Beast Lord Of The Flies Essay

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Significance of the Beast in William Golding's Lord of the Flies

The beast represents emotions, fear and insanity for several different characters in the story Lord Of The Fies. To all the boys the beast relates to a different thing and means something different.

The talk of danger on the island is first brought up on the first day when a small boy claims he saw a 'beastie.' the previous night the older boys don't listen to what the boy has to say and continue their daily discussions. As a group there are mixed feelings about the beast the older boys used the word 'fear' to describe the beast I feel they did this so they didn't sound immature, by believing in monsters however the younger boys showed …show more content…

' Simon found for them the fruit they could not reach, pulled of the choicest from up in the foliage.' The littleuns look up to him for doing this and think of him as almost a Christ like figure ' The littleuns watched him inscrutable over double handfuls of ripe fruit.'

Because Simon has a vivid imagination and is at one with nature he is described in the book as hearing the pig's head, which is a gift to the beast, speak to him. The head was described in the most unpleasant way as 'the obscene thing grinned and dripped.' It was also described as ' the lord of the flies.' This is because of the amount of flies attracted to the pig's head. We can tell Simon isn't really having a conversation with this pigs head as Simon is described as 'answered him in the same silent voice.' So as we can see form this he is on the verge of insanity.

The head starts telling Simon truthful things to hurt him for example 'they think your batty, you don't want Ralph to think your batty do you? You like Ralph a lot,' these things upset Simon as deep down he knows the head is speaking out Simons inner deep …show more content…

It is ironic as Simon sees himself as the beast as in the next chapter Simon goes to find the others who are over excited dancing and chanting hysterically about killing the beast when Simon walks in jack shouts out 'look the beast,' the boys are just entering insanity and in there hysterical madness they beat Simon to death with their spears.

I personally believe that the beast represents the way in which people will try to convince himself that there is no evil inside of them by making someone or something else seem to be the cause for the evil. You can see this developing as the beast gets discussed more and more the boys become more evil. At the end when the island reaches its peak of hysterical insane riotess evil there is suddenly an anti

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