LOTF chapter 8

Chapter 8: A Gift for Darkness

The part of this chapter I think was most terrifying is the part where the Lord of the Flies is talking to Simon. What happens in this part is after the pig's head is put on a stick for a sacrifice to the beast, Simon comes over and believes it is talking to him. Simon believes the pig head is speaking to him, telling him all of them are just silly little boys, because there is no beast. He mocks him saying he knew all along, the beast wasn’t something you could just kill; the beast lived inside of them. It is fear, violence, pain, uncivilization, disorder, anger, and chaos. One reason I find this terrifying is because it shows how the heat and the savagery has affected their imagination, but it's the imagination just speaking what Simon has really known all along. Sometimes we don't really understand our thoughts until they are brought out in front of us, and the Lord of the Flies shows Simon that. Also the title of the chapter kinds of explains this, a gift for darkness. The pig head was a gift to the beast, the darkness, the unknown. The pig head talking to Simon shows that in all of us as humans, there is some darkness like fear, disorder, and violence and all those things have been shown on the island. These things have let their imaginations go wild and believe there is a beast that may attack them, they don’t realize it has been attacking them, but unseen to the eye. It has slowly made them into crazed uncivilized creatures. If you think about it, it is terrifying because it shows us that most of the time our greatest enemy is ourselves.