Chapters 7-9: Savagery & Simon's Death
Chapter 7: Shadows & Tall Trees
On the expedition to find the beast, the boys encounter a boar. Ralph jabs it with a spear and feels a sudden rush of excitement: “Ralph was full of fright and apprehension and pride.” This is significant because even Ralph — the novel’s representative of civilisation — experiences the thrill of violence. Golding shows that the desire to hunt and hurt is not unique to Jack; it exists in everyone.
After the hunt, the boys re-enact the kill as a game, chanting and dancing around Robert, who plays the pig. The game turns violent — Robert is hurt and terrified. Golding writes: “The desire to squeeze and hurt was over-mastering.” This re-enactment foreshadows Simon’s death: the boys are practising murder without realising it.
Ralph’s excitement during the hunt proves Golding’s point that savagery is not limited to “bad” characters like Jack. Even the novel’s moral leader feels the primal thrill of violence. This supports Golding’s thesis that evil is innate in all humans.
Chapter 8: Gift for the Darkness
Jack challenges Ralph’s leadership openly, calling a vote to remove him. When nobody raises a hand, Jack is humiliated and leaves: “I’m not going to play any longer. Not with you.” This childish language is deliberate — Golding reminds us these are boys, not adults, even as their actions become increasingly savage. Jack starts his own tribe at Castle Rock, and gradually most of the boys defect to join him, lured by the promise of meat, excitement, and protection from the beast.
Jack’s hunters kill a sow (a mother pig nursing her piglets). The killing is described in sexually violent language: the hunters are “wedded to her in lust”, and Robert crows that Roger’s spear went “right up her ass.” Golding makes the violence gratuitous and disturbing to show that the hunters are no longer killing for food — they are killing for pleasure and dominance. They mount the sow’s head on a sharpened stick as an offering to the beast. This is the Lord of the Flies.
Simon, hidden in the jungle, watches the hunters leave and then confronts the pig’s head. In a hallucinatory episode (possibly triggered by epilepsy), the Lord of the Flies “speaks” to him: “Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill! … You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you. Close, close, close! I’m the reason why it’s no go? Why things are what they are?”
This is the novel’s philosophical climax. The beast is not external — it is the evil inside every human being. The pig’s head, swarming with flies, becomes a physical manifestation of that inner evil. The title “Lord of the Flies” translates to Beelzebub (the Devil), reinforcing the connection between the beast and the Christian concept of sin. Simon alone understands this truth.
Chapter 9: A View to a Death
Simon climbs the mountain and discovers that the “beast” is actually the dead parachutist — a harmless corpse tangled in its parachute lines. He frees it from the rocks and stumbles back down to tell the others. But the boys are in the middle of a frenzied feast and ritual dance, chanting “Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!”
When Simon staggers out of the forest, the boys mistake him for the beast and attack. In a frenzy of collective violence, they beat him to death with their bare hands and teeth. Golding writes: “There were no words, and no movements but the tearing of teeth and claws.” The language is deliberately animalistic — the boys have become the beasts they feared.
Simon’s death is the novel’s moral catastrophe. The one person who knew the truth is killed by the very people he was trying to save. Golding draws deliberate parallels with Christ: Simon is a prophet who discovers the truth, tries to deliver his message, and is murdered by the community. His body is carried out to sea by the tide in a passage of extraordinary beauty.
After the murder, Golding describes Simon’s body being carried out to sea in luminous, almost spiritual language: “Somewhere over the darkened curve of the world the sun and moon were pulling, and the film of water on the earth planet was held, bulging slightly on one side while the solid core turned. The great wave of the tide moved farther along the island and the water lifted. Softly, surrounded by a fringe of inquisitive bright creatures, itself a silver shape beneath the steadfast constellations, Simon’s dead body moved out toward the open sea.”
This cosmic, transcendent description contrasts sharply with the brutal violence of his death. The juxtaposition between the boys’ savagery and nature’s serene beauty elevates Simon to an almost sacred figure. Golding implies that while humanity destroys its best members, the natural world honours them.
Both Ralph and Piggy participated in Simon’s death. Ralph later admits “That was murder” while Piggy tries to rationalise it as an accident. This difference is important: Ralph confronts the horror of what he has done, while Piggy uses rationalisation to protect himself. Golding shows that even the “good” characters are complicit in the savagery.