Good And Evil In Lord Of The Flies, By William Golding

Superior Essays
As society has learned from the Holacaust and World War 1,as well as the Bosnian Genocide,all men have the capacity for evil given the right set of circumstances (Treub).These events in history leads us to this intresting question, is man inherently good or evil? This is a question that has puzzled people throughout humanity and whom could many not determine an actual answer to.Many base their opinion on personal or world wide events.Lord of the Flies by William Golding is a novel about young British boys who become stuck on an inhabited island after plane crashing.At first the educated boys make regualtions and rules for the tribe which later turn into complete chaos.The novel shows boys who gradually transform from civilized human beings …show more content…
' 'Ballocks to the rules! We 're strong- we hunt! If there 's a beast, we 'll hunt it down! ' ' (Golding 83).Jack and his hunters begin to break and not give importance to many of the rules the boys they had agreed on.Many of the boys rebel on Ralph and join Jack 's tribe,who no longer care about resuce but are obssed with hunting.A person can become obssesed with some thing and being to not care about anything else but their selfish obsession.Since Jack 's tribe needs fire to cook meat,they decide to rob Piggy 's specs overnight to help them light fire.So they head to Ralph 's location, where they badly beat Ralph and the others while they are …show more content…
As I have noted, I believe that man is inherently evil becuase they do not care about comitting murder, use violence as a form of entertainment and are selfish.Commiting murder or physically hurting another person is a very horrible thing.The boys found nothing wrong with the deaths of Simon and Piggy,who were just inoccent boys that were trying to make things right.The murder presented in this novel shows the darkness of man 's heart.Humans are inherently evil because they use violence as a choice of entertainment,the boys in the novel decided they would much rather hunt than do what was really most important, doing what ever they can do to get rescued.Golding showed us that violence is a savage urge lying in within everybody.Which leads us to conclude that humans are also selfish people, that only care about themselves.Jack beleived he was superior to the other boys making him think he had the power to control them.He selfishly used the boys dread of the beast to strenghten his own authority.Golding was able to portray the theme that evil is an inborn trait of mankind (Treub).Throughout studying the human nature in the novel it leads the reader to conclude that a humans true evil with reveal when we least except it or think.We are shaped by the world around us and we adapt to the bad and good things in the world in such a way that it becomes our natural way of life.While all human beings have the ability to be altruistic, darkness lies within all of humanity,and when

Related Documents

  • Superior Essays

    The dead parachutist shows that evil and savagery leads to the fall of man. In chapter six, the boys are hoping for a sign from civilization that would be helpful. However, the sign is “a figure that h[angs] with dangling limbs.” (95) He falls because of a “bright explosion” (95) in the sky, which indicates that war is still going on.…

    • 1056 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The more savage Jack becomes, the more he is able to manipulate the rest of the boys. Besides Ralph, Simon, and Piggy, the group follows Jack in giving up moral restraint and gives into violence and savagery. By the end, Jack learns to use the boys’ fear to control their behavior which is a reminder of how certain beliefs and superstition can be manipulated as instruments of power in a civilized…

    • 1438 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Through various archetypes such as Ralph and Jack, and symbols such as the painted faces, Golding reveals that humans are savage by nature, and are moved…

    • 627 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Lord of the flies essay Savagery vs Civilisation In the novel, Lord of the Flies, written by William Golding, there is a large proportion of savagery versus civilisation. He uses symbols and characters to look at the decline of civilisation the longer the boys are on the island. Golding suggests that all people are capable of evil. The novel uses experiences from the outside world to represent the circumstances of the boys stranded on the island.…

    • 746 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    By killing Piggy, who tries to enforce authority, and destroying the conch, which symbolizes order, it proves that the boys are rebelling against the rules of an organized society. Although prior to his death, Piggy makes multiple attempts to decrease the savagery, but fail as the children rather listen Jack. The children avoid authority as they feel limited by the rules and consequences, which increases their gravitation towards Jack. They view joining Jack’s tribe as an escape from authority and an opportunity to…

    • 1452 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Lord Of The Flies Satire

    • 766 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Humans think they are at the top of the food chain, the most knowledgeable, yet maybe that knowledge is the decay of our humanization. We know that we can beat others and have the knowledge that humans are capable of more than typical animals, so it is used. Things will never go back to the way they were. The boys have done many dastardly deeds like the murders, the hunting, etc. The boys have been taken into a whole different world and brought back to the old world.…

    • 766 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Jack is able to obtain his power by manipulating his tribe with their fear of the beast, but since their previous leader, Ralph, says there is no beast, Jack tries to dethrone him by using his control over the tribe to make himself look superior. He does this by making Ralph look like the antagonist in front of the boys “‘- I apologize’. The buzz from the hunters was one of admiration at this handsome behavior. Clearly they were of the opinion that Jack had done the decent thing, had put himself in the right by his generous apology and Ralph, obscurely in the wrong.” (72).…

    • 943 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Children are pure and endowed with a quality that adults lose throughout their lifetime, innocence. Yet, we would not know if that innocence was ever there. When a group of children attempt to build their own form of government, the tables turn when ambitious boys begin become power hungry, and would do just about anything to achieve it. This book presents itself with a strive for survival with children of various ages attempting to live while preserving their sense of reality. In the Lord of the flies William Golding uses the character Jack to represent temptation, the loss of reality, and humanity.…

    • 739 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In Lord of the Flies, William Golding wanted to bring out the idea of human evil. Golding converted throughout the story that humans should have aphorism and government in order to keep a stable environment. Jack and Roger were the main characters that showed that we all have potential to be/turn evil. The boys would chant “Kill the pig! Cut his throat!…

    • 230 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    “He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool,"-Albert Camus. The Human Condition represents the ideas, problems, and abilities that people have. People can be capable of great love; but also are capable of hate, torture, rape, and war. The main concern is if humans are innately good or bad. Are humans both good and bad, born with one or the other, or taught to be good or bad?…

    • 1318 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    When you are young you have not yet learned the difference between good and bad It is up to your parents/elders to help socialize you into today 's society to become a productive and contributing adult, But In this story a group of boys are on the way back home from boarding school, when something horrible happens with no adults left to help the boys must quickly figure out how to survive. As the story progresses you will quickly see the group tear apart. In this essay I will show specific points and details that will compare the good and evil that is in many different things.…

    • 1036 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Good vs. Evil in Lord of the Flies Does evil always prevail? Some say yes, some say no, but no was nearly the case in William Golding Lord of the Flies. “Good” and “evil” are very broad terms, but easily distinguishable in general. Good can be nearly anything with a positive connotation, but in the case of Lord of the Flies, it typically is anything that sticks to typical morals and values, whereas evil is immoral and barbaric acts that symbolize a regression to a primal nature. The conflict between this type of good and evil can be seen everywhere, religious texts, novels, nearly anything involving a protagonist against a person, force, or themselves.…

    • 1101 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Different individuals have different views on the true nature of humans whether it is that individuals are born naturally evil or innocent. A great example of one’s ideas on human nature is William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies. The author of the novel shares many ideas on human nature with an enlightenment philosopher, Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes idea on human nature correspond with Golding’s ideas through his writing. Hobbes believes that humans are born with a natural evil and will grow corrupt.…

    • 1567 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Lord of the Flies People always say that children are innocent and develop the evil as they grow up seeing the malice and spite in the world. In the book, Lord of the Flies by William Golding, a plane gets shot down with a group of British boys who get stranded in an island when they are being taken out of England to another place for safety from WWII. They try to work together to be rescued but chaos in the island quickly develops. Human nature is essentially evil because of the natural changes that occurred in Ralph, Jack, and Roger. Ralph’s changes show that human nature is evil.…

    • 704 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Golding shows that savagery has always been in human behavior but has been controlled by society. After the young boys are stranded alone, with no adults interfering with their actions, their behavior soon reenact the behavior of humans in the beginning before socialization. Golding explains that human savagery is never gone, but is only masked and controlled by societal standards and morals. He gives a glimpse of the balance between the three parts of the human psyche, id, ego, and superego. The feud between the three create a person’s personality and as a result, a person will act according to one of the three…

    • 1243 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays