1. Lord of the Flies

4. What is the Lord of the Flies?

5. How does the beast begin the story? What is it, as far as the boys know? The beast begins as a product of the boys imaginations. The smaller boys are afraid of things they see at night; rather than be blindly afraid of “The Great Unknown,” they give their fear a name and a shape in their minds. You can’t defeat a “nothing,” but you can hunt and kill a “something.”

6. What is the next evolution in the myth of the beast? What does it become? The next evolution in the myth of the beast is the dead parachutist. It’s no coincidence that the boys catch a glimpse of a dark, UNKNOWN object and immediately call it the beast; perhaps they were relieved to have finally seen the thing? Why?

7. Why is it interesting that Golding chooses to make this manifestation of the boys’ fear a MAN? The “beast” then is not only a man, but a soldier coming from the war. Not only that, but the parachutist flies in, in response to Piggy’s request for a “sign” from the adult world. It’s ironic that the best that adults can come up with is a man dead of their own violence.

8. What did Piggy say the beast was? What did Simon say it was? Piggy says the beast is just fear, and Simon says that the beast is “only us.”

9. What does Simon mean when he says the beast is “only us”? He’s talking about the beast being the darkness that is inside each and every one of us. The Beast, according to Simon, is the human tendency towards cruelty and violence; the Beast is the worst of what we are as humans.

10. What does The Lord of the Flies tell Simon? “I’m the Beast…Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill! 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?...You know perfectly well you’ll only meet me down there— so don’t try to escape!”

11. What connection can you make between how Simon defines the Beast, and what the Lord of the Flies tells him? What the Lord of the Flies tells him makes Simon’s words seem true; you can’t hunt and kill the beast, because they’ve already hunted and killed the pig and it’s still talking to Simon. The beast is inside all of us, and not only can’t we hunt it, but we can never see it, never give it form, and never defeat it. The Beast is just the darkness of man’s heart, and it is “close, close, close…”

12. from your packet… How is the Lord of the Flies like a devil in the novel? What does it mean that the devil is lord over the flies? Who do the flies represent? How is this an appropriate symbol for the story? What is the purpose of including this symbol in the story?