The Lord of the Flies by William Golding

LOTF: Good vs Evil

Change is inevitable. In Lord of the Flies, three of the characters represent how the human condition can change. Each character handles situations and conditions differently. Their conflicts challenge their existence and eventually lead to their demise. In Lord of the Flies, during the wage of war between good and evil, the true face of everyone is revealed, whether it be Roger, Simon, or the children as a group.

There are a lot of ways that good and evil are represented in this book. I am mostly going to be talking about evil. In "Lord of the Flies" Roger represents evil and Satan. In the beginning when Roger was throwing rocks near Henry, he was still good. Because he knew the old taboo of things, throwing rocks at people was not accepted. So that is why he never actually struck Henry. He started turning evil when he shoved the spear up the pigs rear. It is animal cruelty because animals should be respected when they are killed. It was just pure evil to do that to an innocent animal. Another incident was when he killed Piggy for no reason. Piggy was just trying to get the conch and speak, when Roger rolled the boulder down the hill to kill Piggy. There was no reason besides evil to do this to innocent Piggy. This is why Roger represents evil and Satan in the book "Lord of the Flies".

Simon has shown a lot of change, with him and his confrontation with evil. Simon was thought has to being the boy who was completely innocent on the island who had not done nothing bad or inhumane. Simon first act of goodness was in chapter 3, he helps the littluns get fruit from the trees. “Simon found for them the fruit they could not reach, pulled off the choicest from up in the foliage, passed them back down t...

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...hings deep down within ones self, but these unethical and dishonorable evils surface when order is lost. When civilization falls, savagery rises and this causes the equivalent occurrence of the good in people to warp unnoticeably into evil. Without civilization there would be no good. Without order, laws, and discipline, nobody would have a reason to follow even the most adequate and upstanding rules or laws. Innocence would be unheard of because in reality we are all animals. We are greedy and selfish, and when push comes to shove we fend for ourselves; Although we have been taught that we are superior to every other animal on the planet, the pessimistic but realistic truth is that we aren't, and the only thing that keeps us from showing our true self is civilization.

Works Cited

Golding, William. Lord of the Flies. New York: The Berkley Publishing Group, 1954.