payment page
As if it wasn’t a good island… As if...the beastie, the beastie or the snake-thing, was real. Remember?
During the assembly in Chapter 3, Simon suggests that the littluns’ fear of the island is valid, remembering the littlun with the mark on his face who died in the fire and spoke of a snake-like beastie. Simon seems to believe that the boys have a real fear, but that the thing they should fear is not a beastie, but the darkness within each of them.
We used [Piggy’s] specs...He helped that way.
Simon is the only person who is able to remain entirely good and untainted by the island, and in Chapter 2, he stands up for Piggy. Piggy is regularly mocked by the others for his lack of physicality, however Simon reminds the others that without Piggy’s glasses, there would be no fire, and that not all contributions to a society are purely physical.
I wanted—to go to a place...just a place I know. A place in the jungle.
In Chapter 5, a littlun says he saw someone in the darkness and Simon confesses that he was wandering alone at night. Simon regularly visits a clearing in the jungle, the same clearing where Jack and his hunters savagely mutilate a sow and leave her head on a stake. In this scene, the boy mistakenly believes Simon is the beast, foreshadowing the later scene when the group as whole mistakes him for the beast, and kill him in a fearful frenzy.
Maybe there is a beast… Maybe it’s only us.
To the dismay of Ralph and Piggy, Simon admits in Chapter 5 that he does believe in the beast, but suggests that the beast is actually the inherent evil inside each one of them. Simon senses early on that the boys will fall into violent savagery and become their own worst enemies. Simon’s insight into the dangers of mass hysteria makes his murder by the group all the more tragic.
You’ll get back all right. I think so, anyway.
Simon provides comfort to Ralph in Chapter 7 when he suggests that Ralph will return home eventually. The line is simultaneously reassuring and ominous, as Simon says “you” instead of “we,” suggesting that Simon isn’t sure if he will survive the island. This line eerily repeats in Ralph’s head during the final death chase through the woods in Chapter 12, long after Simon has been murdered.
