Lord Of The Flies Beastie Analysis

Phoebe Hecker Mrs. Cyrus English 9 April 22nd 2017

Lord of the Flies: Si(men) Are Inherently Beastie

William Golding, a well known Nobel Prize winner, is best known for his novel Lord of the Flies. Before the novel was published it was rejected about twenty times. The novel is set during the violent and dangerous time of the war. Unfortunately, the plane was shot down and crashed onto an island in the Pacific Ocean. The boys survived, but the pilot the only adult tragically did not make it. The boys, ages six to twelve, were now left on their own. With little life experience and no adult supervision the boys had to find a way to survive. William Golding uses an imaginary creature known as the beastie and

This “beast” figure changes depending on which character is experiencing it. The different perspectives of the beast begin on page 34. Golding uses a character known as a six year old boy with a mulberry birthmark to publicly announce that he saw a snake thing in the woods in the dark. Of course, no one believed him and instead the boys all started to laugh and tell him he was having nightmares. Shortly after a fire spread throughout the island, they realize that the boy with the birthmark is gone. Now everyone starts to fear that there may be an actual beast who took the little boy with the birthmark away. In chapter five, another impression of the beast was created during Ralph's meeting. In the meeting, a boy named Percival describes a new idea of the beast. He mentions that he saw a squid-like figure coming out of the sea (pg 83). This frightens all the boys. Since none of them has had experience with anything like this before, they start to believe what they hear. Ralph is still hesitant to believe what the other boys are saying, especially since the “beast” has only been spotted at night. As a result of Ralph not questioning the beast's existence, Simon gives a new idea. Simon states, “What I mean is… maybe it’s only us” ( pg 96). Piggy interprets this phrase as meaning the beast is a ghost. Piggy is the intellectual scientific thinker, he uses his knowledge to guess the beast is simply something unknown. In chapter six, the beast is now seen by two other boys on the island, who are known as Sam and Eric. The difference in their beast encounter, is that they witnessed it when they were fully awake. What they actually saw is a dead parachutist dangling on the side of a mountain. When the wind blows, the parachute lifts the head of the person making it look alive. The parachute created noises in the wind, which made it much more real and believable. This idea of the beast becomes valid to