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Does anyone know what the "Beast" symbolizes?

Damn, just three weeks ago i cleared out the folder with all my english papers from the last few years in it... now i'll have to try from memory. Been about a year since i read it, so dunno if i'm right. I think the beast was representing fear of the unkown and supersticion.

Ay whats this?

He's referring to the novel, @Craig, which is still taught in some schools. Damn fine book, if rather...stark.

Ow whats it about?

The beast represents the fears, and irrationality of the boys while on the island. It also represents a common enemy, which allows to work together (however briefly)

Originally posted by craig:
<STRONG>Ow whats it about?</STRONG>

It's a harsh lesson on why you should never leave your kids alone without a babysitter.

Seriously, William Golding's Lord of the Flies is a harrowing tale about how ordinary kids revert to brutality when they are stranded on a deserted island. The story is perhaps less poignant today than it once was, since now events take place all the time on our city streets that are more disturbing than anything the kids do to each other on Golding's island.

I think it's quite as effective as it ever was, because it was never meant to be taken as a piece of realistic literature. It's a fable (pardon the pun) of how humankind, offered a chance to restart afresh (boys beginning a new society on a deserted island), still manages to dredge up all that is bad in itself and recreate hell on earth.

Thank you all very much.

IMHO The whole issue about this book evolved around children, still learning the rules of society, suddenly being forced to reconsider and reform rules based on their limited experience of what they have learned is right and wrong. To have to reform a society based on a need to survive, without the supervision and guidance of adults, without the comfort of someone else making decisions for them. Putting food on their table, refereeing arguements and ego trips.

Suddenly their survival is based on their instincts, that recognises a need for some kind of basic formal social structure, the necessity to form some kind of social rules that is recognised. At the same time appreciation is given to the fact that they had never given prior consideration to the importance of form.

The beast is what they do not know.

@Kayless - LMAO!! but true...kids left to their own devices usually turn to brutal instinct.

I enjoyed this book

I'm just glad it didn't go as far as to see what they would do when ful of sexual angst.... That could've gotten ugly... Thankfully, they weren't stranded with a big black guy named "Bubba"...

@Aegis, I'm sure somebody will do that kind of a television show, if it hasn't been done already.

A prison verion of survivor.... Be the last inmate to meet Bubba... and you win your freedom...

I was ages ago I read Lord of the flies, but I perceived it as a story about how the shell of "civilisation" wears off when the children are left to their own devices and no other pressure from a society is regulating their behaviour. The Beast I viewed as humankinds fear of the unknown.

Originally posted by Yshania:
<STRONG>but true...kids left to their own devices usually turn to brutal instinct.
</STRONG>

This is sadly true, I think... I belong to those who think moral develops from empathy and understanding of long term consequences, something that is of course less present the younger we are.

What i also remember - man this takes me back like 7 years and heck i am 19!
What i also remember is that the younger ones start the issue of the beast, overactive imagination or what?
Also the lack of laws is another thing.
Ralph i think that was the guy with the conch, was defacto leader, but nobody listened to him as he had no leverage over the other kids esp. Jack - the psychopath.
I as a poli sci student saw that the leader always needed, in some way to force the kids do what was good for them.
Basic common sense and good of the group didn't cut it after along time.

Second intelligence is not as important as brute strenght and being in shape as can been seen by the treatment of piggy.
That was sad, esp. if it still continues.

[ 11-25-2001: Message edited by: Fas ]

Posted by CE -

This is sadly true, I think... I belong to those who think moral develops from empathy and understanding of long term consequences, something that is of course less present the younger we are.

I agree - and empathy is not something the human being is born knowing.

Posted by Fas -

man this takes me back like 7 years and heck i am 19!

LOL! - well I read it about 20 years ago

Make sure you stay zipped, Omar is around.

Yeah... even Omar can find a way to turn this book into something it's not.... Unless he's still afraid of literature...

Originally posted by Yshania:
<STRONG>LOL! - well I read it about 20 years ago </STRONG>

Me too The reason I remember it fairly well is because it was one of the very first novels I read in English!

Posted by CE -

Me too The reason I remember it fairly well is because it was one of the very first novels I read in English!

I read it at two speeds. We were studying it in literacy but I was enjoying it so much I took it home and read ahead of myself, then had to come back to the relevant chapters we were discussing in class