English Lord of the Flies

Evil is in Us, Not the World Around Us

The world is full of evil, but in the beginning there was peace in a world without humans. William Golding uses the boy’s fear of a beast, or evil thing, on the island to show that they think evil is created around themselves and not from inside themselves. The boys give the beast many shapes throughout the story. It starts as a snake, hiding in the jungle. Possibly a sea-monster or even a ghost. What the boys do not learn till the end of the book is that a beast did in fact take shape on the island, but not in the form they imagined. Golding wants to show in this book the darkness that lurks in all of humankind (Golding). The boys look for a physical thing to pin as the beast, yet in the end they slowly were turning into the beast. When the boys act on their savage ways they are the beast. The beast is inside, not out.

William Golding shows the beast’s identity through Jack and his gang and through Simon’s view, readers get to see his revelation about the beast after seeing Jack and gang kill the pig. Because Simon was an outsider looking in on this particular act, he sees the brutality of it. The pig’s head begins to get covered in flies, things that can not feel empathy or compassion for the dead pig as they eat away at it (Golding). Here is the difference between civilization and savagery, compassion and empathy. Jack in turn loses his compassion and ability to feel empathy and his gang follows suit. They only do what helps them and recruit others or kill those who don’t join.

When Simon dreams that the pig’s head is speaking to him, Golding confirms his sneaking suspicions that the boys on the island are the true beast. The Lord of the Flies aswell confirms that "You knew, didn't you? I'm part of you? Close, close, close! I'm the reason why it's no go? Why things are what they are?" (Golding, 147). The pig head is saying that