8/14/2019 Criticism - Simon and Sigmund

1/4

Lord of the Flies : Simon and Sigmund by Claire RosenfieldThe taboo, according to Freud, is a very primitive

prohibition imposed from without (by an authority) and

directed against the strongest desires of man. In this

new society it replaces the authority of the parents. Nowevery kill becomes a sexual act, is a metaphor for

childhood sexuality. . . . Every subsequent need for

ritual fulfills not only the desire for communication and

a substitute security to replace that of civilization, but

also a need to liberate the repressions of the past and also

those imposed by Ralph. Indeed, the projection of those

impulses that they cannot accept in themselves into a

beast is the beginning of a new mythology.

When the imaginary demons become defined by

the rotting corpse and floating chute on the mountain,

which their terror distorts into a beast, Jack wants to

track the creature down. After the next kill, the head of

the pig is placed upon a stake to placate. Finally one of

the children, Simon, after an epileptic fit , creeps out of

the forest at twilight while the others are engaged in

enthusiastic dancing following a hunt. Seized by the

rapture of reenactment or perhaps terrorized by fear and night

into believing that this little creature is a beast, they circle

Simon, pounce on him, bite and tear his body to death. He

becomes not a substitute for beast, but beast itself;representation becomes absolute identification, the mystic

repetition of the initial event.

Simons mythic and psychological role has earlier been

suggested. Undersized, subject to epileptic fits, 1 bright-eyed, and

introverted, he constantly creeps away from the others to

meditate among the intricate vines of the forest. 2 To him, as to

the mystic, superior knowledge is given intuitively which he

cannot communicate. When the first report of the beast-pilot

1Historically, the epileptic or one who experiences seizures, has

been regarded as either a being possessed by demons, or as one

who has association with divinity. Priests and prophets and saints

have often been linked with religious trances. The visions or

speech produced under the influence of seizures or trances have

been regarded as prophecy or as divine insight.2In some mystical way we sense that Simon envisions not only his

own death but also the destruction that is to follow. When they go

out to search for the Beast, Simon felt a flicker of incredulity . . .

however Simon thought of the beast, there rose before his inward

sight the picture of a human being at once heroic and sick.

8/14/2019 Criticism - Simon and Sigmund

2/4

reaches camp, Simon, we are told, can picture only a

human at once heroic and sick. 3 During the day

preceding his death, he walks vaguely away and stumbles

on the pigs head left in the sand in order to appease thedemonic forces they imagine. Shaman-like, 4 he holds a

silent colloquy 5 with it, a severed head covered with

innumerable flies. It is itself the ti tled Lord of the Flies, a

name applied to the biblical demon Beelzebub. From it he

learns that it is the Beast, and the Beast cannot be hunted

because it is within. Simon feels the advent of one of his

fits and imagines the head expanding, an anticipation or

3 This is an apt description of the human soul as portrayed

in the entire book, and in the words of Simon, maybe its

only us. But even Piggy misses the point and responds to

Simon with derision: Nuts! he says. This clearly

demonstrates Piggys most serious flaw: he can only deal

with facts; he has none of the imaginative insight that

Simon has.4A shaman is a member of certain tribal societies who acts

as a medium between the visible world and an invisible

spirit world and practises magic or sorcery for healing,

divination, and control over natural events.5A colloquy is a conversation, especially a formal one. It

also means a written dialogue.

intuition of the discovery of the pilots corpse. Suddenly Golding

employs a startling image, Simon was inside the mouth. He fell

down and lost consciousness. Literally, this image presents the

hallucination of a sensitive child about to lose control of hisrational facilities. Metaphorically, it suggests the ritual quest in

which the hero is swallowed by a serpent or dragon or beast

whose belly is the underworld, undergoes a symbolic death in

order to gain the elixir to revitalize his stricken society, and

returns with his knowledge to the timed world as a redeemer.

Psychologically, this narrative pattern is a figure of speech

connoting the annihilation of the ego, 6 an internal journey

necessary for self-understanding, a return to the timelessness of

the unconsciousness. When Simon wakes, he realizes that he

must confront the beast on the mountain because what else is

there to do? He is relieved of that dreadful feeling of the

pressure of personality which had oppressed him earlier. When

he discovers the hanging corpse, he first frees it in compassion

although it is rotting and surrounded by flies, and then staggers

6 Ego, according to Freud, is that part of the psyche that is

conscious, most directly controls thought and behaviour, and is

most aware of external reality.

8/14/2019 Criticism - Simon and Sigmund

3/4

unevenly down to report to the others. 7 Redeemer and

scapegoat, he becomes the victim of the group he seeks to

enlighten. In death--before he is pulled into the sea--his

head is surrounded by flies in an ironic parody of the haloof saints and gods. 8

*****

Elegy by Leonard Cohen

Do not look for him

In brittle mountain streams:They are too cold for any god;

And do not examine the angry rivers

For shreds of his soft body

Or turn the shore stones for his blood;

But in the warm salt ocean

He is descending through cliffs

Of slow green water

And the hovering coloured fish

7 The beast was harmless and horrible; and the news must

reach the others as soon as possible.8 In his martyrdom Simon meets the fate of all saints: the

truth he brings would set us free, but we are, by nature,

incapable of perceiving that truth.

Kiss his snow-bruised body

And build their secret nests

In his fluttering winding-sheet.

Lord of the Flies: Golding comments about Simon

In an essay he called Fable, William Golding has written:

For reasons it is not necessary to specify, I included a

Christ-figure in my fable. This is the little boy Simon, solitary,

stammering, a lover of mankind, a visionary, who reaches

commonsense attitudes not by reason but by intuition. Of allthe boys, he is the only one who feels the need to be alone and

goes every now and then into the bushes. Since this book is one

that is highly and diversely explicable, you would not believe

the various interpretations that have been given of Simons

going into the bushes. But go he does and prays, as the child

Jean Vianney 9 would go, and some other saintsthough not

9 SAINT JOHN MARY VIANNEY: Farm hand who in his youth taught other children their prayers and catechism. Priest at age 30, though it took severalyears study as he was not a very good student, and his Latin was terrible.Assigned to the parish of Ars, a tiny village near Lyons, which suffered fromvery lax attendance; he began visiting his parishioners, especially the sick and

poor. Spent days in prayer, doing penance for his parishioners. Gifted withdiscernment of spi rits, prophecy, hidden knowledge. Tormented by evil spirits,especially when he tried to get his 2-3 hours of sleep each night. Thousandscame to hear him preach, and to make their reconciliation because of his

reputation with penitents. Spent 40 years as the parish priest . Born

1786 at

http://pst00707.htm/http://pst00707.htm/http://pst00707.htm/http://pst00133.htm/http://pst00133.htm/http://pst00580.htm/http://pst00580.htm/http://pst00580.htm/http://year1786.htm/http://year1786.htm/http://pst00707.htm/http://pst00133.htm/http://pst00580.htm/http://pst00580.htm/http://year1786.htm/

8/14/2019 Criticism - Simon and Sigmund

4/4

many. He is really turning part of the jungle into a

church, not a physical one, perhaps, but a spiritual one.

Here there is a scene, when civilisation has already begun

to break down under the combined pressures of boy-nature and the thing still ducking and bowing on the

mountain top, when the hunters bring before him,

without knowing he is there, their false god, the pigs

head on a stick. It was at this point of imaginative

concentration that the pigs head knew Simon was there.

In fact, the pigs head delivered something very like a

sermon to the boy; the pigs head spoke. I know because

I heard it.

Dardilly, Lyons, France Died 4 August 1859

http://pst00301.htm/http://pst00301.htm/http://day0804.htm/http://year1859.htm/http://year1859.htm/http://pst00301.htm/http://day0804.htm/http://year1859.htm/