the stronger and more real the beast becomes. The beast is seen as a threat to all the boys except Simon, who understands that the beast resides in the boys. Their fear of the beast formed a connection between them until Jack manipulated their fear to create two different groups to maintain power.
Manipulation to create power One powerful tool to gain power over an induvidual is minipulation. In goldings novel lord of the flies many characters are minipulated and power changes hand through many characters. The key character that creates power through manipulation is jack. The three ways he uses this manipulation is by violance , food and fear. One of the most powerful forms of manipulation that jack uses in the novel is fear.
In the boy’s heads, the beast is a source of the evil and darkness on the island on the island. Although, in reality,the beast is just a representation of the bad side of every person, which is causing the safety of the life on the island to quickly deteriorate. Simon begins to understand this concept even before his run in with the Lord of the Flies, and whilst a fight over how real the beast was, he trys to help the other boys come to terms with this idea. Anxiously, Simon explains to them, "Maybe, maybe there is a beast... What I mean is maybe it's only us" (p. 89). As a result to Simon's declaration, the other boys, who had finally come to a conclusion creating a moment of peace, immediately reignited their argument, more fiercely this time than the last.
Sometimes, when we are afraid, we make up something tangible to characterize our fears. We tend to believe that it exists, when in reality it is just a manifestation of or a way to cope with our terror. Similarly, in Lord of the Flies, the beast begins as a figment of the boys’ imaginations as a representation of their collective fears. Their notion of the beast is one that evolves over the course of the novel, eventually manifesting itself as the Lord of the Flies and illustrating mankind's’ intrinsic capacity for evil. The boys' changing belief in the beast indicates their steady loss of innocence, a journey that reveals the corrupt impulses hidden deep within all human beings.
In the imagination of the boys, the beast is a tangible monster of evil on the island. At first, most of the boys disregard the Beast, but as they fall further from civilization, they put more faith in it. The Beast is a symbol for the evil and malice that reside within everyone, and it gets more powerful as the boys capitulate to their savagery. It causes life on the island to deteriorate. Simon is the first one to realize that it is them who are becoming evil and that there is no beast on the island.