The Justification of Simon’s Death in The Lord of The Flies by William Golding

Could Simon Die?

It was a dark scary night. Nothing could be clearly seen. Loud thunder roared as thick drops of rain fell on the ground. Nothing could be heard but the sound of thunder. A group of agitated and aggressive boys danced with fear and excitement. Golding creates a certain atmosphere under which anything could happen. After the death, even the boys dont understand what had happened on that forbidding night. Piggy sums up all reasons for the death of Simon when he later says, It was dark. There was that that bloody dance. There was lightning and thunder and rain. We were scared. Golding convinces his audience that the killing of Simon is credible by using an obscure setting, mob action, and the dance.

The night was dark and so it was hard to see clearly and it was thundering so it was hard to hear anything. Golding uses this particular night for the murder of Simon, to make the murder seem credible. It was a frightening setting and the boys were scared and to lessen their fears, the boys started to dance and chant. The setting was responsible for the boys turning into a scared and restless mob. Between the flashes of lightening the air was dark and terrible. The setting is so terrifying that it even causes Ralph and Piggy to join the group under the threat of the sky. When Simon crawls out of the forest, Golding uses the word thing, it, or a beast to describe Simon. Golding is the ominous, all-knowing, narrator, yet he even uses such words, instead of Simons name, to heighten our fears and to increase the obscurity of the gloomy night. The audience, at first doesnt know for sure if it is Simon, who has crawled out of the forest and so at that point it seems credible for the boys to beat up on something that resembles a beast. To describe Simons arrival, Golding says, It came darkly, uncertainly.

The group of boys turned into a mob and it is more believable to imagine a mob, which has gotten out of control, to commit a murder than to imagine a sensible character like Ralph to take part in the committing of a murder. When it started to rain and thunder, A wave of restlessness set the boys swaying and moving aimlessly. The picture of the agitated group swaying shows a mob starting to form. All the boys were petrified of the storm and even Piggy and Ralph, under the threat of the sky, found themselves eager to take place I this demented but partly secure society. This shows that all the boys joined together into a mob instead of a scattered group to lessen the fear and insecurity. After the mention of Piggy and Ralph in the former quote, no other individual names were taken of the boys since they all had become one organism. The movement became regular while the chant lost its first superficial excitement and began to beat like a steady pulse. This sentence shows the transition between the initial restless excitement of a scattered group to the solid beat of a mob. There was the throb and stamp of a single organism. The boys were chanting and The chant rose a tone in agony. The mob became a collective mind with only one emotion; fear and Now out of the terror rose another desire, thick, urgent, blind. Golding doesnt mention the names of boys or even the group; he just says the desire to kill something rose out of terror.

The dance is something that can also be held responsible for the murder of Simon. Because of the dance, the boys became a collective mob, which later became violent. The dance was started by Jack to divert the attention of the boys from the heavy rain and loud thunder. While all the boys dance and chant, Roger pretends to be the pig and everyone became excited and started beating him. But soon, everyone became violent towards Roger and so he retreated from being pig. By this time, the boys are so excited that they could beat anything that comes their way and when Simon crawls up At once the crowd surged after it, poured down the rock, leapt on to the beast, screamed, struck, bit, tore. The game where a boy pretends to be pig such as this one, make the boys very excited and aggressive and have happened twice before. In the first one, Maurice pretended to be the pig and it is pure fun but in the second one, while Robert is pig, he is cruelly beaten. Even Ralph pinches Robert, and enjoys it, during the second game. The change in the nature of the first game and the second game cause the killing of Simon to seem credible. It is the second game that prepares us for the third one; the audience is not surprised by the violent nature displayed by the boys once Roger is pig and their increased excitement once he ceases to be the pig in the game.

Golding creates an atmosphere where the death of Simon seems possible. His vivid description of the terrifying night, the obscurity of the night, the forming of a mob and a dance that excites the boys very much, aid the audience in believing that the murder of a boy was possible.