Golding’s representation of the deaths of Simon and Piggy Essay

How is language used to describe events? Discuss the link between these sections and characterisation of the two boys earlier in the novel. From the beginning the reader can tell that Simon and Piggy are set apart from the rest of the boys. Both their psychical and mental attitude to living on the island is different to the other boys on the island. It is ironic that all the children will physical defects die. The first death is of the littelun with the birthmark. Later Simon and Piggy die, all three of these characters have defects, Simon is epileptic and Piggy is asthmatic, overweight and wears glasses. This makes the characters seem unique or it could also simply mean that they were not strong enough to survive on the island. However their characters make them see more special rather than weak. It is also ironic that Piggy, the one with the most deficiencies dies the most violently. The first time we meet Simon, he is in his choir robes. He faints on the beach because of the heat and Jack mocks him. We know he is delicate. He has epilepsy. We find out about Simon’s appearance, which also highlights Simon’s characteristics: â€Å"He was a skinny, vivid little boy, with a glance coming up from under a hut of straight hair that hung down, black and course† He is helpful and works for the good of others; he is the only one to stick with Ralph to make the shelters. He is kind to the littluns and finds fruit for them. The others recognise he is ‘different’ to them in some way. Ralph frowned. ‘He’s queer. He’s funny.’ Piggy says He’s cracked. He has a secret place in a clearing full of flowers and butterflies and is sufficiently at one with the jungle to walk in it alone at night. He is at one with nature and he has no fear. He seems able to prophesy – he is the first to suggest as if it wasn’t a good island and he tells Ralph, You’ll get back to where you came from. He is the most perceptive about the beast. He says maybe there is a beast: â€Å"What I mean is†¦ maybe it’s only us†. He is the only one to see that the problems on the island stem from the boys’ relationships with each other, not from an outside force. Yet no understands what he’s trying to say. When the Lord of the Flies ‘speaks’ to him this idea is reiterated: the voice in Simon’s head says: â€Å"Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill!†¦ You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you?† He is killed just as he is about to reveal the truth. It is ironic that he is the only one who finds out that the ‘beast’ was a dead parachutist, but is denied passing on the message because the groups of boys think, in their frenzy, he is the beast. Nature cares for Simon’s body in death just as it had in life. â€Å"The waves turned the corpse gently in the water. †¦ Softly, surrounded by a fringe of bright inquisitive creatures, itself a silver shape beneath the steadfast constellations, Simon’s dead body moved out towards the open sea.† â€Å"Piggy was an outsider, not only by accent, which did not matter, but by fat, and ass-mar, and specs, and a certain disinclination to manual labour.† Piggy has physical disadvantages because he is fat and asthmatic and is short sighted. Without his glasses, everything becomes a blur. He is very intelligent – in Chp.1 it is his idea to make a list of names and it is he who realises that no adult knows the boys are on the island. Later he suggests making sundial and hats. Ralph recognises Piggy could think†¦ Piggy, for all his ludicrous body, had brains. However, he does not speak as grammatically accurately as the others: â€Å"How can you expect to be rescues if you don’t put first things first and act proper.† Perhaps this is to suggest he wasn’t as well educated as the others and that he is not from the right class of people to be a successful leader: at the time the novel was written, most power was still in the hands of the middle and upper classes. He is embarrassed by his nickname, and he behaves with dignity when Ralph betrays the name to the others. We never know his real name. He is kind and considerate to the littluns like Simon. He helps the boy with the birthmark talk about the ‘snake-thing’ and helps Percival talk about the beast. He is later often left to care for them when the others are exploring and hunting. He has the most mature attitude of any boy on the island. He scornfully sees the other boys: â€Å"Acting like a crowd of kids†. Piggy is pragmatic. When Simon dies, Piggy tries to convince Ralph there was nothing they could have done: â€Å"It was an accident†¦ and that’s that.† Like Ralph, he believes in civilised values and clings to what creates order: â€Å"I just take the conch to say this. I can’t see no more and I got to get my glasses back.† He shouts, â€Å"I got the conch† when they go to the fort to confront Jack, to try to show Jack that he has a right to be heard. Piggy and the conch are destroyed together by the rock Roger levers. Thus, intelligence and the symbol of authority are ‘dead’, so we know that there is nothing left to stop Jack gaining full control. At the end, Ralph mourns the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy. Simon and Piggy’s deaths have a lot to do with their personalities and their life on the island. Simon’s death is caused by the other boys getting out of control, ironically it’s the first time that Simon tries to communicate properly with the group but he still isn’t able to. Simon and Piggy’s death are very different. Simon, is killed as part of a ritual that the boys create in their frenzied dance, it’s not premeditated or planned in any way, but is committed as a group act when all the boys are in a weird sort of hypnotic state, in doing their dance, they have abandoned all sense of being civilised and human, and just gone along with their dark side. As Simon was closest to nature he is lucky enough to be spiritually taken away by the sea. At least before he dies he discovers the truth behind the island. With the death of Simon the boys are one step nearer to barbarity. The murder of Simon is particularly horrific because it involves all the other boys – they get caught up in the frenzied chant: â€Å"The crowd †¦ leapt onto the beast, screamed, struck, bit, tore.† Also, even Piggy and Ralph join in, so Golding is showing that the possibility of doing wrong when in a mob situation is not confined to the bad characters. It also helps continue the religious allegory in the book. Simon is often associated with Christ or a saint. He has come down from the mountain to bring good news, that they have nothing to fear. Like Christ and so many saints, though, he is not thanked or welcomed but killed for trying to help. Even though Simon’s death was quite brutal his body is carried away in a very spiritual and he appears like an angel: ‘Simon’s coarse hair with brightness’ Golding makes out that Simon is an angel and has a halo around his head. This again contributes to the religious allegory in the book. The world is also mentioned making Simon’s death seem something that has affected the whole world and not just something that can be limited to a group of savages. From the beginning of the chapter you can sense the atmosphere because the weather shows how the boys are feeling. The boys are ‘flinching’ and the term ‘stroke’ is used which shows that something violent is about to happens. The rain starts of very light but as they are killing Simon a storm breaks out signifying that they are releasing their anger. In a way Simon deserved his special ending because of the way he was being portrayed as the beast and the fact that they were calling Simon ‘it’. Simon’s death brings the chapter to a nice end and brings some significance to his death. Where as with Piggy his death is very short and is in the middle of the chapter and then pushed aside and then the rest of the story carries on without care. Piggy’s death is him fighting for what is right, but unfortunately he’s fighting savagery not rational human beings any more. The choir has turned into a bunch of painted ‘hunters’ who do exactly what Jack tells them. It is Roger who kills Piggy who is described as a ‘bag of fat’; just before the rock actually hits Piggy, though, Golding says he is ‘holding out the talisman, the fragile, shining beauty †¦ the shell’. This shows that Piggy is the guardian of the thing that the conch stands for, right, justice, freedom of speech and order. The actual description of Piggy’s head smashing on the square red rock is rather grotesque and gruesome and is seen very much as a child would describe it. His legs and arms twitch ‘like a pig’s after it has been killed.’ It is ironic that the conch should almost ‘die’ the same time that Piggy does. At this point all sense of control and civilised behavi our has been shattered. Piggy is killed partly because Roger realises he can hurt somebody; can exercise power over another living creature, without being punished for it. At the start of the novel Roger is throwing stones at some of the little ones. At that point he is still too conditioned by his past to actually throw to hit the children. By the end the restraints of civilisation have disappeared and he feels free to do as he likes. Piggy’s death is described in a child like manner where Golding uses words such as ‘stuff’ and this is ironic because Piggy was the most adult like on the island. Unlike Simon deaths Piggy’s is quick and graphical. Simon and Piggy’s death can also be similar because both of them didn’t have time to say what they wanted to: ‘Piggy, saying nothing, with no time for event a grunt†¦Ã¢â‚¬â„¢ Piggy tries to get the message across that the conch is still important and that rules are still important. Simon wanted to tell the truth about the beast about how they didn’t need to be scared anymore. Both of these were vital messages that could have saved the boys from their savage behavior and could have saved the lives of Simon and Piggy. The difference between Simon and Piggy’s death is that Simon’s death was seen as an accident that the whole group was responsible for whereas Piggy’s death was caused on purpose and was caused by one singled person, therefore making it seem worse out of the two.