What does Simons and Piggy’s Death reveal about the novel

In the novel Lord of the Flies (L. O. F) two tragic murders happen, the one of Simon and the one of Piggy. Both deaths happened in their own ways, but the main similarities between both deaths were brutality and savagery. Simons’ death was brutal, almost un-controllable. His death was slow and painful. Piggy’s death was disgusting and sudden. Simon was perceived as a very quiet boy, keeping himself to himself and staying in the comforts of nature.

Piggy on the other hand was a little more lively, verging of the end of annoying but he was also very intellectual, and thought things through carefully. I’ve been thinking” … “said Ralph sourly” From the first of the two quotes we can automatically see that Piggy thinks things through, if he had just blurted out what he wanted to say it would show that he had not put a lot of thought into what he was going to say but he said “I’ve been thinking” which shows that he was put some deep effort into thinking. When we look at the second quote “said Ralph sourly” we can see that Ralph is annoyed at Piggy and is almost scorning him for coming up with ideas that he did not think important.

What we can see from this is that Piggy’s thoughts were not valued and the other boys disliked him from the start and they did not seem to want to give him a fair chance before making final judgments. The other boys on the island never really liked Piggy, always being that little bit nastier to him, for his appearance and for his intellectual nature. We can see this from the quote “Piggy”, “Piggy”, “Oh Piggy”, “a storm of laugher arose … joined in” From this quote we can see how the other boys automatically judge by his appearance and seem to automatically gain a huge hatred toward him for his looks before they even get to know him.

When it says “a storm of … joined in” we can see how Golding shows that it is not just some of the boys who are being cruel to Piggy, but it is all of the boys showing a group hatred for him. The majority of the boys followed Jack, a violent and cruel person. However people like Ralph, Simon, Piggy, and Sam’n’Eric they followed each-other, there was no particular leader. It was Piggy however that started all the intellectual discussions and all the intellectual thoughts came from him. Although Simon tended to stay with Ralph and Piggy, he enjoyed staying with nature.

He spent much of his time wandering through the forest on his own, where Golding uses images of nature when describing Simon in the novel. “Flower and fruit … bees at pasture”. From this passage of describing the area around Simon we can see how Simon blends in beautifully with nature, describing it at its best as thought all of what is happening around him, is happening because of his presents.

When Simon went to reveal to the rest of the boys what the beast really was, he walked into the middle of Jack’s dance where the boys were wild, and un-controllable. Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood! ” This short chant by the boys tells us a lot, it shows us that the boys are very wild, following after Jack and they are not very aware of what they are saying, this shows us a group mentality where nothing is controllable and where there is or will be total chaos. Simon’s death was brutal and was plain murder. However after the boys realised what had happened they could not explain or confront what had happened.

This shows us how Simon was appreciated during life and during death as well because the boys did not just forget about what had happened and move on, rather they were trying to explain to them selves what had happened but trying to persuade themselves that it did not happen. “You were outside … what we- what they did”, “‘We left early’ said piggy quickly”. These two quotes show it all, the boys were at horror about what just happened, frightened that they would be found out by the others but knew that they had had some role in the killing of Simon.

They knew as we can from the first quote that they took part of the murder, but they try and persuade themselves that they played no role in the murder to try and prevent themselves from the agony of realization of what just happened. Piggy’s death on the other hand was disgusting, it was described in a very graphical way and it was sudden and fast, but worst of all it did not involve a group of people, there was only one person responsible for his death.

Piggy and Ralph were trying to be as usual civilised with the other boys, but Roger (Piggy’s killer) listened to the orders he had been given to by Jack and dropped the rock from the cliff. “Now jack was yelling to … weight on the lever”. This paragraph shows us a lot about group mentality, Roger who was acting as Jacks second hand man was driven by the noise and anxiety around him. Roger being a close follower to Jack had obviously been driven by Jack to enjoy such horrific things such as murder, but was unable to control himself in such a frantic situation, and this caused him to commit such a treacherous act such as murder.

His aim may have been to kill or it may have been to show Piggy and Ralph that he was in authority and they should be punished for challenging Jacks authority. “Which is better law … thing up”. Piggy as usual was trying to be intellectual with the other boys to try and make them see reason as to why they were doing wrong. This however makes Jack’s tribe much angrier as Piggy was questioning their authority. This would have caused a huge break out of anger between Jack’s tribe toward Piggy, incidentally resulting in his death

When Piggy dies, we do not see the boys trying to explain to themselves what had just happened, they accepted it and moved on. This shows a big difference between Piggy’s and Simons death, Simons death caused the boys to try and explain what had happened, showing that they cared about Simon, whereas with Piggy no one tried to explain to themselves what had happened showing that Piggy was not valued and was generally disliked by the other boys.

See, see, that’s what I meant … I’m chief”. What this short phrase shows us is that there was a sudden moment of shock where Jack tells everyone that he will do evil and he will kill anyone who questions his authority, but after he says this, everything goes back to normal and Piggy is given a second thought by anyone showing their hatred toward him even during death.

What we can see from Piggy’s and Simon’s death is that when there are no rules, there is chaos, when there is fear there is panic and when there is hatred there is death. Golding is trying to express the island as a microcosm of the world, and showing us that however young or old we are, however kind or cruel people are, evil exists within all.