Who is the Lord of the Flies?

In Lord of the Flies, Simon encounters two visions of the Beast. In chapter 8, Simon sees the white teeth, and the half dim eyes filled, “…with the infinite cynicism of adult life (Golding 137). The Beast is now introduced as the Lord of the Flies as he talks with Simon. He talks of how Simon is a “silly little boy” and how they others think he’s batty. The Beast questions Simon if he is afraid of him and reminds him that there isn’t anyone that could help him except himself, the Beast.

Simon tries to remind himself out loud that it is just a pig’s head on a stick. However, the beast retorts and mocks Simon for thinking that the beast was something he could hunt and kill. The beast gives a hint that he is god by telling him, “I’m the reason why it’s no go? Why things are the way they are?” As the encounter continues, Simon feels that the Beast is expanding and the beast’s voice is similar to a schoolmaster.

The beast warns Simon not to make him angry and promises to have some “fun” on the island. Simon soon feels himself lose consciousness and falls down. In chapter 9, a different image of the Beast occurs. Simon sees a corpse tangled in a parachute. Simon examines the white nasal bones, the teeth and the rotting color of the corpse.

He saw how the skin was poorly held together after most of the skin has been decayed.

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When the air blew, the Beast (the parachute) lifted and bowed and gave off a foul smell. He later frees the lines from the rocks and realizes an important detail: the beast is harmless. These two encounters give the reader insight on who the lord of the flies is. The readers learn that the lord of the flies is the Beast. This is accurate because the readers notice how the flies follow the dead carcass of the islands to feed off from it. The Lord of the flies also acts as the devil during this exchange. It’s vulgar and demeaning appearance are similar to how Christians describing the devil. Also, the lord of the flies taunting of Simon reflects how the Devil in Christianity would taunt people in order to convince them to sin. This scene even has sparked debate on whether Golding uses a biblical allusion in the first encounter of the lord of the flies from the Gospels of the New Testament when Jesus (Simon) confronts Satan (the lord of the flies) during his forty days in the wilderness. The readers notice how by the end of this chapter, the lord of the flies does keep his promise to Simon.

In the first encounter, the lord of the flies hinted that he was the one who was controlling things and warned him to not make him angry because they are going to have some “fun” on the island or else Ralph, Piggy, Roger, Maurice, and Jack would do him. However, in his second encounter with the beast, Simon realizes the beast never existed, it was just a parachute. But when Simon is about to tell the tribe the news that the beast does not exist, he was soon killed off by the tribe when they mistake him for the beast. The lord of the flies does keep his promise of having fun on the island by the tribe becoming savage and killing Simon. The lord of the flies also knew if Simon told the rest that the beast wasn’t real, he wouldn’t be in control anymore. So Ralph, Piggy, Jack, and the others “doing him” would keep the lord of the flies in charge and would have prevented Simon from telling the truth.