A plane containing a group of young British schoolboys crashes onto a deserted island.
At first, all is well and peaceful, but then the boys start believing in a beastie. They have nightmares and they see beasties in the dark. During the course of this essay, I will take you through the process of understanding how the fear in mankind's heart can lead you to believe in a terrifying, yet imaginary, beastie.The littluns that survived the crash begin to have nightmares.
They dream of big, scary beasties in their sleep. Since there are no adult figures on the island, there is no one to reassure them that there is no beastie. No one's there to tell them that the monster under their bed was just their pet cat, or that the monster from the closet was just a bunch of dirty clothes sagging on their chair. Parents/ adults provide a feeling of security and familiarity. They can protect and comfort you when you are frightened.
First of all, a young boy, about six years old, with a mulberry-coloured birthmark on a side of his face, comes forth and tells the boys about his nightmare. We do not learn his name in the story and therefore he is just referred to as the "boy with the mulberry-coloured mark". He comes forward and claims that he saw a monster, which he calls a "beastie", that was ever so big. He was out in the woods and the beastie came out in the dark and attempted to eat him. He claims that in the morning, it turns into the creepers hanging from the branches.
He is met with mockery and uncertainty from the other boys. They confront him with laughter instead of reassurance, creating more fear and anxiety in the boy. To make matters worse, Jack states: "Ralph is right of course. There isn't a snake-thing. But if there was a snake we'd hunt it and kill it.
We're going to hunt pigs and get meat for everybody. And we'll look for the snake too."(36) Jack makes the mistake of considering what would happen if there were to be a beast. He should have just stopped at "There is no beast." instead of building up the uncertainty in minds and hearts of the boys.This is all forgotten when Ralph suggests making a fire.
They rush up and create an outrageously big fire that starts burning down the forest. In all the chaos of people gathering wood and lighting the fire, the boy with the mulberry-coloured mark is lost and never seen again. The littluns believe he got eaten by the beast, but a few older boys know that he had died in the fire. As the fire rages on, it explodes a tree and tall swathes of creepers fly into view The littluns think they're snakes and call out: "Snakes! Snakes! Look at the snakes!" (48) This event characterizes their growing fear.Secondly, as the chapters progress, the fear of beasts continues to grow.
Ralph notices: "They talk and scream. The littluns. Even some of the others. As if it wasn't a good island." Jack replies that when he is hunting in the forest alone, he can feel a presence- as if he's being hunted.
One boy, Percival Wemys Madison, comes forward and says that he dreamed the beast was coming out of the sea. The rest of the boys fear and one boy, Maurices, claims that his daddy said they haven't found all the animals in the sea yet, and that there are squids that are hundreds of meters long that eats whales whole. This leads to a talk about ghosts.Next, Sam'n'Eric, two twins, were guarding the fire. They fell asleep during their duty and when they woke up, it was dark and the fire had burnt out. Sam'n'Eric go and light the fire see "the beast".
They run to Ralph and he calls an assembly. Sam'n'Eric say that they saw the beast. It was furry, had wings, eyes, teeth, claws, and it chased them, slinking through the trees. The boys see Eric's face striped with scars (from where bushes had torn him) and are horrified. All of this, in reality, was just the sign Ralph had wished for from the grown-up world. Two planes had battled while the children were sound asleep and had dropped a parachutist (which had probably died from the impact to the island.
) The wind pulled him up the mountain and tangled him in the trees near the fire.The last step in believing in a beast is when Sam'n'Eric's confrontation with the beast, leads to a beast hunt. Jack and Ralph climb up the mountain and see the "beast" in the dark, but they don't stay long enough to discover it's actually only a dead parachutist. They rush back to camp and Ralph claims that the beast had teeth and big black eyes. "I don't think we'd ever fight a thing that size, honestly, you know. We'd talk but we wouldn't fight a tiger.
We'd hide. Even Jack'ud hide." (140) says Ralph. "Hunting," adds Jack, "Yes. The beast is a hunter.
The next thing is that we couldn't kill it." (141)All this leads up to the belief of beasts. It is proven later on when Jack is broken up with Ralph and is hunting with his "tribe". They brutally kill a sow he suggests leaving some kill for the beast, so it might not bother them. They cut off its head and stick it in the ground on a stick sharpened at both ends. Jack concludes that the head is for the beast as a gift.
The head remained there but all at once, the boys started running away, as fast as possible, out of the forest and back to the open beach. Mankind's brain can create many wonders, such as making you believe in an imaginary beast.
