Sample #2: from The Lord of the Flies
This chapter marks a pivotal scene in the novel, both literally and symbolically. Simon ascends the mountain on his own after his strange encounter with the Lord of the Flies (the pigs head on a stick). This meeting could mean many things and I think Golding leaves it purposely ambiguous. The Lord of the Flies tells Simon that thinking the beast is something they can hunt and kill is crazy because he is “a part of you.” Whether this meeting is imagined by Simon or whether the Beast actually speaks through the pig’s head is irrelevant; what matters is Simon realizes that the Beast or the Lord of the Flies represents evil and evil is inside us all, it is not outside of us as much as we’d like to think it is.
So Simon decides he has to go up the mountain to see this “beast” that the other boys saw. He probably knows it’s not real. He finds out that this monster is really just a pathetic rotting corpse of a pilot who died parachuting out of his war plane. He is nothing to be afraid of. Simon knows he has to bring this knowledge to his friends so he heads to the beach to tell them. When he gets there, they are all in a frenzy due to the storm and because Jack has exploited their fears and they have all become a bit crazed. They attack Simon before he can bring them his news and he dies on the beach at their hands. Later his body is washed out to sea.
Simon is like a Christ figure because he goes on a trip by himself, is faced by evil, and then discovers a truth that he must deliver to his people. But instead of listening to him, they kill him. The irony is Simon could have saved them from their fear and maybe made them become more civilized again. Did Golding intend to make Simon symbolic this way or is this just a good vs. evil story that keeps being retold?
In the end, the boys ruin their one chance for sanity and they descend into complete savagery. If left alone on that island, they probably would have picked each other off one at a time until there were too few to survive. Kind of like what we do with our wars. So much killing and really we just hurt ourselves. Is it the evil in us that makes us do this, or is it just our nature or is it both?
So Simon decides he has to go up the mountain to see this “beast” that the other boys saw. He probably knows it’s not real. He finds out that this monster is really just a pathetic rotting corpse of a pilot who died parachuting out of his war plane. He is nothing to be afraid of. Simon knows he has to bring this knowledge to his friends so he heads to the beach to tell them. When he gets there, they are all in a frenzy due to the storm and because Jack has exploited their fears and they have all become a bit crazed. They attack Simon before he can bring them his news and he dies on the beach at their hands. Later his body is washed out to sea.
Simon is like a Christ figure because he goes on a trip by himself, is faced by evil, and then discovers a truth that he must deliver to his people. But instead of listening to him, they kill him. The irony is Simon could have saved them from their fear and maybe made them become more civilized again. Did Golding intend to make Simon symbolic this way or is this just a good vs. evil story that keeps being retold?
In the end, the boys ruin their one chance for sanity and they descend into complete savagery. If left alone on that island, they probably would have picked each other off one at a time until there were too few to survive. Kind of like what we do with our wars. So much killing and really we just hurt ourselves. Is it the evil in us that makes us do this, or is it just our nature or is it both?