Modern texts · GCSE English Literature
Simon in Lord of the Flies
GCSE Simon character analysis: “maybe it’s only us”, the Lord of the Flies dialogue, Christ-like imagery, and why the visionary has to die in the dance.
Simon is the only boy who walks towards the beast instead of inventing a hunt for it — and the tribe kills the messenger.
The important bits
What you need to know
- 1
He is Golding’s visionary: epileptic, solitary, kind to littluns, at home in the forest the others fear.
- 2
“Maybe there is a beast… maybe it’s only us” is the novel’s thesis spoken too early for anyone to bear.
- 3
The Lord of the Flies scene is interior and theological: evil talks, and it claims to be “part of you”.
- 4
He discovers the dead parachutist — the “beast” is a fallen adult, war debris, not a monster. Truth is a body on a hill.
- 5
His death is ritual, not accident: rain, chant, circle, mistaken identity. Golding stages a mob that still calls it defence.
- 6
Christ-like readings are useful if you attach them to method — feeding fruit, going into the dark, body carried by the tide — not if you only name “Jesus”.
- 7
Ralph and Piggy’s later denial (“we left early”) shows shame. Simon’s murder implicates the civilised boys too.
- 8
Write him as knowledge the plot cannot allow to live. A prophet without an army is Golding’s pessimism in one character.
Quotations worth analysing
Short evidence. Real method.
“Maybe there is a beast… maybe it’s only us.”
The clearest moral in the book, offered as a hesitant maybe. The others cannot hunt a beast that is their own fear and appetite, so they shut him down.
“Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill! … You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you?”
The pig’s head states Golding’s argument. Hunting is a category error: you cannot spear original sin. The question mark is a taunt at Simon’s insight.
“You’ll get back to where you came from.”
A quiet prophecy of rescue that excludes himself. Golding gives the mystic a knowledge of plot the elected chief does not have — and then kills him before the cruiser comes.
Go deeper
Why can the others not hear Simon?
Simon speaks a truth that would sack every leader on the island. If the beast is only us, Ralph’s meetings cannot vote it away, Jack cannot sell protection, and Piggy’s “scientific” claws-and-teeth speech is incomplete. Golding makes him hesitant, odd, sometimes inaudible in the assembly so that insight looks socially weak. That is method: the group prefers a monster it can spear. When you write, contrast the public “maybe it’s only us” with the private pig’s-head vision. One is a political sentence; the other is theology. Context about Golding’s view of original sin after world war should change how you read the dance: they are not “being silly”. They are acting a religion of fear, and the visionary is the sacrifice.
Go deeper
The parachutist and the death — truth as a body
Simon does the empirical work nobody else will do: he climbs, looks, and finds a dead soldier snagged in the trees. The beast is adult war fallen onto a children’s island. That discovery should end the hunt. Instead the boys, whipped by storm and chant, take Simon himself for the beast and tear him. Structure is cruel on purpose: the one who knows dies as he tries to tell them. Analyse weather, darkness and the ritual language of “Kill the beast” as stage-management of a mob. Afterwards the sea’s “brightness” around the body is lyrical on purpose — Golding will not let the murder look like a playground accident. Beauty after brutality is an accusation.
Go deeper
How far should I push the Christ reading?
It is on the page: fruit for those who cannot reach, a solitary place of prayer, a confrontation with evil, a death by a crowd, a body that seems to leave in light. Use those echoes as method, then return to Golding’s pessimism. This Christ does not rise to save the others; Ralph still hunts and is hunted; the officer still represents adult slaughter. The point is not that Simon “is” Jesus in a puzzle. The point is that a figure of insight and kindness is not enough, in this novel, to redeem the group. A sophisticated GCSE paragraph can say the allegory is both invited and limited. Do not spend the essay proving the label. Spend it on why the tribe needs him dead.
See the idea in action
Question: How does Golding present Simon as different from the other boys? Opening: “Golding presents Simon as the island’s unbearable knowledge: he names the beast as ‘only us’, hears it confess it is ‘part of you’, and is killed in the ritual that proves him right.” Then: assembly; Lord of the Flies; parachutist; dance; tide.
Exam technique
Turn knowledge into marks
Never write Simon as only “nice”. Examiners want the visionary function — what he knows, how Golding shows it, why the plot executes him.
Common mistakes
Do not give these marks away
- 01
Calling him Jesus and stopping, with no pig’s head, parachutist or dance.
- 02
Treating his death as a mix-up in the dark rather than a staged ritual.
- 03
Forgetting Ralph and Piggy’s guilt afterwards — the “civilised” are in the circle too.
What does Simon understand about the beast that the others cannot accept?
AThat it is inside the boys, not a monster they can hunt
BThat Ralph invented it to stay chief
CThat it is a naval officer in disguise
Show the answer
That it is inside the boys, not a monster they can hunt. “Maybe it’s only us” and the Lord of the Flies’ “I’m part of you” are the novel’s thesis. The hunt is a refusal of that knowledge.
Quick questions
If this is the bit you searched
Is Simon a Christ figure in Lord of the Flies?
Golding invites the parallel through kindness, prophecy, a confrontation with evil and a sacrificial death. Use the imagery, then say this saviour does not redeem the island.
What is the Lord of the Flies in the Simon scene?
A pig’s head on a stick — Jack’s offering — and a voice of inner evil. Treat it as symbol and as psychological vision, not as a literal talking ghost unless you argue that reading.
Why do they kill Simon?
Storm, darkness, chant, and a need to attack something. Golding makes it group psychology: fear plus ritual plus mistaken identity. It is still murder.
Should I mention the parachutist in a Simon essay?
Yes. It is his proof that the beast is dead adult war. Killing him as he brings that news is the plot’s cruellest irony.