Deus ex Machina by Gwen J. Montes

Anybody who has analyzed The Lord of the Flies can tell you that Simon is a Christ figure. However, the biblical themes don't end there. Throughout this novel I have noticed several allusions to the Bible other than Simon's character and, as you all know from my Fahrenheit 451 post, I am a total sucker for biblical imagery.

In chapter eight, when Simon was all delirious, stumbling through the forest, and talking to the pig's head, I thought of the story of when Christ in the wilderness. In this story, Christ fasts for fourty days in the desert. During that time he was approached by the devil and tempted and ridiculed. This is similar to Simon's situation in his conversation with the Lord of the Flies. Which, leads me to my second biblical theme.

As we discussed before, The Lord of the Flies is translated from the Hebrew word meaning Beelzebub. The beast, however is also mentioned often in the bible and is used in referrence to the antichrist. In the book of Revelation, the Bible mentions two beasts. One arises from the sea and the other from the earth. From there, humanity begin to worship the beast and kill anyone who refuses. The antichrist is the adversary of Christ and the beast on the island - the manifestation of the boys' evil - is also Simon's adversary and eventually leads to his death.

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Finally, the last bit of biblical imagery isn't exactly biblical. Deus ex machina -a Greek phrase meaning "God from the machine" - is a literary device in which an impossible problem is solved abruptly by the intervention of a new character, object etc. In The Lord of the Flies, the arrival of the naval officer is a perfect example of deus ex machina. The boys hunting Jack almost immediately stop their pursuit as soon as they see the naval officer, a figure of authority, on their island. Although I personally believe that this ending is about as anti-climactic as they come, it gives us readers the oppurtunity to come up with our own conclusions as to what happends to the boys after they are rescued.

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