Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Can literature influence human behavior
Fate versus free will literature
Fate and Free Will novels
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
The issue on whether man is good or evil has been debated over several generations. In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, a group of young boys are stranded on an uninhabited island. In the beginning, the boys have fun and are carefree while adventuring on the island. With no adults around to tell them how to behave, the boys declare war on one another and face several conflicts. These conflicts provide Golding with the opportunity to explore the idea that society restrains the evil intentions of human nature.
Early on in the novel, the boys manage to follow the rules of society by choosing a leader. With no adult supervision, the boys can do whatever they want. They even seem carefree when Golding states, “He patted the palm trunk softly,
…show more content…
and, forced at last to believe the reality of the island, laughed delightedly again and stood on his head”(10). This quote explains how free Ralph is feeling without any adults. They feel free, but they are under control. The group decides that they should have a leader to be in charge when the boys say, “‘Let him be chief with the trumpet thing’”(Golding 22). They are referring to Ralph, who blew a conch to gather the group. The conch is a symbol of authority and rules, so whoever possesses it has power. The conch keeps order within the group for some time; at least until the boys grasp the knowledge of their true freedom. Further on in the novel, the boys start to unravel with their thirst for freedom.
In this first instance, the boys push for their freedom. The boys still have the rules of society in the back of their minds, however, they are about to go over the edge. Roger is contemplating on whether or not he should harm a child when Golding writes,“Roger stooped, picked up a stone, aimed, and threw it at Henry- threw it to miss… round the squatting child was the protection of parents and school and policemen and the law”(62). This quote shows that Roger’s violent actions were minimized because of the thought of how doing so would affect him at home. When Roger realizes this, he decides it’s not worth it to hit the young boy. The boys also become more violent on the hunts. Jack wants to kill the pigs so they can have meat, but is that the only reason he’s doing this? After they hunt, the group feasts on the pig they killed and reenact the scene. The boys become more violent with their words and actions when golding states, “Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Bash her in”(75). This shows how the boys go from being free with rules to being violent with no consequences. This displays the violence hidden within the boys and how they might use violence
again. Towards the end of the novel, the boys are extremely violent and lose all of what they have learned from society.. In the end, Jack goes off on his own and creates a new tribe with his hunters. This new tribe resorts to stealing from Ralph’s group. They steal fire and Piggy’s glasses, and even kill Simon, “At once the crowd surged after it, poured down the rock, leapt onto the beast, screamed, struck, bit, tore” (Golding 153). This occurs after they “mistake” Simon for the beast, an animal representation of the evil inside them. In an attempt to get Piggy’s glasses back, something goes terribly wrong. Golding shows that Roger has become more violent when he writes, “The rock struck Piggy a glancing blow from chin to knee; the conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist”(181). This shows that Roger let a boulder roll down and hit Piggy. Also, it shows that the only piece of rule is broken. The violence within the group has excelled to murder. Another instance where their violence has increased is located in the text, “Roger sharpened a stick at two ends. Ralph tried to attach meaning to this but could not”(Golding 190). As mentioned in the quote, the meaning is attached to when they killed a pig, sharpened a stick at both ends, and put the pig head on it. This means the boys are hunting for Ralph and when they find him they are going to put his head on a stick. This shows extreme violence and madness that is occurring on the island. Even though savagery surrounds Ralph, he fights to stay civilized. Savagery can be found in all humans and can be controlled by society. Ralph sees two of his friends get killed by the savages and battles them to stay sane. Without society, a person’s evil intentions surface and are projected for the whole world to see.
William Golding’s Lord of the Flies portrays the lives of young British boys whose plane crashed on a deserted island and their struggle for survival. The task of survival was challenging for such young boys, while maintaining the civilized orders and humanity they were so accustomed too. These extremely difficult circumstances and the need for survival turned these innocent boys into the most primitive and savaged mankind could imagine. William Golding illustrates man’s capacity for evil, which is revealed in man’s inherent nature. Golding uses characterization, symbolism and style of writing to show man’s inhumanity and evil towards one another.
Mankind is innately evil. The allegorical novel, The Lord of the Flies, allows for little interpretation about human nature. William Golding depicts the idea, “evil is an inborn trait of man” (Golding). Throughout the novel the children who have crash landed on the island begin to uncover their savage nature. Although all of the children somehow succumb to a heinous behaviour, Jack, Ralph, and Roger become most noticeably corrupt. Ultimately, it becomes clear that malicious intent is intrinsic in mankind.
When viewing the atrocities of today's world on television, the starving children, the wars, the injustices, one cannot help but think that evil is rampant in this day and age. However, people in society must be aware that evil is not an external force embodied in a society but resides within each person. Man has both good qualities and faults. He must come to control these faults in order to be a good person. In the novel Lord of the Flies, William Golding deals with this same evil which exists in all of his characters. With his mastery of such literary tools as structure, syntax, diction and imagery, The author creates a cheerless, sardonic tone to convey his own views of the nature of man and man’s role within society.
Evil is an inescapable consequence of human nature, and in the correct setting, this intrinsic evil of humanity will emerge. In Lord of the Flies, the island acts as a microcosm presenting the real world, yet it is left uncharted to creating a bare environment away from the destructive nature of humanity. The novel explores the notion in which man destroys every beautiful environment they settle in, and that when in a bare setting, free of social construct, the evil and primal urges would surface. When the boys first arrive on the island, Golding paints it to be beautiful and not yet spoiled by man, highlighted in the use of personification in ‘the palm-fronds would whisper, so that spots of blurred sunlight slid over their bodies’ which creates
When Ralph sees the naval officer that appears on the island to save them, he realizes that he will return to civilization. The shock causes him to reflect on what has happened. The rescue does not produce joy; instead he feels despair at what he has been through. He is awakened to the reality that he will never be the same. He has lost his innocence and learned about the evil that lurks within himself and all men through his experiences on the island. Ralph’s revelation to his loss of innocence and societal order among the boys is exemplified through the collapse of the attempted Democratic government, the killing of the pig, and the death of Piggy and Simon.
The psychology of evil is vital to understanding why Jack and Ralph progress through the story as they do. In Lord of the Flies, evil is an undoubted key to life on the island. The main characters in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies demonstrate Zimbardo’s “Seven Social Processes that Grease the Slippery Slope of Evil,” most notable mindlessly taking the first step, blind obedience to authority, and de-individualization of self.
The novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding used a group of British boys beached on a deserted island to illustrate the malicious nature in mankind. Lord of the Flies dealt with the changes the boys underwent as they gradually adapted to the freedom from their society. William Golding's basic philosophy that man was inherently evil was expressed in such instances as the death of Simon, the beast within the boys, and the way Ralph was fervently hunted.
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.
Inherent evil is found in many places, particularly within humans. It usually is not present however, where law and order are present. In his novel, Lord Of The Flies, William Golding shows how difficult it is to remain innocent and pure, rather than corrupted and evil where no social order exists. When a group of young British boys crash on a n island, they try to act civilized and good. While the adult world is caught in an atomic war, these twelve year old boys struggle to remain orderly. Roger seems good at first, but commits evil deeds, like murder. Ralph becomes the chief, elected by the boys. Jack, another boy, tries to usurp Ralph's job as chief. Using Roger, Ralph and Jack, William Golding illustrates inherent evil in the human condition when outside forces are absent.
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 backdrop of an external war, exigently explores mankind's potential for evil.
Despite being from in two different time periods, Lord of the Flies by Golding and Othello by Shakespeare , Shakespeare and Golding both share a common theme of good versus evil; the characters Simon and Desdemona share the interest of purity and represent a God/Goddess while being challenged by the unholy or the evil. Jack, dark and evil character and Iago, dark and masterminded character share the characteristic of being evil or unholy. Unfortunately in both instances, evil takes over and cannot be a pure individual. The evil inside them takes over their heart but does not really control them, even in their most brutal murders, they still maintain to be themselves and not get absorbed by evil and turn insane.
This paper will explore the three elements of innate evil within William Golding's, Lord of the Flies, the change from civilization to savagery, the beast, and the battle on the island. Golding represents evil through his character's, their actions, and symbolism. The island becomes the biggest representation of evil because it's where the entire novel takes place. The change from civilization to savagery is another representation of how easily people can change from good to evil under unusual circumstances. Golding also explores the evil within all humans though the beast, because it's their only chance for survival and survival instinct takes over. In doing so, this paper will prove that Lord of the Flies exemplifies the innate evil that exists within all humans.
Lord of the Flies provides one with a clear understanding of Golding's view of human nature. Whether this view is right or wrong is a point to be debated. This image Golding paints for the reader, that of humans being inherently bad, is a perspective not all people share. Lord of the Flies is but an abstract tool of Golding's to construct the idea of the inherent evil of human nature in the minds of his readers. To construct this idea of the inherent evil, Golding employs the symbolism of Simon, Ralph, the hunt and the island.
In the book Lord of the Flies by William Golding, a group of young boys from England are evacuated out of their country due to a war. The plane is then shot down and results into a plane crash on a deserted island. The boys are left all alone with no adults, no supplies, and no one to come and rescue them. They are all on their own and have to establish a new “society”. The boys have to choose someone to govern them and that person ends up being Ralph, who had an internal struggle between what is right and wrong closer to the end of the novel. The boys turn into savages, killing each other, and showing their evil inside each of them. According to, William Golding man is inherently evil, evil is in all of us, but it is oppressed by society, and comes out when there is not anything to hold us back, civilization is what holds back evil from coming out, or it is what triggers evil inside of man.
As fear grows and the lack of control rises it unleashes the monster in everyone. In Lord of the Flies one character, Roger motives change as time progresses. As the boys are all relaxing and doing their duties Roger is witnessed bothering and watching the liluns in particular Henry. Roger was throwing rocks at Henry but made sure not to directly hit him. “ There was a space round Henry, perhaps six yards in diameter, into which he dare not to throw… Round the squatting child was the protection of parents and school and policeman and the law”(Golding 62). This shows that society is what keeps people from being savage and prevents our instincts from coming out. Golding is proving that without the authorization of society...