In the Lord of the Flies symbolism is used countless of times, but the main symbol is the “beast” The beast is like a “walking and talking” terror that could mean several different things depending on how you interpret it. Some say that the beast represents fear, while others believe it is a symbol of war, another one is the idea that the beast portrays the savagery of human nature. One way to interpret the beast is having it represent fear. Fear for everyone can portray different phobias weather it be the dark, heights, or simply being alone. The children on the island, younger and gradually the older ones, saw the terrors of their dreams in the darkness of the night and externalize the fear into what they began to call the “beast.” The beast became a walking nightmare that terrorized the kids of the island. Some of the little ones believed that it was snake like and came out of the forest at night and turned into the vines that hung onto the branches in the morning. They assumed they could kill it like any other animal, the older ones laughed at the idea of it, it did not become clear to them until later that the “beast” was simply their fear. …show more content…
The setting of the book is in the middle of an atomic war, when a group of english schoolboys have evacuated and have been shot down in the middle of an ocean. Golding wrote his novel after his experience as a member of the Royal Navy in the war and has said that it left an indelible impact him, and continues to scare him stiff. He began to see the capability of people and what they were able to do. Putting that idea into his book, he had a parachuter crash land onto the island after being shot down. Sam and Eric saw the event and concluded that it had to have been the beast on top of the