How does Golding use Simon to convey his own ideas?

William Golding's Lord of the Flies is on one level a novel about good versus evil.  Golding uses Simon to convey his own ideas in several ways.  First, Simon, like Piggy, is the voice of reason.  He is rational, intelligent, and independent.  He is the only one on the island who realizes the children need not fear a monster or beast; they must fear themselves.  The beast lives inside of all of them.  When the boys mistake the dead parachutist for the beast, Simon is the one who eventually discovers that there is no beast waving and flailing from the top of the mountain.  However, before he is able to convince the boys that there is no beast, he is savagely beaten to death by the others.  Obviously, Golding's hope for human nature must have been fairly low if Simon, a character who is beaten to death, was a representation of his ideas!