What is the significance of killing the sow

Find Free Essays We provide you with original essay samples, perfect formatting and styling. Order Now. Please check your inbox. Order now. Hi there! Are you interested in getting a customized paper? Check it out! Having trouble finding the perfect essay? Hire a writer. Got it. Haven't found the right essay? Get an expert to write you the one you need! Get your paper now. Professional writers and researchers. Sources and citation are provided. In retaliation, Jack attempts his most serious mutiny yet, trying to convince the other boys to impeach Ralph.

When the boys refuse to openly vote against Ralph, Jack announces his defection and runs off into the forest. Simon suggests they all go face whatever's on the mountain, but no one wants to go. Piggy, glad that Jack is gone, suggests they build a signal fire on the beach so that they won't have to go up the mountain. While everyone gathers wood, most of the biguns creep away to join Jack. Simon disappears as well, going to his hidden spot in the forest to rest after his unsuccessful address to the group.

Piggy starts the fire with his glasses. Meanwhile Jack leads another successful hunt, attacking and killing a nursing sow and then impaling her head on a stick as an offering to the beast, coincidentally in full view of the spot where Simon sits concealed. Simon hallucinates, thinking that the head is talking to him, until he loses consciousness. To get fire for a pig roast, Jack stages a theft of some burning branches from the beach fire and invites Ralph's group to the roast in an attempt to recruit them to join his tribe.

Ralph tries to rally his group to his side but loses his train of thought when he tries to remember the importance of being rescued, causing them to doubt him briefly. Ralph speaks realistically when he tells Piggy that even Jack would hide if the beast attacked; after all, the night before Jack had been as terrified as the other two boys when he saw the dead paratrooper. The sight mesmerizes him, and it even seems as if the head comes to life.

Terrified and troubled by the apparition, Simon collapses in a faint. Once the boys, having mistaken the dead parachutist for a monster, come to believe fully in the existence of the beast, all the remaining power of civilization and culture on the island diminishes rapidly.

In a world where the beast is real, rules and morals become weak and utterly dispensable. The original democracy Ralph leads devolves into a cult-like totalitarianism, with Jack as a tyrant and the beast as both an enemy and a revered god.

Jack uses the beast ingeniously to rule his savage kingdom, and each important character in Lord of the Flies struggle to come to terms with the beast. Piggy, who remains steadfastly scientific and rational at this point in the novel, is simply baffled and disgusted.

Ralph, who has seen what he thinks is the beast, is listless and depressed, unsure of how to reconcile his civilized ideals with the sight he saw on the mountaintop.

Indeed, many critics have described Simon as a Christ figure, for he has a mystical connection to the environment, possesses a saintly and selfless disposition, and meets a tragic and sacrificial death. Others tie the scene into a larger Freudian reading of Lord of the Flies , claiming that its symbols correspond exactly to the elements of the Freudian unconscious with Jack as the id, Ralph as the ego, and Piggy as the superego.

Lord of the Flies may indeed support these and a number of other readings, not necessarily at the exclusion of one another. Indeed, many differences between Simon and Jesus complicate the comparison between the two and prevent us from seeing Simon as a straightforward Christ figure. Simon, unlike Jesus, is not a supernatural being, and none of the boys could possibly find salvation from the Lord of the Flies through faith in Simon.

Fearing that this instinct lies embedded within himself as well, Simon seems to hear the Lord of the Flies speaking with him, threatening him with what he fears the most. Unable to stand the sight any longer, Simon collapses into a very human faint. In all, Simon is a complex figure who does not fit neatly into the matrix framed by Jack at the one end and Ralph at the other.

Simon is kindhearted and firmly on the side of order and civilization, but he is also intrigued by the idea of the beast and feels a deep connection with nature and the wilderness on the island. Whereas Jack and Roger connect with the wilderness on a level that plunges them into primal lust and violence, Simon finds it a source of mystical comfort and joy.

Lord of the Flies is deeply preoccupied with the problem of fundamental, natural human evil—amid which Simon is the sole figure of fundamental, natural good.