What is the importance of Simon in Lord of the Flies?

     Simon is very different from the other boys; his name is the only one that comes from the bible and this is portrayed throughout the story from acting as a Christ-like figure.  Simon is loyal and stands by Ralph and Piggy to the very end, he always tries to encourage them to stay on and to fight Jack to keep control of the group even when Ralph wants to give up being chief.   Simon is never horrible to anyone, he is always kind and nice to the others and helps the littluns, and he also helps Ralph when making the huts when everyone else has gone off to do what they want.

     Simon represents Christ in the novel and is the opposite of Jack and Roger who represent evil.  Throughout the book Simon recreates some of the parables from the Bible such as when he picked the fruit off the tree and gave it o the littluns who could not reach it, which corresponds with when Jesus gives fish and loaves to the five thousand.  Another recreation of a parable is when Jack hits Piggy over the head and his glasses fly off, making him blind.  Piggy then tries to find them but Simon gets their first and gives them to Piggy making him see again just like in the parable when Jesus makes the blind women see.  Whenever we hear about Simon in the novel, we see that he is always described as being in the light and never in the darkness, showing that he can’t be touched by the evilness of the island, until it becomes too powerful for him to handle and he is killed.  Simon is always around and knows everything that is happening and this is just like God omnipresence and when the boys kill him the water claims his body by picking him up and floating him out to sea as if he is being baptised.

     Simon is used to compete against the evil on the island, which is mainly in the boys.  He contacts the ‘Lord of the Flies’ through the pigs head where he argues with him about what is happening and the devil is trying to put Simon down.  Golding uses Simon to try to keep the order in the group by being the sensible one but the others ignore his ideas.  Compared to the 2nd World War, Simon is Britain and their allies with the boys being Germany and so if you follow this idea it is what the world could be like if Germans were the major race.