Throughout the novel Lord of the Flies, the island’s children constantly face various fears. However, there is nothing on the island that they fear more than the beast. In Lord Of The Flies, the theme of the beast is extremely important. The beast represents the way that man will try to convince himself that there is no evil within him by making someone or something appear to be the cause of evil. There are many examples of evidence to support this throughout the book, but first it is necessary to delineate the rise of the beast and evil within children.

There was talk of a dangerous presence on the first day on the island, when a boy with a purple birthmark on his face informed everyone of a “beast”, which he apparently saw the night before. At the time, this was dismissed by the older children as their imaginations, but even at that early stage it was apparent that the younger children were preoccupied with the child’s words. It should be noted at this point that the beast did not have a definite physical appearance because it was supposed to be the overactive imagination of young children at work. At the same time, it is obvious that Golding uses the first chapters of the book to set the stage for the chaos and terror of the beast that follows. It soon became clear that even the older children had begun to wonder if, in fact, some kind of beast inhabited the island. It was also evident that no one was willing to admit this, but the fact that many children now cried in their sleep or had terrible nightmares is further proof that they were all afraid of a beast.

The first signs of evil to emerge from within appeared when Jack and his hunters killed a pig and reenacted the slaughter. In the process, people were injured and the chanting, which would become a ritual, began at that time. Although Jack’s ambition to slaughter a pig had been fulfilled, he now had a taste of the glory and the sense of self-fulfillment it brought him. This meant that he was by no means satisfied that he had killed a pig, but that he would continue to do so. It is significant that Jack felt that it was necessary to kill pigs, as there was a great deal of food on the island. It is possible that Jack simply wanted to kill pigs because the evil within him had begun to emerge and introduced his lust to kill. Another significant event occurred at this point: open violence between children. When Jack confronted Piggy and Ralph because he allowed the fire to go out and a ship passed, he lashed out at Piggy, whom he evidently despised, and broke his glasses. To some extent, this further illustrates how the evil within Jack was beginning to take control of him.