Hey folks,
It has also been more than a decaded since I read the novel, but my wife and I just watched the 1963 film again last night. The book was written about 1954 or 1955, and, as I recall the planload of boys crash landed on a South Pacific island during or shortly after some unnamed war.
On one level, the beast was initially created in the boys' imaginations upon hearing frightening noises in the jungle at night. A pilot, presumably from the war some time earlier, had ejected from his airplane by parachute, was killed upon landing, and decomposed in his 1950s jet type flight suit. The skeletal remains in the flight suit with helmet and oxygen mask were later seen by several of the boys, but they obviously did not recognize it for what it was. Their fright and imaginations caused them to only look at it very briefly before taking flight in fear of the "beast" they thought it was. Later in the film, another boy discovers the dead pilot, takes the time to view the parachute, flight suit, and helmet, and he obviously recognizes it as a dead pilot and realizes it is not a "beast."
On another level, the beast may be the potential for savagery in otherwise civilized people when we stop practicing rational thought and substitute mysterious ideas and invent unsupported dogma.
It seems somewhat like the idea, "We have met the beast, and he is we."
I read this book as a fairly young lad when it first came out, and I was captivated by it. I also thought the 1963 film was also very good in its own right.
Best wishes,
Dave Wile
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