Evil In Lord Of The Flies

A group of kids were rescued after a hard time with a lot of savagery. When the naval officer saw them on the island, he got surprised for the way the boys were telling him the things that have happened. Then, when the group of kids told them about the people who have died, the naval officer kept repeating himself the same question; ‘How could you guys have lost (Ralph looking at the naval officers) the rules of civilization’?

Golding is displaying in The Lord of the Flies that the nature of mankind and society can be both inherently good and evil through the personalities and characteristics the characters have.

For centuries, psychologists and psychoanalysts have studied humans in hopes of discovering a common link, a pattern per say, in what provokes their certain thoughts and actions. Many question certain values, morals, religion, even their brain chemistry, but nobody knows for certain. Sigmund Freud’s theory suggests that human actions/personalities derive from three parts of the human psyche; the id, ego and superego. William Golding analyzes this further in his novel, Lord of the Flies, which is about a large group of boys that crash-land on a deserted Island after fleeing a dangerous England in the times of WWII. These young boys are used to entertain the idea of savagery vs. civilization and how evil lies deep within us all. After

There is a quote by Edmund Burke, “man is the cruelest animal”, that perfectly describes the truth about human nature; that humanity, at its core, is an evil species. William Golding acknowledges this fact in his 1954 novel, Lord of the Flies. Throughout the novel, Golding highlights the cruelty of children, the carelessness of their actions, and the evilness present in the very fabric of society.

“Viciously with full intention, he hurled his spear at Ralph. The point tore the skin and flesh over Ralph’s ribs, the sheared off and fell in the water” (Golding,201). This signifies the transformation from civilized british boys to savages. The loss of civilization allows them to kill their own kind with no grief. Their emotions and feelings of remorse have been lost.

Human nature is complex, occasionally mysterious, and contains both goodness and evil. William Golding, author of Lord of The Flies, suggested in his novel the belief that evil with always predominate after the breakdown of law and order. However, this is not always the case, as shown by Ralph and the boys on an uninhabited island in the novel, Lord of The Flies. The actions of Ralph’s defiance towards Jack and his tribe, Samneric’s loyalty to Ralph, and Ralph’s rescue counter Golding’s belief and instead, demonstrate their remaining good on a wild, uncontrolled island.

William Golding’s novel ‘Lord of the Flies’ is used to explore the basis that humans are evil by nature. William Golding Suggests that humans are evil by providing similarities between the features of a man and the image of the beast. William Golding uses the characters in the novel to show man’s ability to perform an evil act, throughout the novel some of the characters come to the realization that what they had done is evil but little remorse is shown.

The beast is what drove fear through the island, and it represents evil. This evil lies within the boys, but was most displayed in Jack when he decided to part ways. In the beginning of the book the boys were united and worked together to find a way home. But as soon as fear sparked within the littluns, trust grew weaker. The more they feared, the less they trusted each other. When Jack decided to form a tribe with the hunters, they killed Simon thinking that he was the beast. What they didn’t know was that the beast was them all along. This fear that all of them felt was really evil controlling them, manipulating them in a way. In chapter 5 of the book, Simon came to a realization that “maybe there is a beast…… maybe it’s only us,” (80). The boys laugh at him, and didn’t take him seriously. But what they didn’t know is that he was right all along. The whole idea of the beast being within them kind of shows how it is hiding beneath them and not really showing itself. This relates to when Jack and the others put face paint it allows them to dehumanize or hide themselves in a way of letting their inner beast out, the face paint is a symbol of their tribe and their actions parallel the beast in a way. In chapter 8 Simon encounters the beast when he hallucinates that the pig’s head is talking to him, this shows that the beast was always there, and that the boys were too caught up in their own behavior to even

Every human being is savage at heart, no matter how hard they try to oppress it. Evil is an instinct, a part of human kind, but what exactly is evil and what defines it? Mr. Golding believes that evil is intrinsic to human beings; he shows some examples of evil in the Lord of the Flies, in a form called bullying. Bullying increases the bully’s self-confidence, while it lowers the victim’s, in this case Jack harass Piggy to increase his self-assurance. Humans have two desires that conflict with each other: to live by civilization and to live by savagery. The civilized impulse we have is to live peacefully, morally, and by rules and laws. The savage characteristic we have is to act violently, using force to gain authority and power over

William Golding is heavily influenced by his service to the royal navy and the events of World War One. “Human beings are savage by its nature, and are moved by urges toward brutality and dominance over others”. This is a recurring issue in William Golding’s Lord Of The Flies, not only where characters demonstrate elements of human nature beyond civilized human beings as they were struggling in a society with no rules or civilization but also as the novel is Golding’s attempt to trace the defects of society back to the defects of human nature. The world is an evil place within which living without fear would be a dream come true. The fear inside the boys had a major negative impact on the dramatic change of human nature on society.

The lives of humankind can be good or evil, and determined many different ways. In an optimistic perspective, life is an opportunity to live and better ourselves as people, through our mindset and decision making. However in The Lord of The Flies, Jack lives for the violent and bloodthirsty moments, while Caden in Challenger Deep lives to overcome his challenges and grasp the happiness through his positive thinking. When Jack’s tribe sees somebody crawling out of the woods he chants, “kill the beast! Cut his throat!

Shakespeare’s quote in Romeo and Juliet, said by Friar Lawrence, is about the differences in good and evil forces in plants. The quotation shows how the contrasting forces of good and evil will always be fighting each other, like in the quote “two...opposed kings.” This similar concept is seen in Lord of the Flies, where Golding differentiates the good and evil. The struggle between those two forces can be seen constantly struggling with each other in between characters and objects.

The Lord of the Flies by William Golding is tale of a group of young boys who become stranded on a deserted island after their plane crashes. Intertwined in this classic novel are many themes, most that relate to the inherent evil that exists in all human beings and the malicious nature of mankind. In The Lord of the Flies, Golding shows the boys' gradual transformation from being civilized, well-mannered people to savage, ritualistic beasts.

    Despite the progression of civilization and society's attempts to suppress man's darker side, moral depravity proves both indestructible and inescapable; contrary to culturally embraced views of humanistic tendencies towards goodness, each individual is susceptible to his base, innate instincts. In William Golding's Lord of the Flies, seemingly innocent schoolboys evolve into bloodthirsty savages as the latent evil within them emerges. Their regression into savagery is ironically paralleled by an intensifying fear of evil, and it culminates in several brutal slays as well as a frenzied manhunt. The graphic consequence of the boys' unrestrained barbarity, emphasized by the

Lord of the Flies by William Golding is a perfect epitome of the belief that humans are inherently evil since the boys on the island, without society’s law and order, loses their humanity resulting in an anarchy, deaths, and a tragic ending. The article, “Violent evictions of refugees in Rome reveal inhumanity of modern democracy” written by Mariangela Palladino illustrates that society and human beings are in fact inherently evil. The innate evilness in humans today are displayed through the world’s mob mentality against immigrants and refugees causing many refugees in Rome to lose their home and face harsh treatments, just like the Jack and his tribesmen’s aversion towards Simon and Piggy.