Summary Of William Golding's 'Lord Of The Flies'

To a predator, fear indicates weakness. William Golding’s Lord of the Flies is the story of a band of British school boys who become stranded on an uninhabited island after a plane crash during the Second World War. With hope to start a structured society, the boys vote the natural born leader Ralph, as their chief. Two of the older boys, Jack and Simon, also have strong leadership qualities and assume power alongside Ralph. In various points of the novel, we see the imposing fear of the dreaded “beastie” used as a pivotal struggle that influences changes in power between Jack, Ralph and Simon. When these shifts are recounted by the omniscient narrator we see how each leader copes with the fear and how individually they use it as leverage to …show more content…
During his encounter with the pig’s head in the forest, the truth of the beast is explained to him. The pig’s head exclaims “Fancy thinking the beast was something you could hunt and kill!... 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? (158)”. Through these events, Simon learned that the beast does not physically exist but it exists within the boys and represents the potential evil that they are individually capable of unleashing. Simon’s ideology differs greatly from those of Jack and Ralph. Simon attempts to understand the complexity of the beast while Jack and Ralph simply use instinctual knowledge and reasoning to disregard the threat. However, ironically, before Simon can explain the truth to the boys, he is murdered by them after being mistaken as the beast. Even though Simon never gets the opportunity to share his insight with the boys, Golding shows the reader that he had the best leadership qualities and if brought to power could have avoided the violence that would take place. Simon’s insight suggests he could have been a very intellectual and complex