Simon broke out of the circle surrounding him and fell over a steep rock to the sand by the water. The hunters chased Simon and they clawed and tore at the ‘beast’ with their teeth.
After the big uns have murdered Simon they quickly ran back into the forest. By this time in the book, they have lost most humanity and they had reverted from being well brought up children to killing hunters, they were back to their natural form. They have already killed an animal, the next stage of barbarity is killing a human. They do not seem to realise what they are doing wrong and they think it is right especially Jack and because he is the leader, they will do whatever he tells them to do. For Jack hunting and killing is the main thing to do on the island and it has become an obsession for him. He likes the thought that he has killed someone, he enjoys seeing the pigs suffer and he likes seeing the blood. They also have it into their heads that there is a beast somewhere on the island in the forest this was first started by one of the little uns; the little un described the beast in detail. At first no one believed them but now it seems more real to them. This beast is just a figment of their imagination; it was probably started after the little un had a bad dream and decided to tell them all, little children usually think their nightmares are real anyway. Their fear of the beast is fuelled by their boredom it gives them something to think about and it keeps them occupied. They have tried to turn their fear of the beast into a little game but it has gone too far.
Piggy is upset about Simon’s death this explains why he is always looking at the dead body in the sea, he realises that this is no longer a game anymore and it is becoming more serious and he doesn’t know whether he will come off the island alive. Ralph is upset about the death too but he has learnt to push his emotions aside and to carry on with things. Ralph won’t admit to being scared about Simons’ death or to being scared about what Jack might do next. He convinces himself and Piggy that what happened was an accident.
The third and final person to die was Piggy the most levelheaded one of them all. Jack’s Tribe committed the murder, this shows that Jack and his tribe are only interested in hunting and killing at this stage and they do not care who they kill. They kill when they get carried away in their dancing rituals and the unlucky victim is the person who happens to be in their way at the time.
Jack’s tribe has painted their faces and stole Piggy's glasses, they painted their faces so they camouflaged into the bushes and trees so they could hunt pigs easier, Without his glasses Piggy can’t see or start a fire. Ralph and Piggy go to Jack and Ralph demands that he give back Piggy’s glasses. Jack laughs but Ralph tells him that he voted for him to be leader so he should listen to his rules and demands. Both Jack and Ralph challenge one another but neither goes any further than that. Piggy gets hold of the conch, but the group refuses to listen to him. Jack ties Piggy and Ralph up and then Roger starts to throw stones at Ralph and Piggy.
Roger pushes a big rock off the cliff and it hits Piggy from chin to knee the conch shatters into a thousand pieces. The conch symbolised some stability in the group, now that the conch is gone there is no need to listen or show respect to anyone.
Piggy travels forty feet through the air, and lands with his head cut open and stuff coming out (probably his brains!).
They have lost all senses of reality and their only form of control and order was a conch, but after a while nobody takes any notice of this. No one usually let Piggy speak when he had the conch, and the main rule was that who ever had the conch had to be listened to by the others.
This book was published in 1954 after World War II. The author William Golding is trying to show that all men will kill each other when all their social constraints have been taken away and that they will go back to being savages. That was his theory and I agree with this. The children only reverted back to their natural form once all their social constraints were removed. They were all children they didn’t just learn to kill people; they killed those 3 people because that is what came naturally to them.
I don’t think the children would have done most of the things they did if there were older people around to keep them in control. I think this because when the boys landed on the island they were well behaved and well mannered, they were civilised to one another and they had respect for each other to a certain extent. As time drew on and they realised that there was not going to be any adults coming to look after them, two boys took it upon themselves to turn into the adult and look after the rest of the group. This could not work because even if they pretended to be adults they still would not have adult experience and they would not get the respect from the rest of the group like a normal adult would. This is why Jack used violence to get the respect he wanted from the group. Ralph got real respect from the rest of the group. The group didn’t respect Jack that much it was mainly fear they had for him. Ralph used his knowledge about the army to get his respect but Jack’s violence overpowered Ralph’s knowledge.
I think the beast could be a reason why they started to attack other people but the beast was a figment of their imagination no one could say they had saw the beast but people tried to describe it, mainly from what they saw in their dreams. Some of the group could cope with the problems they faced other couldn’t.
When the group painted their faces, they had reverted to their natural form. They used the face paint as camouflage to make hunting easier. When they first came to the island, they would never have done such a thing.
Jack took hunting seriously and he got agitated if he did not kill anything, he was responsible for killing the pigs and he saw it as a great achievement. No one complained because it was food but no one said anything when he and his tribe killed another person. At this point Jack had the overall power and killing was part of his nature.
The children only started hunting and killing when they got tired of having nothing to do all day, they needed entertainment and this is where the beast could have come from. They usually went hunting in search of the beast to kill it but they never found it. This is because the beats only existed in their thoughts. They thought the beast was a danger to them but they were a danger to themselves.
The deaths were not accidents the boys knew what they were doing; they never regretted what they did. If the deaths were an accident then how come there was three? Once can be deemed as an accident, twice more after that can only be classed as deliberate. Some of them never really knew what they were doing and if they did they didn’t have the courage to try and put a stop to it, this is why the murders can be classed as accidental. Even if they hadn’t wanted to kill anyone they wouldn’t have been able to stop themselves plus some of them had no choice they had to do what the leader commanded or they faced death themselves.
