The island was a cell
A pit, a cold, dark well.
He had no eyes
Only pained cries,
For he, The saint
At heart was not faint.
In his gut, he knew,
Kneeling in the midnight dew
Our evil, a silent vigil
Our Lord, the devil's sigil.
I wrote that. It was a few years after the war, when I moved to New York to start up at a law firm there. You see, I had always seen merit in the written word. And so had he, I think. He was only twelve when he died. I always think back to him, when I see in the news about a child in a car accident, or a youngster with a terminal illness. When I see those who have left this world too young, like him. I remember Simon. He was about my age, a skinny vivid boy. He seemed fragile, as if a light breeze would lift him up and take him away. The first time I met him, he seemed like a weakling, something us children scorned above all else. He was not weak. He was not fragile. I think, he was probably the strongest of us on that island. The one thing that really struck me about Simon was his absolute kindness, the sheer compassion he showed, even as his world fell to pieces around him. Not only that he held wisdom for one so young. I remember him saying, as we gathered, "What are we, humans or animals?"
Even from then, Simon realised the evil that we had come across. For it was not, as we thought, a beast, a snake, some malevolent creature that was hell-bent on our destruction.
"Maybe there is a beast," he said, "Maybe it is only us." Because that is all it was. Simon understood that being disconnected from reality, from the grown-ups we had become accustomed to, we had unearthed the innate evil of man. The evil of me, of Jack, of Piggy, of the twins and Maurice, of the hunting choir boys, of the gathering littluns. And the love of Simon. Love that I found so hard to understand back then. That was because there was no true meaning. It was simply Simon. Standing up for little Piggy when Jack and his Choirboys picked on him, giving Piggy his only food. He was the only one who didn't give in to the savagery that the rest of us so easily succumbed to. And it killed him. As the days wore on, Simon began to lose his grip on the reality he had so fervently clutched to. Eventually, he had let his mind run away, allowing the Lord of the Flies into his head, to poison him. To kill him.
It was Jack, in the end. A selfish boy, the opposite to what Simon was. That boy gave into the utter rage that the island held, hidden beneath thickets and vines. There are places in this world that bring out the instinct that we are born with and all our lives are taught to press down, to smother. That Island was a metaphor, I think, for the world we live in. And we were merely ants, struggling against the growing tide of evil. Simon was the only one of us who actually understood our mortality, made peace with it and still, he managed to remain good throughout. I think todays world, with it's war, conflict and poverty, could learn a thing or two from Simon. Simon was good, Simon was kind, Simon was wise. We should remember him for that, and we should take a page out of his book. Simon was the picture of humanity. Have we forgotten how to be human?