I'm reading through Lord of the Flies right now and thoroughly

Do some spoiler tags. God damn!

His name is Simon, ain't that hard to figure out a Biblical reference.

yes of course

anyone have any experience with golding's other stuff? thoughts? i did enjoy lord of the flies but that was like 10+ years ago and i just realized i have zero knowledge of any of golding's other stuff

>>7661236
Okay. I was in my English 101 class today and we were analyzing it. When I brought up the theory that Simon represented Jesus Christ (Which I determined after knowing that the pig's head was a confirmed representation of Satan), the lefties in my class got really buttmad about it and said that "I don't need to push religion into everything" (even though they had no problem with the idea of satan being the Lord of the Flies.)

It would be a little comical if it wasn't so cringeworthy to see the atheists tripping over eachother to attack me for being religious. (I hope you guys don't think I'm trying to be pretentious. I'm not trying to give off that vibe, I just wanted to see if it was confirmed by others.)

>>7661242
They sound like a horrible bunch, senpai. The very title screams "Beelzebub!", of course there's religion in it.

>>7661242
Lel lefties are hilarious.
Did you tell them that Simon's confrontation with the Lord of the flies resembles Christ's conversation with the devils during his forty days in the wilderness.

>everything went to shit when they decided to elect a leader
anarchy 4 lyf
>>7661242
Wow, that sounds really annoying. Politically, I'm as far left as it's possible to be, but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate a good religious allegory.

Just tell them that religious symbolism is all throughout literature and they'll need to get used to it, and that even atheists and critics of the Church have used religious symbolism because it has enormous cultural power, so they should quit being crybabies. Seriously, use those words. "Quit being crybabies."

You can tell them you'll pray for them if you want to really get under their skin, but that seems unecessary.

>>7661257
Yeah. I'm really frustrated with my class.

>>7661264
After class a boy who never hesitates to make himself known as a member of the "pastafarian church" to mock Christianity walked up to me and said: "Okay, so the fact that you pointed this out means one of two things. You either copied what everyone else is saying" (which I have yet to hear from other people), "or you are trying way too hard to force your beliefs on us."

I responded with "None of the above." and proceeded to use that analogy word-for-word to say that there's a clear resemblance. Didn't Simon refuse to drink water for a long time as well during that time? The evidence is overwhelming if true.

>>7661267
If they continue to be condescending about it, then I won't hesitate to tell them to stop being crybabies. The guy who I previously mentioned who tried to argue with my has technically been my friend, but he's revealed his pretentious personality more and more over time and so I could care less about offending him by now.

>>7661242
Disgusting

I'm a fedora tipping atheist but people who don't appreciate the aesthetics and cultural importance of religion are plebs of the highest order

>>7661242
Simon in Lord of the Flies has more parallels to Simon-Peter aka Saint Peter than Jesus.
St. Peter is the one who first recognises Jesus' real nature, who he really is (not a son of man but the son of the living God). Simon first discovers the true nature of the beastie and sees it for what it is, not what it is believed to be.

Simon-Peter hails taking care of lesser others.

Simon in the book often helps the littluns, especially with food.

>>7661282
I might also add that my professor watched the entire situation of people laughing and attacking me for the theory with a smile on his face. I'm pretty sure he knows about the relationship because he said, once everyone was done laughing "Well, anon, let's keep reading and you tell us if there's additional evidence provided."

(I rarely use the terms "mocking" or "attacking", but I can say with complete assurance that 90% of my peers in the room were looking and laughing and making jokes at how ridiculous my claim was. I cannot wait for people to read about his death and I can continue the triggering.)

its a breakdown of human characterization and civilization through ages, the lord of the flies is the evil man's capable of and how it manifests during childhood because of societal pressures, the pig on the stick is Ralph's fear and Jack's god.

Ralph and Jack are two sides of a coin and represent the best and worst of humanity. No one listens to Ralph who wants to create a paradse, Jack gets all the power because he's all meat and ballsacks and promises "freedom" and his unstable civilization crumbles in to a ghetto of shit, also taking down Ralph in the process.

Lord of the flies = shit = people = pigs

we destroy what we cannot control. It has basically absolutely nothing to do with religion accept what you're projecting on to it.

I don't see Simon as a Jesus character because I am not sure if his death wasn't a self sacrifice it was a tragic consequence of the savagery the boys had succumb to. I really don't see how he is a Jesus character, though I do think the book is a very Christian creation. This post makes more sense to me >>7661290


>>7661242
Lord of the flies seems to me to be about the abandonment of Christianity by civilization/society and its consequence.

>>7661294
>laughing
>at the idea that a work of western literature references Christianity
The shit? I bet they'll claim there's no religious symbolism in Frankenstein, too.
>>7661301
There's intentional religious symbolism.

>>7661290
Interesting theory. Do you think he'd use the name "Simon" as a direct analogy to NT Simon, or would an author usually consider that "too blatant"?

>>7661301
But the author explicitly says that the pig's head represents "Beelzebub" aka Satan, and it seems that the evidence for Simon's relationship to Jesus is too great...or at least NT Simon. I can understand your argument but think there's just too much religious symbolism to be a book entirely free of religion.

>>7661307
Holy crap dude, we're reading Frankenstein next.

The fedora-tipping secularization of Christian influence on literature is contemtable. These are the same people that would become savages in lord of the flies while OP keeps demanding they listen to him because he has the conch

>>7661301
>we destroy what we cannot control. It has basically absolutely nothing to do with religion accept what you're projecting on to it.

OP looks like your classmate is on lit too.

Can't it be about more than one thing?

>>7661301
>the lord of the flies is the evil man's capable of and how it manifests during childhood because of societal pressures

He uses boys to parody The Coral Island by Ballantyne. He wants to say that the modern people can bring only destruction and not any form of civilisation, like they did in Ballantyne's novel.

One of the boys even says: "We are English, and we're best at everything."

This is Golding telling you that even those we think are the best (in this case the civilised English) have fallen, and that evil dwells in everyone's heart.

It has nothing to do with kids turned evil by an oppressive society. It's more that evil lingers in everyone, always, no matter who you are and where you come from. That is what WW2 thought him.

>>7661316
This.

The people who said I'm so closeminded for projecting religion into the book are ironically the most closeminded because they seem to think it's solely about the degeneration of society.

>>7661311
>Holy crap dude, we're reading Frankenstein next.

End of semester twist: it was a Christianity in literature course. OP gets an A. Everyone else has egg on their face.

>>7661304
I think Simon may be like a secular Christ. Christ died revealing spiritual truth while Simon died revealing physical truth.

>>7661219
>allegorical readings

what is it, 1800?

>>7661319
I would say that, but the entire first semester seemed to be atheist/esque literature.

We read "The Stranger" and "Crime and Punishment." (Although C&P seems like it could be taken either way due to Raskolnikov's religious revival at the end.)

We also read the "Metamorphosis" but that seemed to not put much into religion or atheism at all...just the meaning of life in general.

>>7661311
Nah, it would only be semi-blatant :^)

The book as a whole is biblical allegory.
It's about the fallen man.
Adam and Eve who fell from Paradise and are now subjected to toil and pains.
These kids who fell from some plane; fell from the dynamic of being kids to the dynamic of harsh reality.

But there is a problem because the island seems like a pretty nice place. There is food (fruits, not counting the pigs), the climate is mostly nice, they never go through with the shelters though. The island is basically a piece of Heaven but people destroyed it with their bullshit.
In the end the whole island is burning

>>7661331
Hello, Tolkien!

>>7661311
>>7661307
yeah christianity informed so much of public discourse for so long that allegory to it is inescapable in the better part of classic literature.

Fucks sake, practically the major theme of frankenstein, "playing god," is conceived in terms of christianity

death of the author and all that jazz, but historical context is important in developing a full understanding of a text.

File: 11659333_858586634196322_5962577851524364825_n.jpg (55KB, 752x960px) Image search: [Google]

55KB, 752x960px

>>7661311
Beelzebub as in evil image, not any particular religion but the idea of evil itself and Jack and his crew worship it as an idea of anarchy. It's the idea of blue lagoon's philosophy where people are put on an island and the question of what would arise, what human traits would endure and what would fall away. Lord of the Flies is a philosophical debate of man's contempt of himself and the nature of civilization, not a reference to Christianity. We can even apply the philosophic questions here: I'm debating that the book has a larger scope to humanity's tropes based on analytical study from experts in their field because I'm a fat nerd that listens to smart people but you're hellbent on applying it to what you think is right without actually really knowing. This thread is simulacra to the book, stop being pig headed.

>>7661361
I'm not hellbent. I thought the same thing as you throughout the duration of the book up until the point of Simon's interaction with the Lord of the Flies. At that point I started realizing all the relations of Simon to Christ, or at least the book itself to Christianity, and now it seems to fit almost permanently in as an allegory for it.

And Golding is apparently Christian, but has no church affiliation.

Also, 10/10 pun dude.

>>7661333
>C&P seems like it could be taken either way

uh...pal...C&P was literally "jesus is the way to salvation: the book"

>>7661317
I think you're right in many ways but the coin flip of the characters brings up that giving in to that dark side is too easy and building against it or in spite of it is not only harder but less popular. You don't think he's using children to set up a parallel to upbringing being the catalyst to anti-civilization?

>>7661219
Do yourself a favor and read Watchmen right after you're done. Watchmen is, imo, a response.

>>7661385
I guess you're pretty right about that.

Actually, yeah, it's extremely one-sided...holy crap what was I thinking?

>>7661239
The Spire is really fucking good.

>>7661340
>Fucks sake, practically the major theme of frankenstein, "playing god," is conceived in terms of christianity
That's true, and interestingly, I would actually argue that Frankenstein is the first straight up leftist novel, given its themes of women being oppressed, giving a voice to the marginalized, and how the book ends with Frankenstein's monster, the creation of the "Modern Prometheus," immolating himself at the North Pole, thereby bringing fire to an inhospitable place where the original narrator believed there should have been paradise... the place farthest from the comforts of the privileged few.