Simon as Silent Prophet of Lord Of The Flies

Simon as Silent Prophet of Lord Of The Flies

The role of the prophet changes with the society in which he lives. In Modern America, a prophet is a visionary, telling his people what they can become; in Biblical times, a prophet was the voice of God, telling his people what they had to become to fulfill their covenant with God. In William Golding's Lord of the Flies, though, the prophet told his people nothing; he realized what they had already become, and he dared not tell them because he knew they would turn against him. Simon lived in knowledge and fear because his society denied the role of the prophet, and he did not fight it because he wanted so much to be part of that society.

The basic premise of Lord of the Flies is that humans naturally live in savagery and ignorance, without any idea of how to live together. It is the story of boys stranded on an island who must develop a government to survive. Every detail of the story holds symbolism. For example, each character represents an aspect of society : those who represent human nature survive, and those who are self-actualized--the scientists, the religious, the leaders--all die. The most terrifying death is that of Simon, who symbolizes the eyes of a blindfolded and stumbling people. He alone saw that the jungle, which represented freedom and the lack of civilization, was not to be feared but to be understood; he alone knew that the mythical Beast of the island, feared by all the boys, was in fact their own inherent savagery. (The title, Lord of the Flies, is in fact a translation of "Beelzebub," a name of the devil in the Judeo-Christian tradition).

In a vision, the Beast told Simon: "Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hu...

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... his fear, his compatriots' savagery justifies that weakness. If his flaw was his desire to be accepted, then he was no different from any of the other boys. Simon was just as human as all the children on the island, abandoned to "the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart" (202). If the truth died with Simon, it died because human nature hates prophets, because humans naturally live in savagery and ignorance.

Works Cited

Epstein, E.L. "Note on Lord of the Flies." Lord of the Flies. U.S.A.: Puntnum Publishing Group, 1954.

Golding, William. Lord of the Flies. U.S.A.: Puntnum Publishing Group, 1954.

Golding, William. "Lord of the Flies as Fable." Readings on Lord of the Flies. Ed. Bruno Leone. Sand Diego: Green Haven Press, 1997.

Riley, Carolyn, ed. Vol. 1 of Contemporary Literary Criticism. Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1973.