During Chapter 2, entitled, Fire on the
Mountain, Ralph holds an assembly to assure the boys that the island is a
good place. A nameless six-year-old boy with a mulberry-colored birthmark on his face
steps forward and tells the group he saw a "snake-thing" or a "beastie" hanging in the
trees during the night.
This point in the novel is really
the source of all the boys' problems on the island. Not only is Golding introducing the
idea of a beastie, but symbolically this is the introduction of fear, as the beastie
represents fear of the unknown.
Later, the fire at the end
of the chapter engulfs the foliage in flames that look much like the snake-thing the boy
with the birthmark spoke about. This moment brings the fear to fruition--it now seems
possible that a "beastie" does exist. The growing fear of a beast develops throughout
the remainder of the novel until it both consumes and controls the
boys.
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