Kindness in an Unkind World

The relationship between the beast and the school boys is played out through the conversation between Simon and the Lord of the Flies. The Lord of the Flies or pig head tries to intimidate and forewarn Simon calling him,”just an ignorant, silly little boy”(184) and scoffs at Simon for thinking the beast is “something you could hunt or kill!” (184) Golding uses this symbolic beast, the Lord of the Flies, to reveal the truth to Simon which is that “they”(184) the boys on the island are the real beast. Before Simon faints the Lord of the Flies warms Simon that

During the meeting where the boys are questioning the reality of the beast, Simon says this,”What I mean is...maybe it’s only us”(Golding 89). While everyone else is debating on whether or not the beast is real, Simon is trying to propose that the actual beast is the boys themselves in the form of their savage impulses. Simon is the first character in the novel to see the beast as the evil nature of humans instead of a physical being. The Lord of the Flies confirms Simon’s thought, saying,”Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill!...You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you? Close, close, close!”(Golding 143). This establishes that the only thing to fear on the island is the evil human instinct inside of

Children are savages by nature, when no adults are around. One kid on the island truly doesn’t have any savage in him. Simon is a Christ-like figure, that continuously stays true to himself and his morals. Simon will not let anyone or anything get in the way of this.

Explanation: The beast was the boys the whole time, even sweet Simon was part of the beast. The beast specifically is the darkness and evil in all the boys, in everyone. Simon knew the whole time, but no one listened. The boys then end up turning on each other, even though the beast was never a real beast. In their attempts to hunt and kill the beast they killed each other in a cruel

Jack and his chosen group of hunters all follow Jack and fail to follow Ralph’s command to keep civilization under control. Simon and his natural behaviors contrast with Jack as he sees the positive interests and goodness in civilization. Simon’s actions reveal his shy, yet kind, and non confrontational attitude which makes the importance of his character hard to notice. Simon is the mediator on the island, as he will never decline a request from the little children for food, an order from Ralph to help build shelters, and tries to keep the peace between the hunters and the civilized boys. Simon can be seen as the most compassionate character on the island as displayed in this quote: “Simon sitting between the twins and Piggy, wiped his mouth and shoved his piece of meat over the rocks to Piggy, who grabbed it. The twins giggled and Simon lowered his face in shame” (Golding 74). Jack, on the other hand, is most malicious towards Piggy as he eventually becomes consumed by evil and and will attempt to destroy all points of civilization and innocence left on the island. Innocence is bestowed upon nearly all the boys trying to keep civilization alive on the island and is despised by Jack and his highly influenced choir boys turned hunters.

The beast is important, because it is a universal personification of the fear that ensnares most of the boys on the island. The strong belief in the beast allows Jack to take control. Furthermore, the fear of the beast scares Ralph to such a degree that he calls a meeting to vote on whether the beast is real or not. The book points to clear evidence of this: “Maybe, ...there is a beast, I don’t know, what I mean, maybe it's only us,” (Golding 84). This quote shows that Simon wasn’t terrified of the beast like the others as a living, breathing monster. Simon fears that the boys are becoming the beast by their actions on the

Later on page 89 the book says, “Simon’s effort fell about him in ruins; the laughter beat him cruelly and he shrank defenseless to his seat.” The others treat him like an outcast and make fun of him. They do not want to listen to what he says because he might be

Simon and Beowulf prove themselves to be the exceptions. While the boys in Lord of The Flies are quickly reduced to violent savages by the mere idea of the ’Beastie’, Simon remains passive throughout the course of the novel. He realizes long before the others that the beast is not a physical being, but the product of “mankind’s essential illness’’ (Golding 89). This is realization made especially apparent when Simon converses with The Lord of the Flies, discovering that the Beast was not something one could ‘’hunt and kill’’, but something that was ‘’close, close, close’’ (Golding 143). Simon is the first to discover that the Beast was the manifestation of evil within all of the boys, and this knowledge eventually dies with

Simon- Simon is a static character throughout the Lord of the Flies. He plays an important role in the plot because he is the only person who actually has a conversation with the Lord of the Flies, which is the pig’s head on the stick, and the “beast.” When Simon was going to share his knowledge with the other

Simon is a character who is a major significance in Lord of the Flies. Simon is one of the boys stranded on the island after his plane crashed. Additionally, Simon is a member of the choir. As part of the choir, he is under the leadership of Jack. Simon is described as “...a skinny, vivid little boy, with a glance coming up from under a hut of straight hair that hung down, black and coarse.” (24) He is also prone to fainting. For instance, shortly after the plane crashes, Simon faints in front of all of the other boys. Simon is an important character in the novel.

Simon says to the group, “Maybe there is a beast… maybe it's only us.” … This shows that Simon is really the only one who is thinking with logic unlike the rest of the boys. Everyone acts like animals but Simon. As soon as Simon realizes that they are just imagining things in their heads he is killed. Even if Simon would have made it out of the woods to tell the group that everything they believed was just in their heads, the group still would not believe him. The boys are too mad at this point to listen to anything anyone has to

He help the littluns to get fruit, and 'pulled off the choicest from up in the foliage, passed them back down to the endless, outstretched hands'. He also helps Piggy to get his glasses back when Jack has knocked them off, showing that he does not discriminate against Piggy because he is different but chooses to help him, even if this may cause him to suffer in the future. These may indicate that Simon, though other characters may be thought of as "good" and kind, such as Piggy or Ralph, Simon shows no flaws at all.

Simon is the first to realize that the beast is “only us” and tries to give voice to “mankind’s essential illness” (Doc F). Later, when Simon finds the dead parachutist, he attempts to tell the others the “Beast is only human.” (Doc E). Rather than listening to his words, Simon is brutally attacked and killed by them: “There were no words and no movements but the tearing of teeth and claws” (Doc F). Ironically, Simon, the sensitive boy with the goal to tell of man's violent nature, is instead mistaken for the beast. Therefore he is murdered by the true, human beast: the boys with “teeth and claws.”

The boys in the novel believed that the “beast” came out at night due to the dead parachuter they found on the island. But Simon tells them, “What I mean is...Maybe it's only in us”(Golding 89). This had made all the boys instantly believe that Simon was the “beast” because, they were not wise enough to think. They thought that Simon was the “beast”, but really it was inside of them. The reader can automatically tell that the boys are the evil ones. They have rebelliously killed Simon, the most pleasant boy on the island. The Lord of the Flies also states that, ”...You didn't know? Im part of you? Close, close, close…” (Golding 143). Since the boys feel so free in an island where there are no rules, they lost their logic of what's good and bad. The more savage they became, the more they believed in the “beast.” All humans have the capability of acting negative. Piggy was wise enough in the beginning of the novel, but he was in denial about the death of Simon. He keeps on denying their evil behaviour and blames everything, except Ralph and himself. Piggy has been surrounded in a place where he can't even be truthful to himself

The boys project their irrational fears as a derivative of their immaturity, in an attempt to identify a realized external enemy. Literary critic Lawrence S. Friedman explains, “Too immature to account for the enemy within, the boys project their irrational fears onto the outside world. The first of these projections takes the shape of a snakelike “beastie,” the product of a small boy’s nightmare.” (233) The boys’ irrational fear of the unknown, one of a small boy’s nightmare, only serves to exemplify their immaturity in handling situations like this. It is a stepping stone to events to come, prophesied by Simon. In addition, the character of Simon alludes to the fact that there evil ‘beast’ can really be traced to their internalized innate evilness. Simon argues, “maybe there is a beast… What I mean is… maybe it’s only us.” (Golding 89) While all of the boys attempt to explain the phenomena of the ‘beast,’ Simon is the one who realizes that the boys themselves are the evil ‘beast’ they perceive. There is no external force, the ‘beast’ only serves to be a placeholder for the boys’ true primal nature. However, it is Simon’s death, at the hand of the boys themselves, that only serves to prove that evil truly exists in all of these boys. Friedman suggests, “The ritual murder of Simon is as ironic as it is inevitable. Ironically, he is killed as the beast before he can explain that the beast does not exist. His horrid death refutes is aborted revelation: the beast exists, all right, not where we thought to find it, but within ourselves.” (236) His death is truly the tipping point, a point of no return for the boys. After his killing, Simon’s philosophy of inner evil is realized. It is clear that his own philosophy is what ultimately leads to Simon’s death, as unfortunate as it may be. It is reflected of the group’s fear of the unknown, and their