The Beast in All of Us

Julia Frys

Marshall

English 2 Honors

28 October 2013

The Beast In All Of Us.

"Monsters are real, and ghosts are too. They live inside of us,and sometimes they win."Stephen King. William Goldings intention in the book Lord of the Flies is to show his readers that every human being alive has the potential of evil. In his book Golding puts young and genuine boys on a strangely beautiful island tucked away from civilization. This is used to emphasize his point that without a feeling of safety and comfort young boys can get caught up in hunting,seeking revenge and turning insanely savage. The boys in the book believe there is a monster that lives on the island which they refer to as the "beast". The boys fear the beast which is what turns them savage. The beast symbolizes the savage instincts within all the boys. When they fear the beast the more savage and dangerous they become.

During the book the beast takes number of forms in the boys imaginations. At first the beast is portrayed as a squid, when Maurice says,"'My daddy says there's things, what d'you call'em that make ink--squids--that are hundreds of yards long and eat whales whole'"(88). The boys at this moment are fearing something unknown and made up right from the littluns imaginations. Later in the book the fear drives the boys so nuts that believe they can hunt down the beast and kill it. In the book another way the beast is presented is from the sky. While Samneric were sleeping,"There was a sudden bright explosion and corkscrew trail across the sky; then darkness again and the stars. There was a speck above the island, a figure dropping swiftly beneath a parachute, a figure that hung with dangling limbs. Changing winds of various altitudes took the figure where they would"(95). Making the pilot look tremendously like the beast moving through the trees. Around the end of the book the fear devours the boys brains that the boys decide to sacrifice a dead pigs head to the beast as a form of a "gift". Imagination of a made up beast creates tremendous amounts of fear in the book which result in savage actions for the need of survival.

Simon is one of the most civilized boys on the island which makes him stand out the most in the book. Simon encounters the pigs head concealed in a huge mass of flies first. During their crazy delusional talk, The Lord of the Flies says, "' You knew,didn't you" I'm part of you?'"(144). This causes poor Simon to faint due to the realization that there is no beast.That this whole time the boys are fearing some beast they are actually fearing themselves the whole entire time. The other person who encountered the beast was Ralph. But when he was faced with the beast his anger conquers him and "fiercely he hit out at the filthy thing in front of him that bobbed like a toy and came back,still grinning into his face,so