Imagine being stranded on an island all by yourself, except for those who survived the crash with you. No adults around, no rules, no nothing. This is what it was like in the novel Lord of the Flies. Throughout the novel the boys on the island are constantly faced with various fears. However, there is nothing on the island which they fear more than the beast. In The Lord of the Flies, the beast is extremely important. The beast represents the way the boys try to convince themselves that there is no evil inside of them by making something else seem to be the cause for all the chaos.
A dangerous company emerged on the very first day on the island; when a little boy with a mulberry-colored birthmark on his face informed everyone of a "beastie," which he apparently saw on the previous night. At the time, this was ignored by the older boys as something in his imagination, but even at that time it was obvious the younger children were troubled by the little boy's words. There was no physical appearance to the beast, because it was understood to be the over-active imagination of little children. In the beginning of the novel, all the chaos and terror is just starting. As the novel progresses it becomes evident that even the older boys had begun to wonder whether in fact some kind of beast did live on the island. There were many boys who now cried out in their sleep or had terrible nightmares because they were all fearful of a beast (The Beastie pg. 1).
The first signs of evil emerged when Jack and his hunters killed a pig and re-enacted the killing. The re-enactment occurs often during the story even though people are injured at each re-enactment. Another episode of evil occurred around the same time and was evident when the boys started to fight among themselves. Piggy and Ralph met Jack because he let the fire go out; Jack then fought Piggy and broke his glasses. Talk of beasts and ghosts emerged at a later meeting as well, and a lot of the boys agreed there was evil present on the island.
