Please choose one passage from the novel that is significant to you. Why is this passage meaningful? Please type it into one of your entries and comment on what you think about the passage.

To put things simple, my favourite paragraph in the whole book would hardly be classified long enough to be a passage, which was "Desperately, Ralph prayed that the beast would prefer littluns." However, I highly doubt this blog assignment's point is to find humour in the book. So, I have found a much more.... significant passage. This is when Simon first encounter the Lord of the Flies, which actually has great meaning that I explained in my "symbolism" (entry of choice =P) question. But for now, page 137~144:


Simon stayed where he was, a small brown image, concealed by the leaves. Even if he shut his eyes the sow's head still remained like an after-image. The half-shut eyes with the infinite cynicism of adult life. They assured Simon that everything was a bad business.

"I know that."

Simon discovered that he had spoken aloud. He opened his eyes quickly and there was the head grinning amusedly in the strange daylight, ignoring the flies, the spilled guts, even ignoring the indignity of being spiked on a stick.

He looked away, licking his dry lips.

A gift for the beast. Might not the beast come for it? The head, he thought, appeared to agree with him. Run away, said the head silently, go back to the others. It was a joke really--why should you bother? You were just wrong, that's all. A little headache, something you ate, perhaps. Go back, child, said the head silently.

Simon looked up, feeling the weight of his wet hair, and gazed at the sky. Up there, for once, were clouds, great bulging towers that sprouted away over the island, grey and cream and copper-colored. The clouds were sitting on the land; they squeezed, produced moment by moment this close, tormenting heat. Even the butterflies deserted the open space where the obscene thing grinned and dripped. Simon lowered his head, carefully keeping his eyes shut, then sheltered them with his hand. There were no shadows under the trees but everywhere a pearly stillness, so that what was real seemed illusive and without definition. The pile of guts was a black blob of flies that buzzed like a saw. After a while these flies found Simon. Gorged, they alighted by his runnels of sweat and drank. They tickled under his nostrils and played leapfrog on his thighs. They were black and iridescent green and without number; and in front of Simon, the Lord of the Flies hung on his stick and grinned. At last Simon gave up and looked back; saw the white teeth and dim eyes, the blood--and his gaze was held by the ancient, inescapable recognition. In Simon's right temple, a pulse began to beat on the brain.

***

"You are a silly boy," said the Lord of the Flies, "just an ignorant, silly boy."

Simon moved his swollen tongue and said nothing.

"Don't you agree?" said the Lord of the Flies. "Aren't you just a silly boy?"

Simon answered in the same silent voice.

"Well then," said the Lord of the Flies, "you'd better run off and play with the others. They think you're batty. You don't want Ralph to think you're batty, do you? You like Ralph a lot, don't you? And Piggy, and Jack?"

Simon's head was tilted slightly up. His eyes could not break away and the Lord of the Flies hung in space before him.

"What are you doing out here all alone? Aren't you afraid of me?"

Simon shook.

"There isn't anyone to help you. Only me. And I'm the Beast."

Simon's mouth labored, brought forth audible words.

"Pig's head on a stick."

"Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill!" said the head. For a moment or two the forest and all the other dimly appreciated places echoed with the parody of laughter. "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?"

The laughter shivered again.

"Come now," said the Lord of the Flies. "Get back to the others and we'll forget the whole thing."

Simon's head wobbled. His eyes were half closed as though he were imitating the obscene thing on the stick. He knew that one of his times was coming on. The Lord of the Flies was expanding like a balloon.

"This is ridiculous. You know perfectly well you'll only meet me down there--so don't try to escape!"

Simon's body was arched and stiff. The Lord of the Flies spoke in the voice of a schoolmaster.

"This has gone quite far enough. My poor, misguided child, do you think you know better than I do?"

There was a pause.

"I'm warning you. I'm going to get angry. D'you see? You're not wanted. Understand? We are going to have fun on this island. Understand? We are going to have fun on this island! So don't try it on, my poor misguided boy, or else--"

Simon found he was looking into a vast mouth. There was blackness within, a blackness that spread.

"--Or else," said the Lord of the Flies, "we shall do you? See? Jack and Roger and Maurice and Robert and Bill and Piggy and Ralph. Do you. See?"

Simon was inside the mouth. He fell down and lost consciousness.


This passage, at first, was very confusing, and only after an interpretation given by Mrs. Lavender was given to me (thanks^^) did I start to understand what Golding was trying to say. At first, I got really overwhelmed because I had thought that I understood it, but had in fact misinterpreted it. I had thought that the flies swarmed Simon and he was the Lord of the Flies. I was all like, "Oh! Yessss!!!!! My favourite character is the Lord of the Flies!!!" But then after awhile the plot didn't match up with my interpretation, and the story did not make any sense. So, I reread it and presumed that maybe it's Simon talking to himself, but after a third reread, I had decided that the Lord of the Flies was some type of spirit or something living in the remains of the dead pig, only to find out that that didn't make the story any easier to understand than either of the first two. So, I did what I had to do and took my question to the all-knowing Mrs. Lavender. Then everything became so obvious!

Simon had been fainting and wandering off a few other times in the book before this point, so it was apparent that he was suffering something. Insomnia. Simon was an insomniac. The Lord of the Flies is sort of a... split personality, inside of him, telling him what to do and what not to do. It's sort of like in those movies where a person is having an internal conflict on deciding to do a good or bad thing, and the little angel him and the little devil him are trying to persuade him on his shoulder. Except Simon is already good, and the Lord of the Flies wants him to do bad. The bad being that everyone has a "Lord of the Flies" in them, so to speak, which, evidently, is the Beast (this is shown when the Lord of the Flies had said, "Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill!"). The Beast within themselves, for that's what they should really be afraid of on the island. Not some Beast that a few people may have gotten a glimpse of (which eventually leads out to be just a shadow of a dead parachuter), but each other. No Beast has killed any of the boys on the island, but Simon and Piggy are both aggressively killed, and the boy with the mulberry birthmark burns to death. All three deaths are a cause of the other boys. They are the Beast.

Also, I got really confused on the part where it says that Simon fell into the pig's mouth, but realized later on that he was fainting and the images in his brain were distorting.

But overall, I'm very glad that I understood this passage, because it is crucial in the book, and, evidently, leads to the climax of The Lord of the Flies.


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