Simon’s death is foreshadowed in this chapter, as he is made scapegoat for the boys’ unshakeable fear. His question to them, “What’s the dirtiest thing there is?” demands an answer far too abstract for this crowd. Once again, Jack provides a concrete and non-threatening answer, an answer far simpler than the answer Simon seeks, which is evil. Simon can’t express precisely what he understands because he lacks a sophisticated education or training in dealing with abstract concepts; he is, after all, a ten-year-old boy. Simon’s inability to articulate what he sees as “mankind’s essential illness” mirrors Jack’s inability to effectively express “the compulsion to track down and kill that was swallowing him up.” Both boys want to describe the same thing, but Simon has reached an abstract understanding of the animality that can produce evil effects while Jack is living it. Of course, Jack later stirs up the group into such a frenzy of animality that Simon is murdered.
This chapter expands upon the theme of humankind’s latent depravity, resorting to the savagery of self-indulgence in the absence of social rules, mores, and control to the contrary. Such control is the basis of most social conventions and institutions, which are designed to promote self-control and civilized discourse. The symbol of such conventions and institutions is the platform. In this chapter the platform’s protective powers break down when the assembly dissolves into “arguing, gesticulating shadows. To Ralph, seated, this seemed the breaking up of sanity.” When Ralph sees the disorderly arguing breaking out and taking over the assembly, he perceives not only that he has lost control of the group but that the group is losing control of itself.
