Lord of the Flies Nature of Man

Mankind is, by nature, an evil, vile, and savage species. This is nowhere more apparent than in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, a novel detailing the adventures of a group of shipwrecked British schoolboys, who must survive on an uncharted Pacific island, while seeking rescue and order. Golding’s exploration of Man’s inherent wickedness is no more apparent in Chapter Nine, “A View to a Death”, in which the group of boys, in a riotous ceremony, brutally murder one of their own. The many events of the book lead to one conclusion: In Lord of the Flies, William Golding propagates the idea that Mankind is inherently inclined towards savagery and evil, which is conveyed via symbolism, juxtaposition, and foreshadowing.

“If you mean going the right way, we’ll hunt(111).” Jack taunts Ralph into helping him hunt. By doing that Jack gets Ralph to help him. Jack frequently manipulated the boys into doing things for his own personal benefit. Jack has total control and implements his beliefs in the other boys. Even if a boy in his tribe didn’t agree with him, his tactics kept them from speaking up. Peer pressure influenced his tribe tremendously. Jack represented a dictator throughout the novel.

In our society we have our system for power set up making the understanding of who is in charge easy; However, when the boys are stranded on an island they are forced to come up with their own system, causing rivalries and corrupting rights and values. Before being stranded on an island Jack was an innocent, well-behaved child, however, when thrown into a foreign place with no society and no system of power it is very easy to destroy all of your innocence when obtaining most power. Jack was a hunter and was in charge of all the hunter, he eventually made his own tribe and almost everyone followed him, giving him a mass amount of control. Golding shows that Jack uses his power in ways only beneficial to him, easily seen when the remainder of Ralphs tribe approach Jacks and see him, “ painted up and wearing garland around his neck” (54). Jack uses his power to idolize himself and make the other

In other words Jack, or chief, is abusing his power and is going to beat Wilfred for an unknown and unsaid reason. From this, we can infer that Jack is very oppressive. In summary, the boys’ reasoning behind punishment begins to not matter and since wrong behavior isn’t corrected, the boys in Jacks “tribe” are becoming savage and almost inhuman as time goes by.

William Golding’s Lord of the Flies is a fictional work about the struggle of good and evil in man. It uses a group of British boys to show the deterioration of one’s innocence through savagery and slaughter.The boys are forced to maintain order on a deserted island where adults do not exist to maintain it. As the protagonist, Ralph, tries to keep the order and be rescued, the antagonist, Jack, wants to only have fun and hunt for meat. Ralph and Jack fight for the control of the boys, which leads to the rise of darkness and the death of a few boys. Golding shows that through the deaths of Simon and Piggy, social

William Golding’s novel, Lord of the Flies, revolves entirely around the belief that all human beings possess the evils of human nature. Throughout the novel, he shows this belief in many ways, including the boys’ rise to power, the use of rituals, and the escalation of savagery. Each of these examples show how the evils of human nature can turn a civilized boy into a bloodthirsty man. In the beginning of the novel, the boys arrive on the island, ready to make a civilized stay for themselves until someone will rescue them. However, their civilization crumbles into anarchy and savagery.

Jack cleverly promises to satisfy the boys’ inner desires of hunting and killing, in addition to using fear mongering, to lure them into his tribe. He incessantly tells the boys that if they join his group of hunters, then they will always “eat as much as they want,” which would thoroughly satisfy their natural desire for meat and their bloodlust (79). Although the boys know that they will lose an immense amount of control over themselves if Jack becomes their leader, Jack is able to trigger their primal impulses to solidify his consent from them and his authority. Furthermore, by manipulating the character of the beast, Jack successfully arouses fear in the boys, which clouds their logical thinking and rationality. Subsequently, he portrays himself as the strong leader who can save them from this horrible creature so that he gains their trust and allegiance by using the promise of safety and security. Even after the boys believe that they had killed the beast, Jack maintains his grip on them by stating, “How could we—kill—it?” (152). He artfully deceives them and makes them believe that the beast is a supernatural and morphing being that will constantly taunt them. Through this clever use of trickery, he continues their need for protection and is able to exploit their fears indefinitely, which seals his power that he desires so greatly. His inner

Human defects and the defects of society have been deep rooted into civilization ever since man has been on the face of the earth. The Lord of The Flies by William Golding , in the genre of allegory, shows us how human innocence in a group of young boys is replaced with a savagery so deep that the boys wreak havoc and in a way, prove to be no more than bloodthirsty savages. The Lord Of the Flies features evil and shows how the defects of society lead to tragedy. The Lord of The Flies tells us a story which tells us the story of how cruel and savage humankind can be and how innocence , pure and good , can be destroyed through evil.

The descent into savagery and evil that overcomes the boys is first distinguishable in Jack. His craving for power using evil makes him a clear bully. This is seen when Jack bullies Piggy over the debate of why they let the fire go out:

In the beginning of the book when Ralph was voted chief he counted the show of hands and stated “I’m chief then.” (23) Then the boys broke into applause, the freckles on Jacks face disappeared under a blush of mortification. This is the turning point of Jacks personality and he starts to rebel against societies rules. A few of the boys tried very hard to do the right thing and keep some semblance of a normal society with rules and morals, the way they were taught to behave

While the boys are on the island, they eventually split up into two groups. Ralph, is represented as good because he wants to do things in a civilised order and not harm people. Meanwhile, Jack is represented as evil as he doesn’t like doing things the “boring way” which proves he isn’t mature enough to act like an adult and solve matters like an adult would when no adults are around to support them. Jack’s attitude changes the way he is his tribe because who are savages. Jack keeps getting hungry and greedy for power as a leader of his tribe. Whoever stands in his way, he will kill them which conducted him as a savage. “…We’ve got to have rules and obey them. After all,

Human nature is quite fragile. In William Golding's book, The Lord of the Flies, Golding portrays the potential of human nature to quickly descend from an ideal society to a primitive one. All human beings contain a mix of good and evil, any of which can be brought out under certain conditions. Golding suggests that there is a struggle between the inner savage of human beings. On the one hand humans have a desire for power, low morals, cruelty and egoism that are in the eternal conflict with governing laws, decent culture and decent morality. Both men believe that the rules of civilization can easily be broken down to expose the savage human nature.

Without moral obligation or rules to be governed by, the absolute rudimentary nature of man would be on display for all to see. What would we perceive? In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, that is the thought that is pondered. This illustrious novel wrestles with ideas of survival, the struggle for power, and how our human nature affects that. In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, man’s immoral, vile, and savage nature is put on display for all to see.

In the words of the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Our greatest evils flow from ourselves.” In other words, humans harbor an ever present looming evil nature within themselves. Evil is the force in nature that governs and gives rise to wickedness and sin, or the wicked or immoral part of someone. This concept of inner evil rising to the surface permeates William Golding’s dystopian novel Lord of the Flies, that evil exists in every human, proven through the characterization of the marooned boys. There is foreshadowing of the dangers of the boys’ inner immorality from one of the boys, Simon. As the novel progresses, evil starts asserts itself as the boys cast off their innocence and humanity, and turning against each other. Even the

James Madison once said, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary”. But men are not angels and there is a need for government, because men are not inherently good. Throughout the novel, Lord Of The Flies, William Golding successfully portrays his view of human nature as inherently evil by the actions and thoughts of the boys who are stranded on an island. The catholic church’s standpoint that human nature is inherently good is overpowered by William Golding’s view. William’s view is expressed throughout the Lord Of The Flies through the savagery in the book, the desire to kill/ hunt, and the loss of their innocence.