When Pig Heads Talk ... LotF Spoilers

I just finished rereading William Golding's Lord of the Flies and, as is often the case during a second read through, it affected me in a completely new way.  I was a Freshman in high school the first time I read it and now I'm pushing thirty; somehow that time lapse was necessary.  This time as I read I noticed craft elements that had been hidden from me before and I felt the harshness of the violence with greater impact.  It was strange because over the past decade and a half, my memory of the book had morphed into something that Golding had not written at all.  Firstly I had forgotten two things that I shouldn't have: the twins, Samneric, and the boy with the mulberry birthmark who becomes a holocaust to the boys' initial immersion into anarchy.  I had forgotten just how adorable Simon really was which is odd since had been (and remains) my favorite character from the start.  Before I even took up the book for a second read, I thought of Simon and ended up naming one of my narrators for The Death Man after this wonderful, compassionate character.

Something else that I had forgotten/warped, was Simon's death.  I had convinced myself that he had simply died, that his was a quiet and peaceful passing along the water's edge.  What crack was I smoking?  Because his death is the epitome of raw violence and savagery.  It was murder.  A sort of crime of passion wherein they bit, clawed, and beat him to death.  In the end only Ralph, Piggy, and Samneric even acknowledge that a human life was lost that night.  Their conversation the next morning was stomach turning for me.  And I cried.  I always cry when I think of Simon.

I was surprised that only three kids actually died.  The deaths of the boy with the mulberry birthmark, Simon, and Piggy seem to me to represent, respectively, the death of innocence, the death of kindness and compassion, and the death of all reason.  It is the natural progression of man into savagery.  First you lose your innocence and you become embittered and lose all compassion and then your reason leaves you and then what are you left with but chaotic paranoia and a desire to eliminate all threats.

The last thing that I'd forgotten was how they treated Piggy.  I suppose I can understand their frustration with him as he had a certain lack of drive in the manual labor department, but he was nothing if not a diplomat.  He tried so damn hard and he was so desperate for acceptance that he'd imagine it where it wasn't given and he stood by Ralph till the end.  And Ralph understood.  But only after Piggy's death.  He finally got it and called Piggy a wise, true friend.  Prior to that he was just as content as the rest of them to holler for the fatty to shut up and to ignore him and roll his eyes at him.  Poor Piggy.  And to make it worse, I keep having visions of Jack as a wolf, knocking on the door to the hut saying, "Little Pig, Little Pig, let me come in!"