“There isn't anyone to help you. Only me. And I'm the Beast... Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill!... You knew, didn't you? I'm part of you? Close, close, close! I'm the reason why it's no go? Why things are the way they are?

Simon is talking to his metaphorical Beast. This is ironic on a few levels. One is that Simon knows the beast is merely a manifestation of man, "at once heroic and sick." It is also ironic that the beast is telling the one person furthest away from the darkness that the beast personifies. This scene is Simon, Golding's Christ-figure, actually facing the evil in man's heart. Simon can overcome this evil but the other boys cannot.