Boys Will Beat Boys: Lord of the Flies and My Inner "Simon"

By Kevin Renick

“I don’t believe in the beast.”
“I suppose not.”
“What I mean is, maybe it’s only US.”
(A conversation between truth-seeker Simon and community leader Ralph in 1963’s Lord of the Flies.)

There are certain film moments that can command my instant attention, especially where the music is concerned. Anyone can have a fond remembrance of a film that meant something special to them, but I’m referring in this context to how simply hearing a particular theme or music cue can put you instantly into a trance, and take you right back to a pivotal moment in your life. That happens any time I hear the boys’ chorus (and subsequent thematic variations) from the original 1963 film Lord of the Flies (we will not speak of the wretched 90s remake in this essay).

Kyrie, kyrie, kyrie eleison. Kyrie, kyrie, kyrie eleison.

The ancient Latin phrase is most commonly understood to mean, simply, “Lord, have mercy.” As sung by the youthful choirboys in Peter Brook’s powerhouse movie of William Golding’s influential novel, that sound became embedded in my psyche for all time. It was melodic, upbeat, almost rapturous. You hear it first coming from a group of robed British schoolboys making their way along the shore of a deserted island. Raymond Leppard’s minimalistic but evocative score subsequently used variations of the theme throughout the film, instrumentally, and sometimes inverting the sequence for effect. In 7th grade, one of my worst school years ever, this music would gradually come to mean something very significant in my story. I’d characterize it as a time when innocent hopefulness started giving way to anxiety and fears about the future. Such was a primary theme of LOTF. And such was my reality, going from a mostly wonderful elementary school experience and a streetful of energetic, supportive friends to a much larger school where I was often bullied and made to feel like an outcast. Kyrie eleison. I didn’t mouth the words “Lord have mercy” to anyone. But after seeing Lord of the Flies for the first time, I sure grasped the concept. And it might have shown on my face a few times, especially after gym class in 7th and 8th grade. Whew. How did I survive?

Favorite movies for me during childhood tended to be sci-fi or fantasy type stories, with the odd musical making its way onto the list. But sometime in 1970 or 1971, after my second or third viewing of the televised black and white film starring James Aubrey as Ralph, Tom Chapin as Jack and Tom Gaman as Simon, I declared Lord of the Flies to be my favorite film. It affected me at the time like no other movie. I eventually became so obsessed with it, including the music, that I put my cassette tape recorder to use to capture as much of the movie’s music and dialogue as I could off our little living room television set. LOTF was never a hit movie; it wasn’t shown very often. No one in the cast ever became a star (I would learn later that most of the boys in the movie were not even trained actors; the director wanted “naturalism” to inform his concept for the film, and boy, did it ever). The seeming obscurity of LOTF was part of its allure. It was about a hushed reality, and the movie itself seemed strangely hushed…with the isolated setting of the tropical island and the sinister behavior of some of the boys emerging gradually. “It began well,” Ralph says in one scene. “But then…things changed. People started forgetting what was really important.”

Most public school students were required to read LOTF, and almost everyone knows the primary plot concerns boys reverting to savage behavior when they are stranded on an island together. Competition for power and leadership turns into an existential struggle. There is violence, and some boys get hurt. Every day becomes a struggle for survival. Yep, that sums up my junior high school years pretty well! And it’s clearly the same today for many kids – even worse, according to social media tales. One could argue it’s also the case in our modern political climate, with the ongoing “red states vs. blue states” battle, a subject deserving of its own essay. Is it any wonder I related to this grainy old film so much? To this day, you sometimes hear the phrase “a Lord of the Flies scenario,” or read tales of what can happen when boys are stuck somewhere together. It doesn’t have to be on a deserted island. It can be in a neighborhood, a school, a business. It can be in politics, and often HAS been these last few years. “Boys will be boys.” The phrase is often used glibly to excuse the bad behavior of males both young and old. It even came up in the Supreme Court nomination hearings for Brett Kavanaugh. But in a reality (and society in general), where competition is encouraged constantly and winning by any means becomes a goal, people can get hurt. Boys will BEAT boys, in other words. At games…in classes…and maybe after school behind a building. They will fight. They will try to get the upper hand over those they don’t like. Their goal is to intimidate. This is hardly the sole province of males. In this age of social media, it’s well established that girls can be just as competitive and cruel as boys. But when I was in middle school, bullying was something that boys mostly did. And Lord of the Flies was the first movie I saw to depict the potential outcome of boys being left to their own devices, without adults around. What would boys be like if there weren’t really any rules to follow? The concept of “character templates” eventually emerged for me at the time. And it helped me understand the movie’s hold on me better.

There was Ralph, the smart, practical communicator, trying to do the right thing and keep people focused on primary goals such as getting rescued, even if he wasn’t above teasing others a bit himself. Ralph was insistent that signal fires had to be kept burning at all times. There was Jack, the strong, aggressive, outwardly fearless “leader” who felt entitled and learns that simply TAKING what you want is a way to get ahead. Jack spearheaded the “hunting” expeditions in the film. There was Piggy, the awkward, out of shape misfit who has brains but is shamed constantly for his imperfections and fun-killing “adult-ish” speeches. And, there was Simon. Not so simple Simon. For here we had the character who pondered the most, who had philosophical inclinations, who tried to understand the natural world, who was gently supportive of Ralph’s common sense but intent on finding the REAL truth about “the beast” that all the boys were afraid of, and trying hard to be HEARD at the regular meetings, where whatever boy held the conch shell was supposed to be listened to at that moment. It’s Simon who wanders off into the woods. It’s Simon who communes with the severed pig’s head, drawing the deepest symbolism of the current plight of the boys from the titular flies buzzing around this grotesque display. It’s Simon, in fact, who is curious and compelled enough to do his own investigation and to find out the REAL nature of “the beast.” Tragically, he never gets to report this to the other boys, as he is killed one campfire-laden night when he’s mistaken for, well, you know. Some kinda beastie.

These templates of different kinds of young men a male might evolve into, along with the straightforward sadism of the “Roger” character, had to be part of William Golding’s m.o. in the writing of his classic. To this day, I can’t get them out of my mind. I always fancied myself a “Ralph” type, especially when I’ve tried to help solve problems in my family or with friends. I went to school with many notable Piggy types, including two characters I vividly recall who were always being teased and ostracized. I had some “Piggy moments” of my own, even earning the unflattering nickname “Rental” from one jerk. Or “Wrench” for a while. Such names were hardly ever witty or well thought out; the bullying types simply seized on a syllable or two and found it amusing to come up with another word to call you that sounded similar. This is absolutely common, and I had to quickly learn not to react at the time. You would only egg the jerks on if you showed that being demeaned bothered you. But if you screwed up in athletics, you were potentially doomed. One or two of my most traumatic moments from junior high school were when I goofed up in gym class and was mercilessly scorned, just like Piggy. A mess-up during a volleyball game had one of the jocks losing patience with me and embarrassing me in front of the entire team, one of those moments I’ll never forget. I sort of became both Piggy and Simon that day. But to have Piggy, you have to have Jack, and that was a widespread species in middle school and high school. Jockus arrogantus, you might call this archetype. The smug bullies who looked down on anyone different, anyone physically awkward, anyone not “worthy” for a million reasons. Sometimes such bullies grow up to be successful businessmen. Or prominent politicians, able to promote outlandish policies. And sometimes they are just selfish, dysfunctional jerks who treat others poorly and only worship money or achievement. I hate to generalize this way, but you can observe the beginnings of such behavior on the playground and school locker rooms. And eventually, in any halls of power. Bad behavior is often commonplace; we’ve seen that over and over.

Back to LOTF, though: Simon was inevitably the character I most related to. Here was a boy who was introspective, seemed to find solace being in the woods, had the wisdom to try and figure things out, and wanted to “report back” to his community on what he’d learned. That sure felt like me! At the same time I discovered this movie, I was the only kid my age who started birdwatching – often wandering off to woods and lakeshores with adults, but frequently finding myself alone for short spells. On one such occasion, I recall being on a side trail, apart from the main group, just immersed in the utter solitude and sounds of nature. But rather than being ecstatic about it, I felt the anguish of things that couldn’t be expressed – life had too many secrets. Kids weren’t nice to each other. Nature was perhaps not important to many of them like it was to me. Emotions had to be bottled up, or you could be ostracized. There was no pig’s head on a post for me to stare at, but there were hidden vistas and sounds that captivated me…evidence of an alternate reality. When Simon walks through the dense trees in LOTF, I related to him. Pictures of me in my early teens reveal that I even LOOKED like young Tom Gaman. Simon was often not heard, the film depicts in a few scenes, and had trouble articulating what he experienced. And of course, he was one of the two boys killed in the story. I didn’t want THAT fate. But I certainly felt like I was in danger during that era of my school days. And sometimes these days, as well. I still feel I know something about human nature, and about the potential of bad behavior and selfishness to get out of control. I definitely speak my piece in social media regularly, and I like to think most of my friends would see me at least as “Ralph like,” although I’m mostly a Simon with recurring Piggy moments here and there. But these boys in Lord of the Flies were vivid and real to me. And that was truly influential to me as a young movie fan. 

What you learn from the excellent Criterion issue of the classic film is that many young auditioners were chosen for a certain look or speaking style, and then given just enough instruction and scenario prompts to get them to carry out the movie’s essential plot points. LOTF moves quickly; its limited budget didn’t allow for all of Golding’s details to be filmed or make the cut; in fact, the movie nearly didn’t get made at all. Peter Brook deserves the lion’s share of the credit; a respected theatre director in England, he was insistent on making the film his way with, as I said earlier, a pervasive naturalism. And he caught enough of the story to convey its memorable lessons. Ralph’s common sense insistence on keeping the signal fire lit in hopes they’d get rescued. Piggy’s clumsiness and tendency to irritate Jack. Simon’s quiet, questing search for truth. The boys all getting caught up in the excitement of late-night campfires, laughter from juvenile comments and observations, and speculation about…the unknown. But when Ralph himself is being hunted near the movie’s end, having failed to protect Piggy or gather enough members to his “tribe,” I remember, each time I watched the film as a young teenager, feeling the most intense of emotions. And seeing Ralph’s deadened, desperate, dirty face in the presence of a naval officer who finally shows up, was always the same, powerful, emotionally wrenching moment for me. He’d survived. Just barely, but…he was alive and the nightmare was over. It brought tears to my eyes more than once. That’s how I felt at the end of junior high school. When my time at North Kirkwood ended, the LOTF theme music went through my head so many times. I’d walk home across the grounds, with memories of trauma but also the realization I, too, had survived. I would get to carry on. And even today, when I’ve been called names or insulted on social media because of certain beliefs, I’d pull myself together and keep going. I felt I knew the truth, like Simon. My job was to try to articulate that, and yes, point out “the beast” I knew was endangering us. 

Bullying people or ostracizing them for being “different” than you is seemingly part of human nature. In school, most of us either observed or were among those who looked different, were slow learners or simply didn’t fit in. It was common, but tended to only manifest in isolated incidents. As the information age and social media took over our lives, a different kind of bullying, disparaging and outright hatred began to take over. In the Trump era, one could argue, more behavior exhibiting the worst of us surfaced. Mere name-calling has been the least of it. In politics and in our communities, with our very neighbors, we’ve all been drawn into sometimes epic battles of right and wrong. We are all still in “tribes” of our own choosing, and yes, the extremists among us have indeed shown a willingness to “hunt down” or otherwise target perceived offenders or “non members.” We may not be stuck on a deserted island, but we are absolutely members of particular groups that have certain specific goals. I’m not so cynical as to suggest that people would always resort to awful behavior when isolated. There was a recent essay, in fact, about a group of kids stranded LOTF style in real life years ago, and it was a much happier tale in which no one killed anybody else. There are good people and bad people in the world…always have been. And frankly, the scale on which absolutely horrifying things happen these days dwarfs the small, symbolic behavioral story Lord of the Flies concerns itself with. But I’m simply relating an experience with this film from my formative years, when I was already longing for meaning, and trying to find MY place in the broader scheme of things. I was a lonely, restless kid who was smart and sensitive but dreaded encountering mean kids or injustice. I loved nature. I wanted to know the truth of things, like Simon. I wanted to be part of a community. And I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to ridicule or hurt someone else. Or why people couldn’t just work things out together. What was wrong?

Maybe it’s only us, all right. Maybe we all have to fight our own “beast” so that in the eternal battle between good and evil, we have the tools we need to choose our right tribe. Our better nature. And to ALWAYS, keep the signal fires lit…