To what extent does environment play an important role in character’s behaviour towards others?

To what extent does environment play an important role in character’s behaviour towards others?

Books: Great Expectations, Charles Dickens, 1861

Lord of the Flies, William Golding, 1954

Environment is a vital factor in determining the behaviour of characters; the books both agree and contradict with each other though. William Golding is of the view that humans share an innate evil: he strips boys of the order of society; he places them in a primitive environment; and in the subsequent story, their conduction descends from that of being civilised into that of evil chaos. He employs Simon, a boy of rare quality, to illustrate this by having him realise that the beast is not real, it exists only “inside us”. Charles Dickens writes about the corruption of an innocent boy too, as he climbs up the social ladder in this Bildungsroman. However his principal message is not that we are all inherently evil- for example his characters such as Joe and Biddy are good at heart- but he does agree that man cannot escape from man’s own true-self: Pip is enticed by the happiness he falsely thinks wealth will bring but eventually discovers the deception and that wealth does not buy real happiness. For Dickens poverty is so often the cause of crime and a lot of criminals have been unfortunate and are actually decent people. The books similarly talk about the corruption of boys due to environment- and their own nature- but Golding expresses he believes we are instinctively bad whereas Dickens believes: some people are essentially good; some people are bad; and there’s a grey area in between.

Both novels take different stances from each other on the innocence of children and how environment affects that. In the Lord of the Flies, the innocent childr...

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...rrogant. An example of this is when Biddy send him a letter to say that Joe would visit him and Pip thought that if he “could have kept [Joe] away by paying money, [he] certainly would have paid money.” Joe raised Pip as a father, yet Pip was embarrassed of him and thought he was below him because he was given money to become a gentleman. Just like London which before visiting seemed attractive and paradise-like, Pip had a great outside perception as a gentleman; but upon first visiting, Pip found the reality was that London, just as the marshes were, was a dirty place and he too became wrong with his inward feelings. It is only after Pip loses everything, has “debts” and is nursed back to a stable condition by the faithful Joe who pays off his debts, that he realises a true gentleman is determined not by wealth and mannerisms but by someone who does good. Magwitch