The Ideas Of Evil In William Golding's Lord Of The Flies

The Lord of the Flies by William Golding is a novel about a group of boys stranded on an island with no adults and no rules. Golding believes that humans all have a capability to do wrong, and through The Lord of the flies portrays how certain situations make a human’s capacity for evil more prominent. Golding shows how the boys’ civilization deteriorates from being good British kids to murderous savage people. The novel can easily be connected to the Stanford Prison Experiment, and how what happened to the boys on the island can happen outside the realm of fiction. Golding shows the reader what the Lord of the Flies is in the book and how the namesake of the book is found in all of us.

The concept of Exploring Transitions is presented through the text, ‘The Story of Tom Brennan’ by J.C Burke. ‘The Story of Tom Brennan,’ is about the transition of immaturity to maturity and the adversities that come with moving from one town to another. The transition that are present throughout this story are mental and physical transitions. Similarly, the aspects of mental transition is also in ‘Song of the Sea,’ of Ben who feels little obligation to his sister, Saoirse due to his mother’s disappearance. Saoirse also goes through a mental and physical transition throughout their journey.

When humans are pushed to survive, they are willing to do anything to do so. In the novel “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding, a group of boys are stranded on an island and have to survive, however as the story progresses the boys become more barbaric and savage like. Even though there are good people in this world, there will always be evil. Why does evil exist? Golding’s belief of human nature is that humans are naturally evil and savage. However, law and civility keep humans from turning into this natural state of evil and Golding uses the development of Jack to show how savagery is created.

Throughout the novel Lord Of The Flies, the boys on the island are continuously faced with numerous fears. Subsequently there is nothing on the island which they fear more than the beast. The beast is not a tangible object that can be killed or destroyed by conventional means, but an idea symbolizing the primal savage instincts within all people. Its Golding’s intention to illustrate the innate evil inside man through his view of human nature, the actions of the Jack and his tribe, and the relationship between the beast and the school boys.

Although humankind attempts its best at preventing evil actions, eventually evil rises above all else. While humans are living ordinary lives and living in ignorance, evil is always scheming and waiting to slide up behind the turned backs of society as depicted in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. One could argue that this is not the case and that good deeds always overshadow evil and that evil is just an occasional blip. However, what one’s opinion of society does not outshine the cold hard facts of humankind’s natural tendencies; specifically, how things are never as they seem, how easily humans can betray their emotions and how humans choose to ignore difficult situations in the search for an easy

Knowing William Golding took part of World War II, we as readers can understand why Golding wrote Lord of the Flies and other survival-fiction novels. When the story was released in 1954, Golding described his book as "an attempt to trace the defects of society back to the defects of human nature." It is unmistakably obvious to anyone who reads this book that Golding is trying to exaggerate the good and evil in the boys on the island. Throughout the book, we learn that people, including children, are not pure goodness. Deep inside there is an evil constantly trying to rise to the surface of our minds. Golding proves that eventually the evil within us will destroy us. Golding saw in World War II what

‘Lord of the Flies’ is based almost entirely on Golding’s view that evil is an inherent force in every man, “man produces evil as a bee produces honey”. Golding acquired this belief while he was a soldier in the Second World War. From that point on, he became extremely pessimistic about human nature, calling it “the disease of being human”. This belief is shown very clearly, as he puts ‘innocent’ children on a deserted island, free of all corruption; free of an external threat, therefore with no need of an army; abundant in food and supplies, therefore with no need to steal. Therefore, what evil was left could only come from the

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth. After having created everything on Earth, He made man. “The Lord God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.’”(NIV Genesis 2:15). Thus, He made Eve from the rib of Adam. God told Adam and Eve not to eat from the tree of knowledge but the evil serpent, who was craftier than them, tricked Eve into eating the fruit. Eve later convinced Adam after having argued with him and he gave in. Both were punished by God for having gone against His word and would suffer the consequences of it. “So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After He drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden a cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life” (Genesis 3:23-24).

wrote this after publishing Lord of the Flies. It is our world, in the form of a story. The two leaders in the story are Ralph and Jack. Ralph starts off a comfortable leader of the boys, but by the end of the book, Ralph and his companion Piggy are alone facing Jack and the rest of the boys. As the novel progresses and the society on the island starts to change, so does Ralph. He begins thinking he has all the answers, but comes to realize that without Piggy he would have never gotten this far. By the end of the book, Ralph and Jack are complete opposites. Jack is about savagery and fun while Ralph is holding on to society, rules, and civilization. Appearing to be a weak leader due to defection of his followers, Ralph is actually dedicated and insightful, only loosing his followers because he could not compete with one category that attracts nearly everyone in the world: fun.

Many years ago, Charles Darwin introduced a theory that we humans are a species which evolved from animals that have inhabited the Earth for many years, and he believed that we were civilized, intelligent, and logical life forms for these very reasons. In the novel, Lord of the Flies by William Golding there is a prominent theme of good versus evil which reveals that maybe humans are not the civilized human beings that they were said to be. William Golding carefully netted this theme with his utilization of literary device such as his symbolism. Golding uses this simple story of English boys stranded on an inhabited island to illustrate how destructive humans can be when implanted in a impoverished environment where they

The Ashanti tribe is located in central Ghana in the rainforest of West Africa. They are the major ethnic group in this roughly 50 years-old young nation. The Ashanti people are known as fierce fighters whether they are women or man. The tribe have a slogan: “If I go forward I die, If I go backward I die, better go forward and die.” (Baden-Powell) When they are faced by a war, you can hear drums from the villages to signal each others. The Ashanti religion combines both spiritual and supernatural powers. They believe that every living thing have souls, including plants and animals. They believe that there are fairies, monsters and witches, and their religious belief surrounds an all-powerful, all-knowing god called “Onyame”. In this research

One of the most crucial components of a storyline is the theme. It is the central message of the story. In the novel Lord of The Flies by William Golding, the message is that even the purest of hearts contain an innate animalistic behaviour. As suggested in the story, savagery is inherent in all beings because true evil lies within one’s genetics, personality, and their surroundings.

Every human being is savage at heart, no matter how hard they try to oppress it. Evil is an instinct, a part of human kind, but what exactly is evil and what defines it? Mr. Golding believes that evil is intrinsic to human beings; he shows some examples of evil in the Lord of the Flies, in a form called bullying. Bullying increases the bully’s self-confidence, while it lowers the victim’s, in this case Jack harass Piggy to increase his self-assurance. Humans have two desires that conflict with each other: to live by civilization and to live by savagery. The civilized impulse we have is to live peacefully, morally, and by rules and laws. The savage characteristic we have is to act violently, using force to gain authority and power over

I walk into a library and sit down. Looking around, I feel overwhelmed by the massive amount of volumes, editions, and anthologies resting in their respective places on the shelves around me. For a moment, I contemplate. If I start reading now and halt several years from now, I will not even come close to putting a dent in the amount of information around me. How insignificant one feels when surrounded by the unknown.

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