Envision this: you’re a young schoolboy on an island with other boys your age, no parents, and a beast. What could this beast possibly be though? In Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, young schoolboys have run away from their homes to fend-off rules and wind up coming in contact with a beast. This beast evolves throughout the story and appears to symbolize a multitude of things. 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, …show more content…
In Document E, Simon finds an airman that had crash landed and was “rotting and fly-blown”. Simon then has an epiphany. What if the beast isn’t fear or war, but something a little more complicated. Maybe the beast is savagery of humans. Savagery meaning an uncivilized or inhuman state or condition. 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! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!” What could these boys possibly be chanting this about? Continuing on in the document, the thing that they are chanting this about is a human. “The beast was on its knees in the center, its arms folded over its face. It was crying out against the abominable noise something about a body on a hill.” A body on a hill? Who could this be? Obviously, it has to be Simon. There was nobody else that knew about the deceased body that was found on the hill. Now it all comes into focus. The beast is proven here to be the savagery of
Evidence in Doc. A, states that “They eternalize these fears into the figure of a ‘beast.’” Meaning, the boy’s are imagining their worst fears since they have no one there to comfort them. Another example of these fears coming to life is in Doc. B, “"Tell us about the snake thing.
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.
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.
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.
The idea of the beast emerges early in the novel as a symbol
(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.
The beast is a representation of the savagery and darkness that lies within the boys. At the beginning, the beast is portrayed as a mere figment of imagination created by “Them little ‘uns”. It is not until Samneric see the dead pilot and his parachute that they believe there truly is a beast. In a state of delirium from thirst and hunger, Simon sat in front of the beasts head as it spoke to him. “You knew, didn’t you?
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.
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.
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.
Savagery, uncivilized, and hypocritical children have clouded their judgment when trying to figure out if there is a real beastie. A monstrous figure frightens the juvenile boys that landed on this forsaken island. In the Lord of the Flies, these English boys are all alone to defend for themselves, thats when it all unravels. This mythical monster sooner called the “beast” is symbolized a fear of a mistaken beast, as the darkness of war, and the evilness of humanity waiting to be unleashed.
In document A, it is stated that “ they externalize these fears into a ‘beast.” This shows that the fear of the boys in itself creates the beastie. In document B, it is stated that “He was dreaming... He must have had a nightmare.” Since there were no mothers, there was no one to tell the boys that it would be okay and that nightmares did not actually happen
Initially, the beast represented fear. According to “The Terrors of the Unknown” (Doc. A), “They externalize these fears into the figure of a beast”. “They” would be referring to the boys stranded on the island. The unfortunate boys are left without a motherly figure when times got fearful.
On the beach, the littluns are in disarray, they scream “...and [blunder] about, fleeing from the edge of the forest, and one of them broke the ring of biguns in his terror. Him! Him!”(168). Furthermore, the literary technique of syntax adds to the theme of the power of fear by portraying Simon’s death as a gruesome and savage, spur of the moment incident through exclamatory phrases, repetition and word choice. The chant reveals the unification of the boys due to a mutual fear.
Some of the younger boys claimed to see a “beastie” or a “snake-thing” at night. Many people are perplexed when it comes to the query: “What is the beast and what does it symbolize?” There are numerous definitions about what the ‘thing’ haunting the children signify and it evolves throughout the book. In the beginning, the beast represents the children’s fear.