Key learning points

1. Simon wakes up after fainting, sees the parachutist and realises the boys have mistaken the dead body for the beast.
2. Simon goes to Jack's feast to tell the boys that the beast is not real.
3. Jack's feast becomes a frenzy as the boys perform a hunting dance - even Ralph and Piggy join in.
4. The boys mistake Simon for the beast and savagely kill him with their hands and teeth.
5. Golding uses pathetic fallacy to describe how the tension builds, explodes and reduces in this chapter.

Keywords

• Hallucinatory - relating to experiences in which you see, hear, feel or smell something that does not exist

• Collective - shared by every member of a group

• Pathetic fallacy - the projection of human emotions onto non-human objects found in nature

• Tension - a feeling of anxiety or nervousness before a significant event

• Connotations - a feeling or idea that is suggested by a word in addition to its basic meaning

Common misconception