Analyse, review and comment on the three different presentations of Simon’s death in ‘Lord of the Flies’.
...of the novel showing that the savage boys killed the less brutal character in the novel. It is Simon who walks in the forest alone at night, who acknowledges that there may be a beast and “… maybe it’s only us.” Thus it is Simon who senses what Golding calls: “mankind’s essential illness.” He is trying to say that man may fear darkness and solitude because they rob him of the worlds he builds with his daylight mind, and force him to live with his own interior darkness. Harry Hook builds up tension and suspense at seen of Simon’s death when all the boys’ begin to dance and simulate in a circle around the fire. The simulation, I think is very effective and this, in my opinion is not portrayed enough in Peter Brookes version. They start to chant, scream and jump in frenzy and the setting in darkness gives makes me tense that something is about to happen. The camera takes the shot back to tranquil Simon who is staring at the body of the dead pilot. The contrast is effective as this can tell an audience, once more, of Simon’s solitude in the way he is unconnected with the rest of the group in their dance. This solitude is portrayed in Peter Brooks’ version and I think that both producers considered this an important scene before Simon’s death. Simon is not shown to scream but is shown to be running away, and with the right of his poetic licence, the producer decides to have Simon hold glow stick in the night, which gives the audience a bizarre impression. Peter Brooke builds up the tension in his black/white version to a climax at the point of which the boys’ have totally become inhumane and sadistic. The death of Simon commences with chaos, running, screaming and jumping and with a rhythmic drum roll and a close-up of Simon. The steady drum roll I think is effective because they are military drum rolls reminding the audience of whom these boys once were and what they have now become. Their faces are painted which I think is quite ritualistic for they have separated into tribal groups and have become rivals in their own parts of the island. The frenzy continues but with a tri-syllabic chanting ‘Kill the beast! Slit her throat! Bash her in!’ This tells me of the fear that the boys have seen and the envy to kill they have for each other. It also tells me of how brutal these boys sound and how brutal they will be when the death of Simon occurs. Then there is the sound of waves crashing rhythmically in the background, reminding me of their Utopian surroundings. Jack offers food to Ralph and Piggy who sit separately from the tribe showing me that they do not want to become tribal like the others and they still want to remember their ‘old lives’ as well-behaved schoolboys. Piggy, feeling suspicious and ominous of what is soon to occur says that ‘there’s going to be trouble’ and perhaps at that point of the film this makes us think of what we have already seen but that we are going to see something more appalling. The conch, which has been dismissed out of its authority where it was once important in that whoever holds, has the authority to speak. Jack says ‘Conch doesn’t count…’ which reminds us that being civilised doesn’t count on he island anymore either. In the original novel, the climax and tension is added to by a ‘blink of bright light’ and with Golding’s additional comment: ‘thunder exploded’ we know that something dire is about to happen. Ralph adds to the suspense by saying that there’s ‘going to be a storm’. Golding has used double entendre, which I think is an excellent effect in telling the reader that Ralph’s phrase has two meanings. There is to be a storm in the course of nature and a storm in which the boys themselves conjure up. Goldi...