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

1288 Words6 Pages
“The pig’s head is cut off; a stick is sharpened at both ends and ‘jammed in the crack’ of the earth.” (207) In William Golding’s novel, Lord of the Flies, a group of (British) kids find themselves upon an island after a plane accident. Even though the kids do try to survive with each other, one group of kids wanted to set up a rescue fire, and another group of kids desired hunting for survival (because they don’t care about being rescued as much as the other group). This conflicts both of these groups from doing what they want. The kids are then separated, then separate into two civilizations after some time out of civilization. One being a civilized bunch (the kids who wished to have an active rescue fire), and another group that lived like beasts, but not completely (the kids who wanted to hunt). Sooner or later, the already troubling situation has escalated, so fast that the situation becomes deadly with savage murdering and capture (this could have gone worse). Eventually, the conflict ends when they get rescued by an officer after he (the officer) sees smoke rising up from the island. In Lord of the Flies, William Golding presents the idea that most people will be inclined toward evil if there is no authority to control their behavior. First of all, if people were absent for a time out of civilization for too long (or anything similar), they could eventually turn into an evil (or savage) state. In Lord of the Flies, it quotes “Don’t you understand, you painted fools?
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