Key Quote
“"Maybe there is a beast… maybe it's only us"”
Simon · Chapter 5
Focus: “only us”
Simon's quiet, devastating insight — that the 'beast' the boys fear is not an external creature but the darkness within themselves — is the novel's philosophical core, rejected by the other boys but proven true by the novel's events.
Technique 1 — ELLIPSIS / EPISTEMIC MODALITY
The ellipsis (…) creates a pause — a moment of hesitation before the devastating conclusion. Simon does not rush to his insight but approaches it tentatively, as if the truth is too frightening to state directly. The epistemic modal 'maybe' — repeated twice — expresses uncertainty, but the uncertainty is social rather than intellectual: Simon KNOWS the beast is internal but understands that saying so will be rejected. His tentativeness is not ignorance but wisdom — the wisdom to know that truth, when unwelcome, must be spoken carefully.
The pronoun shift from 'it' (the beast — external, objective) to 'us' (internal, subjective) is the sentence's crucial turn. 'It' can be hunted, killed, avoided; 'us' cannot. By replacing 'it' with 'us,' Simon eliminates the possibility of escape: if the beast is us, there is nowhere to run. The pronoun shift transforms an external threat into an internal condition.
Key Words
RAD — PROGRESS
Simon alone progresses toward genuine understanding — he is the only boy who moves from fear to insight, from superstition to philosophy. While the other boys regress into savagery, Simon progresses toward the novel's deepest truth. But his progress is fatal: the group punishes him for his insight by killing him. Golding suggests that moral progress is dangerous — those who see truth most clearly are often destroyed by those who cannot bear to hear it.
Key Words
Technique 2 — IRONIC UNDERSTATEMENT — 'ONLY'
The word 'only' is devastatingly understated: 'only us' makes the most terrifying revelation sound small and dismissible. The understatement is ironic because the truth Simon reveals is the BIGGEST truth in the novel — yet he presents it in the smallest possible word. This contrast between the enormity of the insight and the modesty of its expression captures Simon's character: he understands the most but claims the least.
Simon's statement is rejected by the assembly: the boys cannot accept that they ARE the beast. Golding dramatises the psychological mechanism of projection — the unconscious displacement of unacceptable qualities onto an external 'other.' The boys need the beast to be OUT THERE because admitting it is IN THEM would require confronting their own capacity for evil.
Key Words
Context (AO3)
POST-WAR DISILLUSION
Published in 1954, nine years after WWII and the Holocaust, Golding's novel reflects profound disillusion with the idea of human goodness. If civilised Europeans could perpetrate genocide, the 'beast' was clearly not an aberration but a permanent feature of human nature.
ORIGINAL SIN
Golding, a devout Christian, draws on the doctrine of Original Sin — the belief that all humans are born with an inherent tendency toward evil. Simon's insight aligns with this theology: the beast is not created by circumstances but is intrinsic to human nature.
Key Words
WOW — THE SHADOW (Jung)
Carl Jung's concept of the Shadow — the unconscious, repressed part of the personality containing everything the conscious self refuses to acknowledge — is directly dramatised by Golding. The beast IS the boys' collective Shadow: the aggression, cruelty, and savagery they refuse to see in themselves but which emerges in their behaviour. Jung argued that the Shadow cannot be destroyed — only acknowledged and integrated. Denying the Shadow's existence (as the boys do) causes it to erupt in uncontrolled, destructive forms: exactly what happens on the island. Simon functions as the Jungian individuation figure — the person who confronts the Shadow directly (his encounter with the Lord of the Flies) and achieves integration. But his integration is destroyed by the group's refusal to do the same work: they kill Simon rather than face what he has understood. Jung would read the novel as a failed individuation narrative: the collective Shadow, denied and projected, consumes the group.
Key Words