The novel "Lord of the Flies," by William Golding, depicts an adventurous story of boys stranded on a desert island fending for themselves and trying to maintain a sense of civilization in hopes of being rescued quickly. As the boys try to adapt to the island, fear quickly settles in for the littluns believe to have seen a beast. The beast becomes a major obstacle to maintaining civilization of morals and rules. The beast also invokes a mob mentality causing the boys to act savagely. While Simon attempts to be the pure, Christ-like figure of the group, he tragically fails due to the darkness that exists within mankind. .
Simon is depicted as a compassionate, wise, mature, visionary, prophetic character with a will of goodness to help the other boys. His character represents Jesus as he portrays natural goodness and purity through his actions. In the jungle, the virtuous boy helps the littluns find food, which he "found for them the fruit they could not reach, pulled [it] off the choicest from up in the foliage [and] passed them back down to the endless, outstretched hands" (Golding 56). His good deeds show how different he is from the others through his nature of civility and how kind hearted he is by not turning into a primitive savage. Simon is the first one to realize the truth about the beast and how it is a concept of darkness that comes from within the boys, rather than a physical creature. Attempting to be insightful, the virtuous young in suggests to the others that the beast could "maybe [be] only [them]" (Golding 89). Simon points out the possibility of the boys being the beast, meaning that the beast is the darkness that is inside each and every human being. After the chaste civilian gets stabbed to death by the other boys acting outwardly savage, Simon's blood gets washed away, representing the blood of Christ that has been shed and made pure. As Simon's dead body floats towards the beach, the water purifyingly "[touches] the first of the stains that seeped from the broken body and the creatures made a moving patch of light as they gathered at the edge" (Golding 154).
