Golding illustrates that time is passing on the island by depicting how the boys' hair grows significantly longer and how their clothes become increasingly worn. When the boys initially arrive on the island, their clothes are relatively intact, and their hair is cut short. As the novel progresses, they begin to wear fewer clothes, and their hair grows wild. At the beginning of chapter 3, Jack examines the landscape, hoping to find evidence of pigs, and Golding describes his appearance by writing,
His sandy hair, considerably longer than it had been when they dropped in, was lighter now; and his bare back was a mass of dark freckles and peeling sunburn (37).
In chapter 7, Ralph becomes aware of the intense heat on the island for the first time, and Golding illustrates that time is passing by describing Ralph's appearance. Golding writes,
He [Ralph] pulled distastefully at his grey shirt...
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and wondered whether he might undertake the adventure of washing it. Sitting under what seemed an unusual heat, even for this island, Ralph planned his toilet. He would like to have a pair of scissors and cut this hair—he flung the mass back—cut this filthy hair right back to half an inch (84).
Ralph's long, unkempt hair depicts the passage of time and illustrates how the boys are gradually reverting back to their primitive nature. In chapter 11, Piggy tells Ralph,
We ought to comb our hair. Only it's too long (134).
By describing the boys' growing hair, Golding illustrates that time is passing on the island and shows that the boys are gradually becoming more primitive and less civil. In regards to the second question about the beast, the beast symbolically represents mankind's inherent evil. Only Simon truly understands the nature of the beast and realizes that it is present inside each boy on the island.
In the novel 'Lord of the Flies' by William Golding, one of the ways in which the author shows us that time is passing is by marking it with meetings - just like we do in the real 'civilized' world. The trouble is that the boys no longer have a schedule that is required by convention, social rules or routine. In their new world, time is marked more by hunger, thirst, dawn, dusk, light and dark. Ralph tries to impose some sort of order that he is used to in order to 'civilize' their surroundings to some degree at least. The 'meetings' idea soon gets dishevelled (like their hair which also shows time passing by its growth) because they have no need of clocks and none of them have any other time commitments or diaries and can spend time as they please. Ralph cries out
'Meetings. Don't we all love meetings! Every day,twice a week,we talk.' (The word 'week' is a measurement of time.)