Evil In Lord Of The Flies

All Humans Have the Capacity for Evil

As members of society, we have been taught morals and ethics that build our character. Despite the large role our environment plays in establishing our moral principles, social surroundings can influence a person to contradict them. Through this, one can become vulnerable to being consumed by evil. With an increasingly bad environment, corruption progresses. One’s removal from civilization wherein there are rules and order, can influence the manifestation of one’s innate savagery and evilness, which ultimately results to a diminished way of thinking.

Lord of the Flies, a novel written by author William Golding, narrates the experiences of a group of young British boys who are stranded on a deserted island and removed from society. Golding meticulously depicts the boys’ effort for survival on their own without parental guidance and supervision. The boys have been removed from a society where there were rules and orders to follow. Thus, when

This is evident in Golding’s The Lord of the Flies, in which the boys become vulnerable to being consumed by evil. With the increasingly bad environment, corruption begins to thrive on the island. Initially, Piggy’s glasses supported the boys in their efforts to produce a signal fire as part of their tactic to obtain help, “Piggy! Have you got any matches?...His specs–use them as burning glasses!...My specs!” howled Piggy. “Give me my specs!” (Golding 55-56). However, further in the novel, Jack breaks Piggy’s glasses. This act not only leads to Piggy’s physical loss of his vision, but it also represents the boys’ loss of their vision of civilization. This signifies the contentment the boys have on the island, wherein there is no societal law and order. Thus, as people begin to refuse moral principles, they succumb to their innate evil human