The Lord of the Flies

The raven-haired boy stared at the gruesome mass before him. The initial

repulsion he had felt at first was now completely gone. This was no longer a bloodied

boar's head. It was the monster, it was The Lord of the Flies... Not only Simon, but each

of the other main characters made something out of this being. In William Golding's Lord

of the Flies, the boar's head symbolized different things for each character.

Sweating, trembling, with sickening delight, Jack slit the boar's throat. The sow

emitted its last squeal, and the boys clustered around it as Jack mounted the head on a

spike. He left this oozing, raised part of the carcass as a gift for the beast. Jack knew that

it was more than that, though. It was not really a present, or even a peace offering. It was

his way of fighting back, of facing the unknown monster. To Jack, the head meant power,

rage and the fury of the hunt.

When Simon discovered the spiked remnant, he became entranced. Flies swarmed

around it, crawling all over it and devouring its flesh. To him, it was the Lord of the Flies.

It was the fear that they all had, the so-called beast. And for Simon, it was also a vent, a

way to channel his growing insanity. Although the boys thought Simon was completely

batty, he made more sense than all of them. Had they listened to him, their chances of

staying together would have been much greater. Instead he was mocked, and the fear that

could have been prevented was what killed him. The Lord of the Flies was truth, for

Simon.

He had to get away. Ralph had to run, hide, escape the pursuing savages that

chased him. The group that had so quickly ditched him to "have fun and hunt" with Jack.

Now he was the victim of their deadly war games. A stick sharpened at both ends. In his

haste Ralph glimpsed the spiked boar's head, and the realization of what was happening to

them flooded in. He knew that what had happened to Simon, and to Piggy, was no

mistake. Their brutal, killing selves were let loose. No matter how hard they tried, they

could never keep the civility of grown-up men. They didn't know how. For Ralph, the

boar was an awakening.

In Lord of the Flies, each boy held a very different out look, a different perspective

of how the island should be run. This affected their opinions, and what things meant to

each of them. The bloody boar's head was the result of a passionate hunt, for Jack. To

Simon it was knowledge, and provided an escape from the wild society. And to Ralph it

was a stunning realization. This symbol may have been the one thing that they all had in

common, it was what told of the truth.