Lord Of The Flies : The Views Of Nature Vs. Nurture

The Defects in Society are the Defects of Human Nature in Lord of the Flies

The fundamentals of the social learning theory significantly describe offenders and their criminal behavior which is learned based on observation and imitation. A researcher by the name of Albert Bandura along with coworkers tested the social learning theory with several experiments on children and their imitation of aggression based on what they saw and were exposed to. Bandura’s focus was to prove that human behavior such as aggression is learned through social imitations and copying the actions of others. Walters (1966) gives details about the Bobo doll experiment and explains its purpose related to learning a violent behavior based on observation. In the experiment, the tested subjects were children of both sexes, ranging from the ages of three to six years. Some of the children were exposed to a non-aggressive adult, while the other children were placed in a room with an aggressive adult who would both physically and verbally attack the Bobo doll. The control group in the experiment was not exposed to any adult. During the second phase of the experiment, the children were left in a room by themselves with the toys, and watched to see if they would demonstrate the aggressive behavior like that of which they observed adults doing earlier. Walter (1966) describes the results as “children who had been exposed to an aggressive model showed more imitative physical and verbal

The room was also equipped with a one-way window so the child could be observed without their acknowledgement. The experiment showed that the consequences in the films that the children observed in the ending, created a different outcome. The children who witnessed the film were the adult was rewarded was most likely to repeat or imitate the aggressive behavior toward the Bobo doll. In the situation of the other children who watched the adult being punished for their aggressive behavior, the children were less likely to recreate the aggressive behavior towards the Bobo doll. After the findings Bandura added to the experiment. The children who watched any of the three films were asked to recreate what the adult did in the film. Each imitation the child recreated correctly, they were rewarded with candy and stickers. Virtually all the children were capable of recreating all actions, aggressive or non-aggressive. The different variations of the films the children watched had no impact on them. In conclusion to Bandura’s experiment, you are capable of imitating any behavior, aggressive or non-aggressive, but you are more likely to imitate if there is expectation of any type of reward.

Throughout Lord of the Flies, Golding shows his views of the inherent evil of humans. He shows how humans can be in such a savage state, practically mimicking the way of life of their prehistoric ancestors. He exemplifies this with acts of carnage carried on by the young stranded children. It all started with a slight urge to hunt down a pig and then continued on to murdering another human being. Golding shows his views best at the end of the book with the boys being rescued by a Navy crew, which would go on to war it self.

It is a very arguable subject on whether or not people are born with good intentions, and therefore taught by others the ‘evil’ side of their personality. Whether it is the absence of ethical conduct in human nature, or just the way one perceives a situation, evil seems to be prominent in our everyday lives. Humans seem to have a moral code that follows them with every decision they make, yet despite the laws of morality and society, people of this world still seem to behave inhumanely because of the act of self-preservation, human interest, and who exactly the authority figure is at the time.

In the Lord of the Flies, we encounter a group of boys who have been stranded on an uninhabited island after a plane crash. They are English school boys who have been taught proper manners and understand what it means to be under authority. They demonstrate this by their initial election of a chief and the establishment of a certain degree of rules and order. However, this falls apart very quickly and the boys’ sense of right and wrong are abandoned. What was the driving force behind the savagery and chaos that developed as the structure they established deteriorated? Was it the environmental factors they were cast into, or was it an innate biological instinct that drove them to the edge?

island is tropical and shaped like a boat. At the low end are the jungle and the

Humans are shaped through nurture in a way they their experiences and what people tell them could change the person that they are. Meaning, if a person experiences a bad situation, this might affect how they act from now on. One book that showed this scenario was the Lord of the Flies written by William Golding. Golding wrote about a main character named Ralph who was left on an island with a bunch of boys and barely any supplies. On this island, he was first elected leader and then everything went downhill from there. This character was put through countless exhausting troubles and complications during the the story. Relying on the theme that humans are shaped through nurture, the book proved that Ralph did change because his experiences showed that he lost his innocence and his leadership qualities were diminished.

The Bobo Doll Experiment was a study on aggression conducted by Albert Bandura at Stanford University in 1961 because there was a lot of debate about whether a child’s social development was due to genetics, environment factors, or social learning from others around them. The purpose of the study was to give credit to Bandura’s claim that children behavior can be acquired by observation and imitation of a trusted adult role model. The experiment was performed by a team of researchers who physically and verbally mistreated a 3- and 5-foot painted cartoon clown doll, that is designed to sit back upright when knocked down, in front of preschool-age children, which led the children to later copy the behavior of the adults by attacking the doll in the same fashion.

In the novel, Lord of the Flies, William Golding is able to use his outstanding writing abilities utilizing metaphors, symbolism, and other literary devices to establish a hidden message throughout the novel. The hidden message that Golding builds on is that there is a natural evil inside every human being, which is suppressed in an organized society through laws, rules, and punishment. The young boys in the novel are on an island all by themselves. There is no punishment for their actions, therefore allowing that evil to come out of most of the boys. All humans have an innate evil within them and that evil is brought out when there is a lack of civilization and consequence as seen in Simon’s murder,

While many believe that we are both nature and nurture, some still takes sides and argue whether we are nature or nurture. The topic nature vs. nurture has always been debated. Nature is our inborn abilities and traits, what we are born with. Nurture take the traits we have and mold them as we mature and learn new things. Scientists argue if who we are is shaped by our genes and/or the environment. In the novel, Lord of the Flies, by William Golding it focuses on a group of boys stranded on an island and their attempt to govern and take care of themselves. Most of the boys become savages. The nurture theory impacts us everyday in our environment. Everyone cares about what others think of them. One follows the current fashion. They try to be like others and start acting like them.

A feral child (also, colloquially, wild child) is a human child who has lived isolated from human contact from a very young age, and has no (or little) experience of human care. It is said that feral children are the real life experiment that we cannot ethically carry out. They question what the defining factors in human nature are and furthermore how much society impacts on our personalities. The texts I have chosen are Romulus and Remus (Roman myth), The Girl with no Name by Lynne Barret-Lee, The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling and Lord of the flies by William Golding. All four texts propose that the experiences we have as a child are the most significant ones in making us who we are.

Stanley MIlgram is a Yale University social psychologist who wrote “Behavioral Study of Obedience”, an article which granted him many awards and is now considered a landmark. In this piece, he evaluates the extent to which a participant is willing to conform to an authority figure who commands him to execute acts that conflict with his moral beliefs. Milgram discovers that the majority of participants do obey to authority. In this research, the subjects are misled because they are part of a learning experience that is not about what they are told. This experiment was appropriate despite this. Throughout the process, subjects are exposed to various signs that show them

Human nature is the “general psychological characteristics, feelings, and behavioral traits of humankind”. Between the Book, Lord of the flies and The Crucible, human nature is strongly portrayed through similar characters such as Simon and Mary Warren, Satan/Devil and the Beast, and Jack and Abigail. Simon and Mary Warren both share their wise and kind traits and being bringers of truth, while Satan/Devil and the Beast share the characteristic of exotic and the unknown, both are also able to bring out each person’s human nature like Jack and Abigail’s, which is consisted of being selfish liars. Lastly, Jack and Abigail, who both portray betrayal and the same characteristics of being evil, lying , and selfishness.

Nature vs. nurture has been discussed by philosophers in the past and by scientists more recently. Philosophers such as Plato argued that all knowledge was inherited from your parents and when you were told something you didn’t learn it you were just reminded of it. Aristotle however argued that all humans were born with a blank slate and built on it with influence from there environment. In the 1700’s the empiricists and the internalists took over the argument. They fought through letters explaining there point of views and denouncing the others. This leads to Pavlov coming up with the idea of behaviorism in the early 1900‘s. Behaviorism became the new wave of Psychology and influenced a lean towards the nurture side. It was not