My Lion King Forum

Let's look at it logically. Simba would be feeling guilt for years. A natural reaction, when feeling guilty for such an event, is to try and find a way to NOT blame yourself. If he'd taken that route, replayed what happened over and over in his mind, he'd realize that it was SCAR who had told him to wait in the gorge, Scar who had seemingly known quite a bit about the hyena incident, Scar who who told Simba about the Elephant Graveyard, Scar who suggested that Simba practice his roar in the gorge, and perhaps even recalled Scar's comment about the surprise being "to die for". Also, Simba may even have made the connection between the three hyenas in the Elephant Graveyard and those same three who showed up to try and kill him right after his chat with Scar when Scar told him to run away.

remember he was living the worry free lifestyle, he had mostly been repressing his memories of life on pride rock.

those memories were too painful for him.

[quote="FriendlyHyena"]Let's look at it logically. Simba would be feeling guilt for years. A natural reaction, when feeling guilty for such an event, is to try and find a way to NOT blame yourself. If he'd taken that route, replayed what happened over and over in his mind, he'd realize that it was SCAR who had told him to wait in the gorge, Scar who had seemingly known quite a bit about the hyena incident, Scar who who told Simba about the Elephant Graveyard, Scar who suggested that Simba practice his roar in the gorge, and perhaps even recalled Scar's comment about the surprise being "to die for". Also, Simba may even have made the connection between the three hyenas in the Elephant Graveyard and those same three who showed up to try and kill him right after his chat with Scar when Scar told him to run away.[/quote]

It was a perfect storm that preyed on Simba's biggest flaw his pride. Cub Simba is very arrogant and prideful the idea that Scar was talking about the hyena incident would only hurt his pride because his failure was known to another and Scar said everyone knew so Simba went along with it. The next factor is Scar told him to work on his roar this was a board line public confession that he was in the elephant graveyard that day but Simba is just insulted that his roar was called little.

His pride is stopping him from actually thinking about what Scar is saying. He than roars and it echoes across the gorge making Simba think he started it. Not blaming himself requires taking away what Simba thought was an achievement his roar in the gorge if his roar didn't start it than what did? A part of Simba was impressed with his achievement a little cub scared an entire herd of wildebeest, that is impressive. Not blaming himself means taking that moment away and he went into exile left his title, his home his family, his best friend for nothing. His father died for nothing, everything Simba lost was senseless.

He needed to blame himself otherwise he lost everything for nothing, there was no sense or purpose to any of it. Simba wants to blame himself because he won't let his father's death be something he had no control over. This also would explain why he still has nightmares and has his father calling out to him. Revenge did no good Scar confessing did no good him dying did no good, because Mufasa is still dead and Simba can't change that.

Simba's own pride won't let him accept that there's nothing he could've done to save his father he would rather blame himself even after Scar confessed rather than accept there was nothing he could do.

There is also the point that until Scar revealed his betrayal to Simba, Simba loved and trusted his Uncle. I doubt Mufasa, Sarabi, or anyone in The Pride would have told Simba of Scar's animosity towards Mufasa. It is also possible that only Mufasa, Sarabi, Zazu, and possibly Sarafina knew how Scar felt. Even then obviously none of them thought it sever enough that Scar would resort to murder. Hence no one suspected anything when Mufasa (and supposedly Simba) was killed.