Evil In Lord Of The Flies

In the Book, Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, a group of young boys are left stranded on a island with no adult supervision, and boys are left to create their own society. Golding tries to illustrate his negative view of humanity, stating that human behavior is inherently evil, this opinion is fallacious. While Golding argues that humanity is inherently evil, this is invalid because humanity is good at heart and it is the situations that makes humanity turn evil. Humanity will impulsively cooperate and help others in order to survive. On November 20, 2012, an article was released about a scientific study that was conducted by researchers at Harvard University and Yale, on the topic of human behavior when put into quick situations. A

After hurricane Katrina many homes, businesses, and normal ways of life were destroyed, and beyond this many people were making certain efforts in order to survive and help others. Many people scavenging for food, water, and other supplies, during the misunderstanding of these acts to help, local authorities tried to stop what would have been crime before Katrina, which was just acts of survival, “When authorities and others tried to stop the [looting], much of which was people simply taking what they needed to [survive] from stores that had been abandoned”(How Disasters Bring Out Kindness). This passage describes the misunderstanding between committing evil for helping others, the so called acts of “looting” was simply the act of good. Humanity’s hidden acts of kindness are overseen by the means of those act. But some of our actions are so well hidden, they might as well not even existed, in were our action becomes inaction. In situations humanity finds it difficult to act good or by thinking to not join in the acts of evil, but not by stopping the evil to occur, but by being a bystander or on whom sits on the sideline waiting for someone else to act upon the evil, this is shown during the Stanford Prison experiment. The bad guards were there abusing the so called prisoners in dehumanizing and cruel ways, “It's the good guards who allowed such abuses to happen. The [situation] dictated their inaction that [facilitated] evil.”(The Banality of Heroism). This quote shows how it wasn’t humanity’s fundamental corrupt or being inherently evil, it explains that it was the “situation” that caused the good guards to not act upon the evil, and thus the bad guards had no reference of what level of treatment was acceptable behavior. Without an outside party or society to choose a level of acceptable behavior, there is no way of deciding what is facilitated; logical or irrational