Lord of the Flies: Simon and Sigmund by Claire Rosenfield
The taboo, according to Freud, is “a very primitive rapture of reenactment or perhaps terrorized by fear and night
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. Now
every 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
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.”
Simon’s 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
1
Historically, 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.
2
In 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.”
reaches camp, Simon, we are told, can picture only “a intuition of the discovery of the pilot’s corpse. Suddenly Golding

human at once heroic and sick.”3 During the day employs a startling image, “Simon was inside the mouth. He fell

preceding his death, he walks vaguely away and stumbles down and lost consciousness.” Literally, this image presents the

on the pig’s head left in the sand in order to appease the hallucination of a sensitive child about to lose control of his

demonic forces they imagine. Shaman-like,4 he holds a rational facilities. Metaphorically, it suggests the ritual quest in

silent colloquy5 with it, a severed head covered with which the hero is swallowed by a serpent or dragon or beast

innumerable flies. It is itself the titled Lord of the Flies, a whose belly is the underworld, undergoes a symbolic death in

name applied to the biblical demon Beelzebub. From it he order to gain the elixir to revitalize his stricken society, and

learns that it is the Beast, and the Beast cannot be hunted returns with his knowledge to the timed world as a redeemer.

because it is within. Simon feels the advent of one of his Psychologically, this narrative pattern is a figure of speech

fits and imagines the head expanding, an anticipation or connoting the annihilation of the ego,6 an internal journey

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

3
This is an apt description of the human soul as portrayed
in the entire book, and in the words of Simon, “maybe it’s
the unconsciousness. When Simon wakes, he realizes that he
only us.” But even Piggy misses the point and responds to must confront the beast on the mountain because “what else is
Simon with derision: “Nuts!” he says. This clearly
there to do?” He is relieved of “that dreadful feeling of the
demonstrates Piggy’s most serious flaw: he can only deal
with facts; he has none of the imaginative insight that pressure of personality” which had oppressed him earlier. When
Simon has. he discovers the hanging corpse, he first frees it in compassion
4
A shaman is a member of certain tribal societies who acts
although it is rotting and surrounded by flies, and then staggers
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. 6
Ego, according to Freud, is that part of the psyche that is
5
A colloquy is a conversation, especially a formal one. It conscious, most directly controls thought and behaviour, and is
also means “a written dialogue.” most aware of external reality.
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 halo
of 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 years study as he was not a very good student, and his Latin was terrible.
“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 all
the 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 Simon’s
going into the bushes. But go he does and prays, as the child
Jean Vianney9 would go, and some other saints—though 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 several
Assigned to the parish of Ars, a tiny village near Lyons, which suffered from
very lax attendance; he began visiting his parishioners, especially the sick and
poor. Spent days in prayer, doing penance for his parishioners. Gifted with
discernment of spirits, prophecy, hidden knowledge. Tormented by evil spirits,
especially when he tried to get his 2-3 hours of sleep each night. Thousands
came 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
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 pig’s

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

concentration that the pig’s head knew Simon was there.

In fact, the pig’s head delivered something very like a

sermon to the boy; the pig’s head spoke. I know because

I heard it.

Dardilly, Lyons, France Died 4 August 1859