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In this podcast episode, Magnus and Leanne discuss the 1950s classic Lord of the Flies. They focus on the character of Simon, who represents human goodness. They also explore the theme of fear and its effects on the group dynamics and leadership. The beast in the story is seen as a manifestation of the boys' own evil and fear. Jack's obsession with power and supremacy is driven by fear. Simon's death and the subsequent chaos highlight the destructive nature of fear. The authors also discuss the different forms of fear portrayed in the story: fear of the unknown, fear of human nature, and fear of war. They invite listeners to send questions for a future Q&A episode. Hello, my name is Magnus and I'm here with my co-star Leanne. Today we're going to talk about the 1950s classic, Lord of the Flies, a thrilling, scary and exciting story about a group of young British schoolboys who crash land on a deserted island where they need to build up their own society. However, this doesn't work out as you would expect, as fear creeps up and divides the group. Eventually, their inherited bad takes physical form as Lord of the Flies and creates even more fear. However, there's one outlier, one who embodies good, and Leanne's favourite character, and the one we're going to talk the most about today, Simon. So what do you want to say about Simon, Leanne? Simon's physical description is that he's a small and skinny guy with black hair who was considered strange and odd by the others due to the fact that he was somewhat shy and secretive. The reason why Simon is my favourite is because his role in the story was to be good to everyone and anyone. He was always kind and helpful, like for example, he helped Ralph build a second shelter and he somewhat acted like an older brother slash guardian for everyone, especially the little ones. And I think a characteristic trait is something that makes him pretty unique, in other words, I would say that Simon was perfect, like he never did anything wrong, he was just perfect. The moral of the story is that Simon represented human goodness that we have in ourselves. Personally, I think he was an allegory of Jesus Christ due to his characteristic resemblance to him, how he was rather kind and wise. Did you know Simon was the only one who realized that the beast was in the boys and not a literal monster? That the monster was just a figure of speech and not something factual. Towards the end of the story, Simon was beaten up by the boys because they mistook him for being the beast, which then led to his death. His death also plays a part of how I see him as an allegory to Christ, how his own people turned against him because they thought he did blasphemy, but honestly, I think the kids were just apprehensive, that they felt the feeling of fear. Magnus, do you have anything to say about the feeling of fear? Yeah, I guess, let's start with the body fear. Everybody probably feels fear, maybe because you're scared of spiders or because you're mad and not terrible. But the huge part of fear is because it's one of human's most important feelings. It drives people. It's how we survive. And so there's many different responses to fear, but we can mostly divide them into three different groups. It's freeze, flight, and survive. We can first see the freeze response when the boys find the dead pilot. They become shocked. They stand still and they have nothing to say. And then they quickly move on to another fear response, which is flight. And so they run away as fast as they can. And so did Ralf, after he died. He ran and ran and ran as fast as he could through the jungle, where we eventually found help at the beach, when the navy corps came and rescued him. Another important fear reaction is flight. And this, I feel, is the most important response in this book. We can quickly see Jack, which is kind of like that person, but has many different reactions to this. For example, I believe he has a fear reaction when he loses the election. He wants to be the leader. He wants people to care. He wants to be really important. And so he wants to become the leader and signs up for the election, where he loses to Ralf. He quickly fights it and says, it's unfair how Ralf can get to this and that because he found a conch. And so they make him the leader of the hunters. So it kind of worked. And then they go this trip, right? They find a pig. And Jack says, this is my deal as a hunter to kill this pig. But he fails. He's too humane to kill this pig. He's just this small piglet and he isn't able to kill it. And so the boys naturally, they mark him. And as anybody would, he becomes annoyed, right? But he has another different response to this. Now he knows he won't be seen as strong. People won't be able to care. He will never become this fair leader he wants to be. And so he has this obsession with killing this pig. He even forgets important things like the signal fire, which Ralf sets up because he's scared of not being found, right? And when he forgets it, Ralf immediately targets him on the wrist, right? Because he's scared too. But Jack still has this obsession for killing this pig. And even when he does, he keeps on killing and killing and killing this pig. An obsession is stuck in him, right? And then eventually that isn't enough, right? He then moves on to tormenting other humans, right? Other boys. Eventually, Jack suggests killing a little lamb. And the group end up getting split. With the more savage and evil people joining Jack's group. And the more organized ones continue to be in Ralf's group. And now, finally, Jack has his group. Finally, Jack can be the leader. However, he doesn't stop there. As he ends up making this whole new group extremely violent. As he terrorizes the other group at night to try to steal Piggy's glasses so he can make fire. Which, conveniently, is Camp Rock. Which I'm going to talk about a little bit more later. And so, another response is when Simon dies. And he dies because they released the beast, right? And so they kill him because they're scared of the beast. Which is another fact response. But what is the beast? Well, the beast is the thing that always scares the boys. It started in the earlier chapters when one of the villains had this nightmare about a snake. This snake is particularly important because it shows that the villains have portrayed one of the leaders in a sly perspective. And it might be foreshadowing for the betrayal with Jack later on in the book when he starts Camp Rock. Later, the beast takes a different kind of form. They see it as some kind of sea serpent, right? So this snake-serpent-act kind of monster. But this time, nobody knows where it comes from. They believe it comes from the ocean, which is vast. And yeah, it's scary, right? They have no idea where this beast is. And then they believe it comes from the air, right? They have literally no idea. They see everything as scary. They see this paratrooper, which was the beast from the air. And they really, really become scared. And Simon and Eric, the ones who see it, they portray it even more scary than it really was. And so eventually, the boys start believing this thing. Or most of the boys start believing this thing. And so they start hunting this beast. They have no idea where to look. So they look for the beast, and they find Camp Rock. Camp Rock is significantly important because it's where the hunters took place. And if they kind of found the beast at Camp Rock, it shows that they're evil. If we go off this thing, this symbolism of the beast, it's their own evil, like Simon said. It's not a physical beast. It's their slyness. It's their evil. It's their crazy, savage feeling that everybody has, right? This is something that takes part at Camp Rock. It shows kind of a perspective of how Jack leads his group. He leads it through the beast. Another nickname for the beast was Lord of the Flies, as you may recognize from the title of the book. Lord of the Flies has also been a nickname for the devil, which is where this part gets really interesting. Because now we have two different allegories. We have Simon as Jesus, and then we have the Lord of the Flies as the devil. So if you still believe that the beast is a manifestation of something bad in all the boys, for example, as you could say in Christian terms, it's sins, and Simon doesn't have any, it becomes really important for the evil part of the boys to kill Simon. And they do, because they believe that he's the boy, right? They believe that he's one of the major sins. Like Liam talked about, that he did blasphemy. And the crazy part is, when he dies, all the mayhem starts. There's kidnapping, and there starts murdering. They kidnap Simon and Eric, and they murder Piggy, right? It's a really, really huge shift after Simon's death. So in conclusion, we started this podcast by talking about how Simon was an allegory of Jesus Christ, and then eventually we moved on to the topic about how the beast was an allegory of the devil. We also mentioned how the beast symbolizes the negative aspects of human nature, and the impact fear has on the group dynamics and the leadership. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about what I personally think about some parts of the story. First of all, I personally feel like the topic fear appeared clearly when the kids declared their alliances. How fear eventually turned into obsession and supremacy on Jack's behalf, which then led to Jack leaving Ross' group to kind of make his own one because he wanted to be a leader. Another part of the story where I think the topic fear was shown clearly was when Simon died, how the kids beat him up until he eventually died. Obviously, the kids thought that Simon was the beast, and since they were scared of the so-called beast, who was in this example, was Simon, their first instinct was to fight. And they did, which then led to Simon's death. Adding on to the topic fear, I also want to talk a little bit more about the beast. I personally like the way the author had portrayed the beast in the story. Throughout the book, we find out that the beast wasn't actually a real animal, but was actually the fear the boys had encountered on the island. But what I think is so special about how they represented fear in the story, is how they represented it in three different varieties. Fear of the unknown, fear of human nature, or fear of war. If anybody has any questions, please send us an email, because we will do a little mini Q&A next episode, because we're going to have a small mini episode on Wednesday, as our usual schedule suggests. So please send an email at autistictalksatgmail.com Thank you guys for listening. I hope you guys liked listening to me and Magnus summarize what this book was about. And as mentioned earlier, if you have any questions or feedback, send us an email. And if you even have another book recommendation, for what we should summarize next, feel free to add that to the email as well. And next week, don't forget, we'll have a mini Q&A for all the questions that we have gotten. And this was Autistic Talks by Magnus and Leanne. Peace out!