Not all the boys on the island will admit it, but homesickness is one of the greatest challenges the Lord of the Flies characters face. Some take it worse than others: Percival lies in the grass chanting his address, but his “incantation. . .[is] powerless to help him.” At one point, Ralph sarcastically suggests to Piggy that he write his auntie a letter, and Piggy laments that he has no envelope or stamp. These are still little kids, after all, who have spent their short lives communicating with the adults in their lives about everything.
The sensitive, visionary Simon holds a special place in my heart. He is the island’s poet and prophet— passionate, misunderstood, and at the mercy of all the island’s “beasts.”
I wanted to get into Simon’s head a little more deeply, so I wrote an epistolary poem—that is, a poem in the form of a letter—in his voice. As Atticus says in another one of my favorites, To Kill a Mockingbird, “you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them.” Standing in Simon’s shoes for a bit brought me a little closer to understanding this complex character:
Dear Mum,
I fainted again today,
and while I was out,
I dreamed of us picking fruit
behind the house—
I reaching into the vines,
you filling your apron
with blackberries.
My mouth was full of juice!
Then I woke up
to the same cracked lips
and a dozen boys kicking me
in the ribs.
But I’ve made myself
a new house of creepers.
Sometimes I go there
to hum old choir tunes.
Mostly I stare through
my overgrown hair
and the frenzy of leaves
as I try to understand
the crash landings
of all these hearts.
The boys are filling with poison,
Mum, but I want to save
them. Wrap them up
in your knitted blankets.
It’s so hard to explain.
If I don’t make it back,
please trust I’ll be okay.
I’ll be safe out there
in the ocean
with all the other forgotten beasts
floating with the moonbeams
and jellyfish.
Love,
Simon
Your Turn: Poetry Prompt
Write your own “letter home poem” in the voice of a character from Lord of the Flies. Remember to incorporate details and images from the novel as you get into your character’s shoes.
Photo by Josselin Berger, Creative Commons license via Flickr. Post by Tania Runyan.
See more Lord of the Flies poems
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