The first mention of the beast is followed quickly by the first death on the island. Ralph insists ‘there isn’t a beast’ but Jack does not completely dismiss the idea but instead uses the situation to assert his power by telling the boys ‘If there was a snake, we’d hunt it and kill it.’ This is an instant warning, as Ralph has no belief in the beast, whereas Jack seems to have some belief in it already, despite the fact he has not seen it. The fire on the mountain is described as ‘hell’ but it is not the island that is the hell but it is a man-made hell that the boys themselves have created. Here, we begin to see what happens when power is abused or misused and from this point in the novel, the boys begin to lose their delicate sense of order.
When the fire goes out, the tension between Jack and Ralph escalates dangerously. The boys face each other, which is clearly presented by Golding as a challenge and conflict between the boys. For the first time, we are told what each boy represents. While jack’s world is described as one ‘of hunting, tactics, fierce exhilaration, skill’ whereas Ralph’s is one of ‘longing and baffled common sense’. Jack’s world is becoming more appealing to the boys as rescue is forgotten and the desire for meat makes the boys act in a frenzied manner. The beginnings of savagery are appearing as the boys dance around the fire in a very tribal manner, chanting and pretending yet again, to kill a pig.
Ralph calls an assembly when he feels things spiralling out of control but again, the topic of the beast destroys the assembly. When Simon tries to explain ‘mankind’s essential illness’ the other boys laugh at him similarly to the way they mock Piggy when he suggests the ‘fear’ is just fear of each other. The beast has already infiltrated the boys thinking and for the first time, they begin to lose some of their humanity when described as ‘a dense black mass’. In response to the boys’ request for a sign from the adult world, the parachutist falls onto the island. Ironically, this shows that the adults are no better than the boys in that destruction in the adult world is also increasing in severity. This is a sign that the threat has now become a physical reality. The boys go and look for the beast but only find castle rock. However, it is now clear the boys have started to lose their sense of morality, in particular Jack who suggests throwing rocks onto the enemy. This comment is very sinister and shows the capacity for evil in Jack is very great and he is beginning to shed his sense of shame, self-consciousness and right and wrong. In addition Ralph forgets rescue for a moment further indicating the boys’ ties to civilization are being worn away and the decline into savagery has begun.
The boys then find the ‘thing that bowed’ on the mountain at night. They mistake the dead parachutist for the beast and this is now a confirmation that it exists. Ralph joins in the ‘pig game’ and this is very sinister as his ‘desire to squeeze and hurt was overmastering’. This indicates that the beast is beginning to control Ralph too, and he like the others does see the appeals of savagery. Jack then decides to leave ‘Ralph’s lot’ and soon, his hunters and many littluns follow him. The boys hunt and kill a pig in a very disturbing, sexual manner by the use of ‘..they were heavy and fulfilled upon her..’ (the sow). This is a terrifying contrast to Jack at the beginning who could not bring himself to kill a pig because of the ‘enormity of the knife descending into flesh’. After the death of the sow, the boys play with its blood and ritualistically celebrate their kill. In addition, the ‘unbearable’ blood has become something Jack flicks onto the other boys and laughs. This is truly disturbing and very savage behaviour, as the boys show no mercy for the sow and behave like savages. The murder of the sow allows the boys to revert back to their primitive instincts and lose all traces of guilt and conscience.
Jack’s tribe impale the sow’s head on a stick as a gift for the beast. This shows they have now cut all ties with civilization as this is a very primitive thing to do and the beast has become almost a totemic god that the boys are worshiping. Simon then meets the Lord of the flies, which is the pig’s head, but becomes both a physical manifestation of the beast, a symbol of the power of evil, and a kind of Satan figure who brings out the beast within each human being. The Lord of the Flies represents the devil contrasting with Simon who represents Christ. The Lord of Flies says that the beast is not a physical manifestation that is in the form of an animal that can be hunted and killed, but resides inside the souls of the boys on the island. The Lord of the Flies even says that the Beast is part of Simon, the symbol of goodness, suggesting that all human beings are born with both some evil and goodness. Later on while Ralph is fleeing from Jack and his tribe, he stumbles upon the Lord of the Flies and ‘little prickles of sensation ran up and down his back’. Soon after, Ralph hits the pig's head and smashes it into pieces. By destroying the Lord of the Flies, Ralph denies his internal evil and primitive instincts. The difference between Ralph's and Simon's encounter with the Lord of the Flies is that Simon accepts The Lord of the Flies and listens intently to what it is saying to him. However, Ralph destroys it and then walks away from it. Both Ralph's and Simon's experience with the Lord of the Flies states that all men are capable of evil, and that evil is inherent in all human beings, without exception.
In conclusion, the beast is the main reason for the boys’ decline into savagery and their hidden evil surfaces in a very sinister and frightening way. The beast causes the boys to begin worshipping the evil on the island and forgetting the civilization that they left behind. As the boys on the island progress from well behaved, orderly children longing for rescue to cruel, bloodthirsty hunters who have no desire to return to civilization, they naturally lose the sense of innocence that they possessed at the beginning of the novel. But Golding does not portray this loss of innocence as something that is done to the children but something that results naturally from their increasing openness to the evil and savagery that has always existed within them. Golding implies that civilization can hide but never wipe out the sinister evil that exists within all human beings. The forest glade in which Simon sits in Chapter 3 symbolizes this loss of innocence. At first, it is a place of natural beauty and peace, but when Simon returns later in the novel, he discovers the bloody sow’s head impaled upon a stake in the middle of the clearing. The bloody offering to the beast has disrupted the paradise that existed before—a powerful symbol of human evil disrupting childhood innocence. At the end of the novel, Ralph weeps for the ‘darkness of a man’s heart’ showing the essential evil that resides within each human being and the terrible things that happen when power, anarchy and unbridled savagery reside over morality and civilization.
