{"id":42274,"date":"2022-03-09T11:17:54","date_gmt":"2022-03-09T11:17:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/essays.homeworkacetutors.com\/2022\/03\/simon-from-the-lord-of-the-flies\/"},"modified":"2022-03-09T11:17:54","modified_gmt":"2022-03-09T11:17:54","slug":"simon-from-the-lord-of-the-flies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colapapers.com\/us\/simon-from-the-lord-of-the-flies\/","title":{"rendered":"Simon from The Lord of the Flies"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Simon is a character who represents peace and tranquility, with some references to Jesus Christ. He is very in-tune with the island, and often experiences extraordinary sensations when listening to its sounds. He also has an extreme aversion to the pig\u2019s head, the \u201cLord of the Flies,\u201d which derides and taunts Simon in a hallucination. After this experience, Simon emerges from the forest to tell the others that the \u201cbeast\u201d that fell from the sky is actually a deceased parachutist caught on the mountain, only to be brutally killed by Jack\u2019s people, who ironically mistake him for the beast. The final words that the Lord of the Flies had said to Simon vaguely predicted that his death was about to occur in this manner. Simon\u2019s death represents the loss of truth and common sense.[6]<\/p>\n

The first time we see Simon, he\u2019s fainting. Physical weakness becomes a hallmark of his character, from passing out to throwing up to hallucinations and bloody noses. So it\u2019s easy to think right off the bat that this kid is kind of weak. Simon is a timid but compassionate guy. A \u201cskinny, vivid boy,\u201d Simon\u2019s got this innate goodness that comes out in his actions. He helps the littluns pick fruit to eat, he recovers Piggy\u2019s glasses when they fly off his face (post-Jack\u2019s punch), and he gives Piggy his own share of meat. As important as what he does do is what he doesn\u2019t do, namely turn into a primitive savage and go about killing things.<\/p>\n

But Simon is actually wise, mature, and insightful to the point of being prophetic. Simon wins the Most Amazing Comments Ever award in Lord of the Flies, despite competing with such brilliance as \u201cWe need an assembly to put things straight\u201d and \u201cWhat are we, humans or animals?\u201d Simon\u2019s prize-winning contender: \u201cMaybe there is a beast [\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6], maybe it\u2019s only us.\u201d<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s not all in the wise comments department, either. You can\u2019t talk about Simon without talking about that huge, show-stopping scene in Chapter Eight when he \u201ctalks\u201d with \u201cthe Lord of the Flies.\u201d If you choose to see the Lord of the Flies as purely a product of Simon\u2019s imaginations, then all of the pig\u2019s head\u2019s comments can be attributed to Simon\u2019s insightful brilliance. We\u2019re talking about lines like \u201cFancy thinking the beast was something you could hunt or kill!\u201d and \u201cYou knew, didn\u2019t you? I\u2019m part of you? Close, close, close.\u201d We\u2019ll go into more detail in the \u201cSymbols, Imagery, Allegory\u201d section, but for now be satisfied with the fact that Simon is the only boy to truly grasp that \u201cthe beast\u201d is just all the negative, horrible aspects of mankind. The pig\u2019s head\u2019s next line, \u201cI\u2019m the reason why it\u2019s no go [\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6], why things are the way they are\u201d is a direct answer to the question Piggy posed several pages earlier: \u201cWhat makes things break up the way they do?\u201d So there you have it: Simon answers the questions of the other boys \u2013 it\u2019s just that no one will listen.<\/p>\n

Of course, the other way to view the Simon\/Lord of the Flies scene is to say that the talking pig\u2019s head isn\u2019t a mere hallucination \u2013 it\u2019s the actual Lord of the Flies, Beelzebub, the Devil, evil incarnate, talking to Simon via a severed noggin. If this is true, Simon loses points for not coming up with the intelligent insights on his own. On the other hand, he gains quite a few points back for being like Jesus.<\/p>\n

What? Yes, indeed, Simon might be considered to be a lot like Jesus. To start with, his name is Simon, which happens to be the name of one of the twelve apostles. Simon started out as Simon until Jesus decided really his name should be \u201cPeter\u201d instead. Now, as you\u2019ll see elsewhere in this module, Lord of the Flies is sort of a response to another book, The Coral Island. Golding went so far as to use the same names for his characters, taking Ralph, Jack, and Peterkin. Except \u201cPeterkin\u201d ended up as \u201cSimon.\u201d<\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s Simon\u2019s affinity for meditation, his kindred spirit-ness with animals, his \u201csuffer the little children unto me\u201d attitude (think about the fruit-picking), and his ability to prophesize (like when he tells Ralph that Ralph will get home, and sort of suggests that he himself won\u2019t). Simon is one big religious guy. Having established that, we can go back to our pig\u2019s-head-on-a stick scene and compare it to Jesus\u2019s visit to the Garden of Gethsemane the night before he was crucified. Now, when we say visit, what we really mean is long and solitary mental suffering, much like Simon undergoes the night before he meets his own untimely death. Simon is \u201cthirsty,\u201d and later \u201cvery thirsty,\u201d and although the text doesn\u2019t say it, we can only assume that at one point later he is very, very thirsty. He\u2019s also sweating, having a seizure, and bleeding profusely from his nose. So, if Simon\u2019s \u201cnight before\u201d matches up with Jesus\u2019s \u201cnight before,\u201d then it\u2019s only natural for us to compare their deaths as well. Does Simon die for the sins of the boys? Are they somehow saved by his death? We think the most potent conclusion is that Simon was the boys\u2019 savior: he alone had the knowledge of the beast\u2019s true nature, and he alone had the potential to save the boys from themselves and their fear. And then they killed him.<\/p>\n

The most interesting part of this gruesome, tragic death is that the boys think Simon is the beast when they kill him. How ironic is it that Simon said the beast was \u201conly us,\u201d and is then later pegged as in fact being the beast himself? The kicker is that, of all the boys, Simon is the least beast-like. The question is whether being non-beasty makes him more or less human.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Simon is a character who represents peace and tranquility, with some references to Jesus Christ. He is very in-tune with the island, and often experiences extraordinary sensations when listening to its sounds. He also has an extreme aversion to the pig\u2019s head, the \u201cLord of the Flies,\u201d which derides and taunts Simon in a hallucination. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5858],"tags":[8337,2871,3882,6551,6297,1689],"class_list":["post-42274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english-literature","tag-affordable-online-college-homework","tag-cheap-essay-writer-australia","tag-pay-someone-to-write-my-paper","tag-research-essay-help-uk","tag-science-homework-assignment-help","tag-write-my-paper-online"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.colapapers.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.colapapers.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.colapapers.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.colapapers.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.colapapers.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.colapapers.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42274\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.colapapers.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.colapapers.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.colapapers.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}