Popular Culture Review Vol. 1, December 1989 | Page 41

how the sense of self-importance in children can become a force o f
destruction. They need and find a leader, but this play also involves
them in a world o f competition in which Ralph, the average man
symbolizing the social instinct, is pitted against Jack who is
responsible for the release of evil. Simon discovers it when he
blurts out ‘T h e beastie is within us,” and he also encounters it when
he confronts the Lord of the Flies—the pig’s head on a stick.
When he sees the dead parachutist, which is another symbol
of evil and the adult world, he compassionately releases him from
the tangle. According to Golding, the parachutist is History.
“History is Evil but history is made evil by men who have not grown
out o f original sin. Simon realizes this and being more inclusive in
vision than the spectacled Piggy, the orderly Ralph or the animal
Jack, he pays for it by dying. Men are Evil and the Evil is within.
Boys will be Boys and Boys are Evil.” (Mohan 29)
In the ending o f the three novels also, there are significant
similarities and differences. Swami strays into a forest and the
father pursues him with the dread of seeing his son’s dead body
among the weeds. To his great relief, when he stooped to put his
finger on the wet patch on the rails, he found that it was only water
and not blood. Swami is almost lost in the forest, but characteris
tically, hunger forces him to think o f home. But it is very difficult
for him even to reach the Trunk road leading to his place. “The
strangeness o f the hour, so silent indeed that even the drop of a leaf
resounded through the place, oppressed him with a sense o f
inhumanity. Its remoteness gave him a feeling that he was walking
into a world of horrors, subhuman and supernatural. He collapsed
like an empty bag, and wept bitterly (Swami 160). This is very
much like Ralph’s weeping at the end o f Lord o f the Flies for “the
end of innocence, for the darkness o f man’s heart and the fall
through the air of the true, wise friend Piggy.” (248) Swami also
thinks of his friends, Rajam and Mani, though the whole thing is

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