Simon Symbolism In Lord Of The Flies

Golding's Lord of the Flies is about a time during war, when a plane crashes and a group of boys are alone, unsupervised, on a deserted island. On this island they have to fend for themselves, they have to find a way of survival. As Golding takes us through the sequence of the story, he uses many situations, items, and many of the characters as symbols of worldly things.
Before War World II Europe and Germany didn’t have the best relations, but they got along, that was until Hitler invaded Poland. Prior to the invasion of Poland, Hitler had won the support of Germany by promising that he would get them out of their economic depression. Soon after becoming chancellor of Germany, Hitler went back on his word. He did not doing anything he claimed
he was going to do, instead he became a dictatorial leader. Hitler started using intimidation, violence, and fear as means to keep his power. Jack and Hitler have very similar leadership characteristics. In the beginning Jack uses persuasion to obtain his power. He persuades them by telling the group that he is going hunting. The boys are not impressed with Ralph's fire watching so they are inclined to join Jack. When he gets power he uses the boys' fears to keep them in his favor. He promises to keep them safe from the beast, which they are all for. Soon the power starts getting the best of Jack. He is no longer just regular, evil Jack, he has turned into a tyrant. While Jack is wreaking havoc Ralph stands close, quietly. Europe stayed quiet until Poland was invaded. Ralph is Europe in this sense. He is quiet until Sam and Eric are captured by Jack, then Ralph becomes enraged.
The boys of Lord of the Flies made it evident that there was a war going on. They had many reactions to it. In the beginning Piggy made a suggestion saying that "[they] were attacked" (Golding 8). This implies that while they were on the plane, they were shot down by enemy planes. Moments later, Ralph started acting like a fighter plane "Ralph danced out into the hot air of the beach and then returned as a fighter-plane, with wings swept back, and machine-gunned piggy" (11). This shows that war has been going on long enough for them to be able to mimic the sounds of the different type of planes.
Throughout the storyline there was a struggle between two types of government: Democratic and dictatorship. Ralph would be the democratic with Piggy being his advisor and Jack would be the dictator with Roger as his henchman. Throughout the book, Ralph has held many meetings to have the boys vote on a problem. In the beginning Ralph held a meeting to elect the leader. Most of these meeting were Piggy's idea seeing as he was the brains behind Ralph's good looks. Ralph seemed to not have a mind of his own when it came to making decisions for the group of boys. The boys in his group seemed to not like his way of doing things so they explored their next option, Jack's group. Jack and his group are very violent, most of the boys only joined him when he mentioned hunting. Jack just by himself is very conniving, evil, and power hungry, but when you add Roger to the equation they are no longer evil, they are vile. Roger is Jack's henchman considering he likes to the dirty work.
Prior to all the chaos, it was evident that the boys had some kind of behavioral expectations. The choir boys were the most behaved before they took off their cloaks. The cloaks appeared to be the behavioral expectations from the English. When the choir boys took off their togs it was "as if they were released from class" (23). Almost immediately after they took off their togs they became wild animals. It showed their hidden emotions under adult supervision, what they are really like. When the choir boys took off their cloaks they became savages, only after he took off his cloak did Jack really become a hunter. Not only did their clothing represent their behavioral expectations, but several of the boys symbolized behavioral characteristics. "Simon represents intuition and feeling" (Bloom 65). Simon represent intuition and feeling because he learns from his feelings, rather than his experience. He is intuition because he was the one and only person who figure out that the beast could talk. He was the one who figured out that the beast was within all of them. While Simon was intuition, Piggy was "rationality and logic" (Bloom 65). He was the brains behind every rational idea. He thought of the conch shell and everything good. Piggy was the only boy who was able to think everything through. Everything went down hill after Roger killed rationality.
Several of the characters symbolized religious figures.
Simon is the Christ figure, he is the purest out of all the boys. He realized both good and evil, but mostly evil. He was after all, who realized that the beast was not an object created by man but it was the evil inside each and every one of them. Simon's death was very much like the death of Christ. When he died so did the truth, he never got the chance to share his findings with the other boys. Simon is "Christ" and the choir boys are the "apparent believers". The choir boys follow anything that is believable in their eyes. They shadow behind their leader just waiting for something to happen. Simon and the choir boys symbolize Christ and his apparent believers, while Ralph and Jack symbolize Cain and Abel. Ralph and Jack's story is similar to Cain and Abel's story. Cain was very envious of his brother, Abel. This jealousy soon turned into hatred, he had so much hatred toward his brother that he attacked, and killed his own brother. Jack and Ralph's feud is an reenactment of this story, instead they are not brothers. Jack and Cain's envy spawned from the fact that their rival was more in favor to who they were trying to appeal. Jack was furious when Ralph was chosen for leader. At first he let the situation go but throughout their journey of survival he started feeling threatened, he realized that Ralph, in some way, is a threat to his power. With evil thoughts forever going through his mind, he killed
Ralph.
During the course of this frightening story, there was many symbols dealing with the Island itself. Throughout the story the ocean has represented many things. In the beginning the ocean symbolized pleasure, celebration, relief, and reassurance. Moments after Ralph and Piggy discover each other on the island they find pleasure in being in the water. As the story went on the and the sun began to settle underneath the trees, the ocean took on a more evil approach to the boys. Once the sun sets the water is no longer bright and blue, but it is dark and luminous. It is then seen as a symbol of evil, driving the boys to savagery. The ocean wasn’t the only symbol that Golding used. The one and only conch shell was very symbolic. It not only represented power, it also symbolized government. The conch determined who had the power to speak, make decision, and who the leader was. Another important symbol was Piggy's glasses, which symbolized fire, which represents the boys' salvation. The glasses also represent all things good. When Piggy's glasses were lost all bad things seemed to happen. They had no fire to keep them warm and keep the littluns safe from the "beast".
In Lord of the Flies Golding reached his readers by usign the symbolism of War World II, government, and other worldly topics that he was sure that would pull the attention of his fans. Throughout the story Golding uses symbolism to give us insight of many worldly ideas and topcs.