Simon

Throughout William Golding’s, Lord of the Flies, many of the characters go through changes in their personality traits. From beginning to end, Simon goes through the smallest amount of change than anyone in the novel. Despite the fact that Simon did not really fit in with the other boys, he tried his hardest to make a difference in his and the other’s lives.

In the beginning, Simon was described as a “skinny, vivid little boy…,” (Golding 24) showing that he was undersized and possibly weaker than the others. He stuck around Ralph for a while, went exploring with him and Jack, and even helped him build the shelters. It was not long before he began to wander off by himself to that little place among the creepers. The other boys thought he was “queer….funny.” (55) because he was an outcast and rather strange.

Towards the middle of Simon’s stay on the island, he started to realize that he truly was different from the others. Every time he tried to talk to the other children, his “effort fell about him in ruins; the laughter beat him cruelly and he shrank away defenseless to his seat.”(89) Just when he thought he had been accepted he embarrassed himself again, “When he bashed into a tree Ralph looked sideways impatiently and Robert sniggered.”(104) They were getting restless with his behavior.

In the end, he was trying more to tell the boys what he knew, but they just thought he was weird. He told Ralph, “You’ll get back alright.”(111) Ralph’s response was only that he thought Simon was “batty.” In another instance, he went to tell the others that he found out what the beast really was (the parachutist), but got caught in their bestial dance. They heard him “crying something about a body on the hill,” (152) but it was too late. In the darkness, he had been mistaken for the beast and was killed.

Although Simon’s life was a short one and he did not have the time to go through much change, he proved that there was hope for being rescued. He may have been an outcast and slightly weird, but he knew that everything would be just fine. Had he lived through the assault that took his life, the other boys would have seen that he was not as strange as they thought he was. It always seems that the children who know the most are mistaken for something else and are automatically singled out.