Jack shows enthusiasm about tracking down and killing the beast violently, if it does indeed exist. This is one of the first signs of Jack’s violent vehemence, his beast instinct. Ralph continues to be persistent that the Beast doesn’t exist.
Dubiety existed among the littluns whether or not it was merely a nightmare, for they felt and experienced it, and a rational, logical approach was not going to convince them that their experience of the beast didn’t take place.
Simon is shown to understand the true nature of the Beast, manifest in Jack’s savagery. Simon bore witness to Jack’s decapitation of the pig, as a spectator, an onlooker, rather than a participant. This gave him a very different perspective to that that a participant would have, because he was not under the influence of the moment. The pig’s head soon gets covered with flies, and is hence named the Lord of the Flies. The flies represent ruthless creatures that lack the ability to feel compassion towards or empathy for the slaughtered sow’s head. This lack of humaneness is the key division, as Golding conveys, between humanity and savagery. Jack’s tribe lacks this compassion too, most apparently towards Piggy. This instinct soon overshadows their human instinct and soon drowns it. This is shown when Jack’s tribe is so brutal that anyone not a part his tribe, he believes, deserves to be slaughtered.
On page 177, Simon appears to be having a spiritual moment with the staked sow’s head. In this scene Simon is shown to understand the nature of the beast: “There isn’t anyone to help you. Only me. And I’m the Beast”. This point is further emphasized when the lord of the flies says, “You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you? Close, close, close! I’m the reason why it’s no go? Why things are what they are”? Simon sees the staked head as “dim with the infinite cynicism of adult life”, and on page 178 the voice he imagines the Lord of the Flies to be speaking with, is that of a headmaster. A headmaster would be an ideal choice because they are likely to be rather experienced and their experience taught them well, albeit that it is to be cynical. This cynicism is confirmed the Lord of the Flies warns Simon that “I’m going to get waxy. D’you see? You’re not wanted. Understand? We are going to have fun on this island. Understand?” The ‘fun’ that the Lord of the Flies is speaking of was the kind of activity Jack and his tribe call fun. The repetitive use of the question “Understand?” creates a powerful effect to ensure Simon was paying attention. The said “fun” was a warning of Jack’s tribe and their new savagery.
After Simon awakes from his faint, he asks aloud, a repetition of the question he asked Ralph before, “What else is there to do?” He received no response and continued onward towards the mountain, drearily. The dreariness is like a result of the Lord of the Flies’ cynicism having rubbed off very slightly on Simon. He approaches the parachutist’s corpse and sees it “sit up on the top and look down on him”. He turns away, embarrassed by the boys’ perception of this harmless corpse as the Beast. He felt sick to his stomach about the way the corpse was being prevented from decaying and escaping. He frees the parachutist from the rocks, so as to allow the corpse to be carried away with the wind, which it is soon afterwards.
None of the boys, save Simon, considered the parachutist a sign. Simon, however, spiritually confronted both the supposedly evil presences on the island; the Lord of the Flies and the parachutist’s corpse. These confrontations empowered him with the knowledge of the nature of evil, of the Beast. When offered the opportunity to share this knowledge with the others, perhaps because he didn’t they were mature enough to accept his understanding. When he finally decides to tell the others about the Beast, he is murdered. This murder is a prime example of Jack’s tribe following their Beast instinct and having the “fun” that the Lord of the Flies that warned Simon of.
Jack’s tribe portrays the Beast’s identity as the most primal form of evil, throughout the majority of this novel. The description of the scene of Simon’s murder as having “no words, and no movements but the tearing of teeth and claws” by Golding contains infinite description of a pack of beasts. If a reader were to only read that sentence by itself, they would assume the creatures described were a pack of carnivorous wolves or hyenas or other such scavengers, but they would never think it were a group of kids. These children, however, do have the instinct of the aforementioned animals. The lack of tools suggests a very primitive use of physical features rather than more sophisticated tools or weaponry. The absence of words is another aspect of savagery is often associated with, and is an invention of humankind that puts us above savagery. In this example, the true nature of the beast is acted out by Jack’s tribe when they use their “teeth and claws” to murder Simon as brutally as they possibly can. This is an instance of a moment when each member of the group was completely possessed by their beast instinct and had their humaneness entirely suppressed.
