Simon Lord Of The Flies Chapter 9 Essay

William Golding’s Lord of the Flies is a poignant reminder of the dark side of the human condition. The ideas that underpin this message are most obvious in chapter nine, when Simon, a representation of benevolence in human nature, is killed. Through foreshadowing this event, natural imagery, and repetition, he reveals that primitive behavior takes hold when social order collapses.

Simon is a figurehead of all that is good in human nature. Friendly, reserved, impartial, and intelligent, his presence is welcomed even when he stands apart. When the boys brutally murder him and he floats away, that social structure and calm washes into the sea with him. Soon after, chaos ravages the island. To make this transition powerful, Golding builds suspense

by foreshadowing the death to come. Just before the ninth chapter, the Lord of the Flies threatens, “‘we shall do you? See? Jack and Roger and Maurice and Robert and Bill and Piggy and Ralph. Do you. See?” He predicts Simon’s death at the hands of the boys. It builds tension and postulates that the relative order of the island will fall. Once Golding establishes Simon’s soon-to-be death, he builds tension and foreshadows events to come through imagery representative of the descent into chaos. In one part, he writes, “Evening was come, not with calm beauty but with the threat of violence.” His description of the surroundings foreshadow that the boys are on the verge of collapse, correspondent with the fracturing social structure.

Then, to build upon the theme, Golding builds the world around the boys with unsettling natural imagery. In the middle of chapter nine, he adds, “a great wind blew the rain sideways, cascading the water from the forest trees. On the mountaintop the parachute filled and moved; the figure slid, rose to its feet, spun, swayed down through a vastness of wet air, and trod with ungainly feet the tops of the high trees.” The uneasy tone and dark visuals surrounding the story’s events correspond with the state of the social structure and the boys’ mindset; they show the correlation between the breaking down of order and primitivism. Then, after Simon’s death, Golding provides finality to the events through a melancholy tone and even darker natural imagery. He writes, “somewhere over the darkened curve of the world the sun and moon were pulling, and the film of water on the earth planet was held, bulging slightly on one side while the solid core turned. The great wave of the tide moved farther along the island and the water lifted. Softly, surrounded by a fringe of inquisitive bright creatures, itself a silver shape beneath the steadfast constellations, Simon’s dead body moved out toward the open sea.” The juxtaposition of the peaceful sea and the dark imagery establishes the idea that hope, order, and structure is gone forever.
Furthermore, the use of repetition mid-chapter builds upon the element of savagery.

Jack is everything Simon is not. He is a ruthless and bloodthirsty leader who prefers primitive methods to more civilized and rational ones. While hunting, he and his pack invent a “chant” for hunting pigs. Golding uses this chant to characterize Jack and his followers as tribe-like savages. As the social order initially established ruptures and crumbles, the chant’s significance grows. During the scene in which Simon dies, the boys repeat, “Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill His Blood!’...’Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood! Do him in!’” The repetition of the chant reinforces ideas of primitivism and tribal behavior in the mind of the reader. Because Simon’s death represents the loss of social structure, the fade-in of primitivism at this point is rather apt. Golding goes on. “At once the crowd surged after it, poured down the rock, leapt onto the beast, screamed, struck, bit, tore. There were no words, and no movements but the tearing of teeth and claws.” Unlike the chant, Golding does not repeat a single phrase, instead he repeats a pattern of speech to impart his point about primitivism to the reader. Terms such as screamed, struck, bit, and tore relay the ideas that bolster the theme. They show the boys’ plunge into savagery and newfound

impurity.
In summary, Lord of the Flies is a telling allegory about the influences and consequences of human nature’s darker aspects.

In chapter nine, writer William Golding uses foreshadowing, natural imagery, and repetition to make his point that the fracturing of social structure will invariably lead to the descent into primitivism. Chapter nine in particular draws some controversial conclusions about human nature. The themes that humans will fall into their primitive ways if left without structure, that people can be both inherently good and bad, and that they are lost if they do not support each other are overarching themes which come to fruition in chapter nine. Through Simon’s death, Golding makes an important point about the world. Simon represents an innate benevolence hidden somewhere in human nature. He, like some in the world, is inclined more to good than evil. Had the boys listened to him throughout the story, their fates may not have taken such a dark turn. By listening to everybody equally, no matter the popular opinion, Golding argues that the world could be a more wholesome place not so disposed to basic, primitive

desires.