Chapter 8: Gift for the Darkness

Lord of the Flies

Chapter 8: Gift for the Darkness

Chapter Reflection

This chapter is probably the most gruesome in the book, and for my topic I chose Simon talking to the”Lord of the Flies.” This seemed like the most creepy and gruesome part of the chapter. I didn’t choose Jack running away, but I didn’t think that no one would want to overthrow Ralph, but I didn’t feel like I would have enough to talk about with that topic. I didn’t choose the hunters leaving the head as a gift for the beast because that didn’t seem as creepy and frightening as the pigs head talking to Simon.

If I were to put myself in Simon’s shoes for that part of the book, being under ten, growing up a peaceful, kind person, I think I would have acted the same way. Completely creped out that a disembodied head was talking to me about going back to my friends back at camp, and then later threatening me to leave, I would pass out without having Simon’s problem. Another reason why I didn’t choose Jack and the hunters slaughtering the pig was because Simon was there to watch the whole thing. They ruined his secret paradise with the abomination of the pigs head. Then he thinks that it is the lord of the flies, the dead pigs head on top of a wooden poll. The way that William Golding describes it is pretty gross, with the pig’s guts next to the head. The way he says the head calls him a silly little boy, and it’s grinning at him as it speaks, it just seems like a terrifying scene. Another part that I would worry about if I were Simon would be that what would happen to me if Jack or one of the other hunters saw me. What would they do? How would they react? They seemed pretty savage to me, so they probably would have abused him.

If Simon goes back to tell the boys what he saw, I wonder how they will respond. Will they not believe him? Or will he convince them that the pigs head is the lord of the flies? This was a pretty good example of Simon’s point about the boys being wrong about the beast. The disembodied head mentions to Simon that it is the beast, and I wonder if the boys will believe that the beast is something that cannot be killed, but it is the dark side of all of them. I wonder if the lord of the flies that Simon sees is his dark side. Maybe he is just hallucinating and the pig talking to him is just him going crazy on the island, and I wonder if the pigs head will have something to do with his death. Hopefully the truth will appear soon in a future chapter.