How To Kill Simon In Lord Of The Flies

Ralph, Piggy, Jack, and a few other boys were trapped on a deserted island during the Cold War in the 1950s. They had been planning to murder the beast. They chanted and began hunting for him. They supposedly found the beast. However, it turned out that they had just killed their friend Simon, another boy living on the island, thinking it was something else. In a modern court of law, this would be charged as criminal-negligence involuntary manslaughter. While they did kill Simon, it wasn’t planned in any way. They had no intent of it originally. The death of Simon came from complete recklessness. This was involuntary manslaughter because the boys were affected by mob mentality, and Simon was extremely delirious.

The boys weren’t thinking straight at all, and with them super riled up and full of adrenaline, it influenced the way they killed Simon without taking notice that it was actually him. For example, they were chanting and dancing before going out to hunt the “beast”. In Lord of The Flies by William Golding, it mentions that “Roger became the pig, grunting and charging at jack, who side-stepped. The hunters took their spears, the cooks took spits, and the rest clubs of firewood. A circling movement developed and a chant.” (Golding 151). Another factor that caused the boys to do this could be that they had been dealing with mob mentality. In the article ‘Mob …show more content…
The “murder” of Simon was not planned,but they DID plan on killing the beast. They got too caught up in killing it and before they could realize it was SImon, it was too late. The boys were influenced by mob mentality, and Simon was hallucinating and imagining that the Lord of the Flies was talking to him. This stopped him from preventing the murder. In conclusion, the boys should not be charged with murder, but with criminal-negligence