The Origin of Savagery Where does savagery come from? Are certain people evil from the moment they were born? Why do some people grow up as saints and leaders, while others grow up as killers and thieves? In Lord of the Flies and “Why Boys Become Vicious”, William Golding explains how one’s background and peers are able to affect who we are as people. Every single person in this world is born with savagery and vicious within themselves. How humans are raised and who they interact with ultimately determine if their true nature flourishes within themselves. Every single human on this planet is evil when they are born. William Golding, a Nobel Prize-winning author, writes, “we are born with evil in us and cruelty is part of this” (Golding, …show more content…
Humans’ true nature, savagery and violence, flourishes within themselves if they grow up without guidance from their parents and peers. For instance, after the First World War, orphans in Russia “roamed the country attacking and killing out of sheer cruelty… left to themselves, these children found a kind of elemental cohesion in their viciousness” (Golding, “Why Boys Become Vicious”). These children become violent and cruel due to the fact that their parents and guardians is not around to nurture them and teach them what is right and what is wrong. With the absence of guidance, the children’s morality is not able to suppress their viciousness and violence in their nature. In addition, an individual’s peers can have a great impact the person’s nature as well. Peer pressure can turn a leader into a killer, regardless of how well the individual is raised. For instance, Ralph and Piggy from Lord of the Flies were peer pressured into joining Jack’s dance with the littluns, and eventually killing Simon, despite the fact that Ralph and Piggy were amongst the more civilized kids. Ralph and Piggy “found themselves eager to take a place in this demented but partly secure society” (Golding 152), but without Jack’s pressuring, they would not have felt that way. An individual’s parents and peers can affect one’s nature, but they are definitely not the only
Is humankind inherently kind or cruel? Humans are the product of their environment; humans are capable of both good and evil based on what shapes them. This topic can be seen in the memoir “Night” by Elie Wiesel, a survivor of the Holocaust sharing his experience, which raises the question, “Is humankind inherently good or evil? Humankind is intrinsically kind; we couldn’t benefit if we were all cruel towards each other, we rely on each other, and a bad influence drives hostile behaviour.
Today girls are more privileged than back years ago. Several women still expect that they are treated the same as women were back at that time, which causes several women believe that boys are still the dominate sex. Explained by a woman named, Christina Hoff Sommers, as she wrote “The War Against Boys,” who argues that girls have been increasing ahead of boys, which has resulted in boys languishing academically and socially. However argues that this statement is untrue. Beginning to build her credibility, Sommers states a few of the accomplishments of women and also saying that countless women complain about being the less dominant sex.
Golding speaks of the circumstances that cause fierce behavior. Chaos, fear, and the corruption of power breed savagery. Without these components, savagery can not flourish. The first contribution to violent behavior is chaos, providing desperation during a time or event. Desperation causes people do things they would usually not do.
Whether working with a co-worker, learning with a classmate or hanging out with a friend, the thought of any of them having the potential to be evil does not cross the mind. Everyday people are not typically evil beings, but if people are not evil beings then why do they commit actions like torture, killing and genocide? Could it be that the certain people committing the acts are just monsters deep inside, or could the actions be mere products of circumstance? In his article "The Genocidal Killer in the Mirror", Crispin Sartwell, a journalist and philosopher, advises his audience to take a look at the heinous acts people have committed throughout history as a way to show us how anyone could commit evil acts, including ourselves. Marianne Szegedy-Maszak,
Peer pressure is a very disturbing thing in our culture today. In the book ScrewTape Letters, ScrewTape informs Wormwood about peer pressure. Of how this pressure can lead one astray for going into the wrong crowd. People change people. It is easier to pull someone off a chair than to pull someone up onto the chair.
A common question arises in philosophy: are people born good or evil? Many believe that humans have an innate desire to exclude minorities and discriminate against people different from them. Although discriminatory trends are prevalent in society, who’s to say whether it is an inborn or an externally imposed tendency? In her short story “Brownies” ZZ Packer intersperses exposition to show that people are not inherently racist but become this way as a result of experience and communal self-reinforcement; as children lose their innocence, so too do they lose their tolerance. Racism is a learned attribute.
This question has been asked for hundreds of years, are humans born inherently good or bad? Some might argue that as people mature, society’s influences ultimately determine whether or not that person will end up being good or bad. These people suggest that humans are naturally born of good intent. Many studies show that this may be true. In another case it can be argued that some people are born with a natural instinct to do bad things.
“A boy was born in this world with a heart of gold, but the way of the world made his heart turn cold” this is a quote take from the song by the band “Earth Wind and Fire” which is an excellent metaphor for talking about whether humans are born good or evil, to which one might say they are born good or they are born evil others will say they are neither. This brings up an interesting point, some people argue people are usually born neither as when you are born you have no perceived context of good or evil, and the environment on which you are raised will affect your morals and how you live your life, but some people may bring up the argument that out of all the people born in the world at least a small percentage must be born with evil intentions, this brings up an sizable dilemma that the book “Lord of The Fly’s” can answer. The book seems to allure to the answer to that question being evil as evidenced by the way the tribe changes from the beginning to the end, the changes of the two chiefs throughout the novel, and also even the world we live in today. The two tribes in the book lord of the flies is the main conflict of this book.
Naturally everyone is born evil, it just takes someone to teach us how to be good. When people don 't know where to turn to, they turn against each other. This is demonstrated every time a civilization collapses, people result to violence. The reason we do not commit crime, is because of the law, accompanied with the fear of the punishment. "I was like a wild beast that had broken the toils; destroying the objects that obstructed me and ranging through the wood with a stag-like swiftness.
Are humans born savages? Yes, humans are born savages; and William Golding’s Lord of the Flies proves this. In Lord of the Flies, William Golding shows the kids’ return to their natural state of savagery as they drift further and further away from civilization. Civilization is just a facade and inside each and every human there is the basic instinct of survival, and that drives the savagery within. Everyone is capable of stabbing, shooting, or murdering someone, however, everyone has their own trigger… for some, it might be jealousy or envy and for some, it could be pure anger.
The Monitor on Psychology article “What makes good people do bad things?” by Melissa Dittmann analyzes the results of the Stanford Prison Experiment conducted by Stanford psychology professor Phillip Zimbardo in 1971 and discusses what the experiment can tell us about human nature and what causes humans to be evil. In the novel “Lord of the Flies” the author William Golding discusses the effects of the theories mentioned in the article by creating his own fictional experiment with children stranded on an island during a nuclear war. Throughout his novel Golding explores the focus of Dittmann’s article; that environments and situations can bring out the evil that is inside all of us. People can act good or bad depending on their environment, and these actions are not entirely their fault because when people are not held accountable for their actions their more violent natures are revealed.
What causes savagery behavior ? Biology can make people do bad things. It can cause savage and immoral behavior. Just like in the novel The Lord of the Flies. In the book, The Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, he writes about character who are kids whose plane has crashed on an island.
In Man’s Nature Is Good and Man’s Nature Is Evil, Mencius and Hsun Tzu argue about the true meaning of human nature. Mencius believed that humans are inherently good and Hsun Tzu believed that humans are naturally evil. Is it possible humans can be both good and evil? When it comes to whether human nature is good or evil, most people will choose one or the other.
Human beings are naturally evil, throughout our lives we learn or pick up the non-civil actions through other people, books, movies, or tv shows. In “why boys become vicious”, by William Golding, he wrote about a time when he was stationed in “Russia after the first world war” when he saw “gangs of children who had their parents” abandon them or were killed during the war roam the countryside “attacking and killing” others either out of boredom or pure cruelty.
Esbensin, Peterson, Taylor and Freng (2010) implies that “ young people who have committed serious violent offenses have the highest level of impulsive and risk-seeking tendencies.” Moreover, extreme violent criminal activity being performed in front of youth increases the risk of them performing acts of extreme violence themselves. Because youth see those acts as acceptable so committng those violent activities make youths to become ruthless. Smith and Green (2007) assert that violent activities becoming ruthless and the perpetrators even more ruthless.