Dbq Lord Of The Flies Beast Analysis

Hasn’t everyone wondered if the monsters in your closet or under your bed were real? In the Lord of the Flies, set in the near future, six young boys are left alone on an unnamed island. They are left alone with their imaginations that have created a “Beast”. In Lord of the Flies, what is the “Beast”? Soon the reader will realize that the symbolization of the beast changes. In document A and B, the “Beast” symbolizes fear. According to Claire Rosenfield in document A, the boys are horrified on the island without their “comforting mothers” and due to that they “externalize these fears into the figure of a ‘beast’”. Additionally, in document B, the boy with the mulberry birthmark claims to have seen the “beast”, “A snake-thing. Ever so big. He saw it.”. The boy then says that, “...in the morning it turned into them things like ropes in the trees and hung in the branches.” While these boys are left alone on this
Simon, in document E, is trying to figure out what exactly the beast is, “Then he sets off, weak and staggering, to tell the other boys that the beast is human.” When he goes to tell the boys, he is mistaken for the best. The boys then brutally kill him, “There are no words, and no movements but the tearing of teeth and claws.” Stated in document F. As Simon tries to tell the boys that the beast is human, he instead gets mistaken for the beast and gets murdered by the true, human beast. The human boys with “teeth and claws” symbolize the savagery of human nature in the form of the “beast”.
As the symbolism of the “beast” in Lord of the Flies changes from fear, to war then to the savagery of human nature, in the end they all come together and connect. While the boys are fearful of being alone, it’s the fear of others that lead to war. War isn’t started without the savagery of human nature. So in the end we find that the figure of the “beast” is more than just one thing and is all around