Lord of the Flies Symbolism

Symbolism is the author's sneaky way of tying the story's action to its theme. Cleverly placed throughout the story, these symbols can be found if the reader takes a closer look. In William Goldings The Lord of the Flies, a school of boys plane-crash onto a deserted island and become stranded there. The boys slowly begin to lose their minds and start turning into animal-like savages. Golding uses symbols throughout his story, most of them having biblical similarities. The three most important symbols in the novel are The Lord of the Flies, Simon, and the Beast.

The boys believe a monster lives on the island which they refer to as "The Beast." The boys fear the beast and their fear puts them into an animal-like rage. The beast symbolizes the savage instinct within all the boys. The more they fear and believe in the beast, the more savage and dangerous they become. Some of the children want to hunt down and kill the Beast. The boys’ fear of the beast gets the point where they offer animal corpses as a sacrifice to the beast. The boys hunt and kill a pig, stick its severed head on a spike, and call it a "gift" for the beast. There is one boy, named Simon, who realizes that the only beast on the island is the boys themselves.

Simon is one of the younger boys and he stands out from the rest. Simon seems calmer than the other boys and doesn’t jump to conclusions. Simon symbolizes goodness, wisdom and truth. Simon is also one of the many symbols in The Lord of the Flies that has a biblical similarity, and his eerie parallel with Jesus Christ. About half-way in the story, Simon discovers that the so-called "Beast" all the boys seem to fear is actually the boys themselves. Just like Christ, Simon holds the truth and wants to share it with others, but before he has the chance, he is brutally murdered by all of the other boys, just like how Jesus Christ was crucified by his own people for spreading