THE SIGNIFICANCE OF “THE BEAST”

Lord of the Flies - The significance of “The Beast”

Lord of the Flies - The significance of “The Beast”

Introduction

Lord of the Flies remains among the best-known work. It is a superficially simple but densely layered tale that has been labeled, among other things, a fable, a myth, an allegory, and a parable. On the surface, it is an adventure story. A group of schoolboys await rescue on a deserted island, meanwhile exploring, hunting, and finally warring with one another. In Golding's hands, the story becomes a parable that probes the nature and origin of evil (Reilly, 2006).

The point of departure for Lord of the Flies is a nineteenth century boys' novel titled The Coral Island (1858), by R. M. Ballantyne. In Ballantyne's story, a group of shipwrecked British schoolboys (two of whom share their names with Golding's main characters) manage to create on their deserted island a fair replica of British civilization. Golding's view of human nature is less sanguine. His is a view that accepts the doctrine of original sin but without the accompanying doctrine of redemption (Gindin, 2008). People, in a state of nature, quickly revert to evil, but even in a so-called civilized state, people simply mask their evil beneath a veneer of order. After all, while the boys on the island are sinking into a state of anarchy and blood lust, their civilized parents and teachers are waging nuclear war in the skies overhead.

Discussion on the Significance of “The Beast”

The novel's central symbol, the pig's head around which buzz flies, which the boys dub the Lord of the Flies, is an allusion to Beelzebub, one of the most loathsome and repulsive of the false gods assailed in the Old Testament. Here, Beelzebub is represented by the rotting head of the sow killed by Jack Merridew and his hunters (choir members) in a frenzy of bloodletting that, in the language used to describe it, has sexual overtones (Friedman, 2006). As Simon realizes, however, the beast, the Lord of the Flies, represents something anarchic and evil in the very core of human nature, not—as in the Bible and religious folklore—a demon separate from humanity but capable of taking possession of one's soul. Although human beings are gifted with at least a glimmer of intelligence and reason—represented in the novel by Piggy and Ralph, respectively—the power of evil is sufficient to overwhelm any opposition (Dick, 2007).

Lord of the Flies bears a close resemblance to Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1902); each involves a journey by representatives of one of the supposedly most civilized nations of the world into a darkness that lies at the very core of the human self. The irony in Lord of the Flies is even more pointed, however, in that Golding's entire cast of characters consists of children—traditional symbols of innocence (“trailing clouds of glory” from their heavenly home, William Wordsworth claims). That they are British public schoolboys only adds to the irony in that perhaps the chief goal of the British ...