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Evil In Lord Of The Flies Essay

876 Words4 Pages

A group of young school boys on an island, are the only remains from a plane crash. No adult survived the accident, forcing the boy to look after one another. They attempt to create their own rules, but without any real figure of authority like an adult there will be chaos. The boys have a civilized society in the beginning, but over time they begin to conflict with each other. The problems between them begin to grow and their natural behavior soon comes out. A theme seen throughout William Golding's novel “Lord of the Flies” is without rules man is drawn to their evil instincts. After two of the young boys find one another, they try to look for others. Ralph the fair haired boy found a conch, while the other boy Piggy helps him use it …show more content…

After getting over his fear of killing the pig, he quickly becomes obsessed with killings. Jacks savage behavior was one of the first to come out, hunting became his priority when it should have been to get off of the island. After killing another pig, “ The twins and Jack seemed to share one wide, ecstatic grin. Jack had too many things to tell Ralph at once. Instead, he danced a step or two, then remembered his dignity and stood still, grinning. He noticed blood on his hand and grimaced distastefully, looked for something on which to clean them, then wiped them on his shorts and laughed(58).” Jack was excited to experience another killing, he was overwhelmed with joy, greed, and thirstiness at the moment. He even began to lose his manners, he wiped the dirty blood on himself and laughed about it. The island is beginning to fall apart due to everyone having competing ideas. Jack and his hunters are focused on killings, whereas Ralph and his explorers are focused on getting rescued. These two conflicting priorities are getting in the way of the groups being able to work together. During an assembly things started to get out of control, the boys were talking all at once while arguing. Ralph is trying to reinforce rules, even when he knows the boys won't listen for long “ We nearly set the whole island on fire. And we waste time, rolling rocks, and making little cooking fires.

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Ralph’s inner conflict of the desire to rule and the desire to be a part of the hunting display both a man vs society and a man vs self-conflict. Ralph realizes at times that by hunting with Jack, he can provide safety needs, but also that he needs to rule the boys rather than Jack. As evident when, “Which is better- to have rules and agree, or to hunt and kill?” (Golding 180). It is evident the boys, as well as Ralph himself, are not sure whether they would rather have food or civilization.

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Over the course of the book, Ralph wants to create a positive society for the boys in which they will get rescued, while Jack as a Machiavellian, manipulates and twists the boys into a problematic society. In the quote, "The fire is the most important thing on the island. How can we ever be rescued except by luck, if we don 't keep a fire going?” (80), we see Ralph fighting hard to focus the boys on the bigger picture of getting rescued. Despite Ralph’s valiant efforts, we see in the quote, “Ralph was on his feet too, shouting for quiet, but no one heard him.

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People are often scared of monsters when they are young, but once they grow older and mature, they begin to realize that the idea was made up in their heads. However, some people are so set on the theory of there being mythological creatures that they do not think of the possibility of actual people being monsters instead. We like to believe that we live in a world where none of us are sane and our behavior is superb. When in reality, it is the opposite. We do not realize how much hatred, rape, and violence there is in the world.

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Ralph is all by himself, with no one else to help him, but Jack has his overwhelming dominion over the boys, commanding them to do deeds for him. The alpha sends them out to hunt Ralph while dragging him to the open. Jack is the most captivating character because he is the most violent person on the island. The hunt leader creates a party to kill a pig and chooses not to focus on getting off the isle and draws attention to an act of violence; after returning from the hunt, Jack and the boys carry a pig’s head on a stick. The description of the offering amplifies the overuse of violence with the pig’s blood on the stick and the flies that swarm it.

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This reveals that even though Ralph wants to get rescued, he needs the help of the other boys to contribute to that. Ralph is getting irritated with Jack because he let the fire go out for their rescue. This reveals the start of Ralph’s and Jack’s argument, which commenced because Jack let the fire go out, when he was the one in charge of watching the fire. Ralph decides to build a fire signal for their rescue, however the fire grows out of control. This reveals that even though the boys were smart enough to start a fire signal for their rescue, they are still young boys that probably didn’t know the full knowledge of making a fire, which caused the fire to grow out of control.

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Jack and his hunters had split away from Ralph and the others and starts to become more and more savage. After chopping the head off a pig jack says “This head is for the beast. It’s a gift” (156). It is difficult to cut off the head of a pig and it's extremely gruesome, Jack made the boys put the pig's head on a stick as an offering to some beast they think is on the island. Finally at the end of the book Jack has gone completely insane and has lost all off his innocence he says, “See?

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This is juxtaposed with Jack wanting to hunt yet again. Jack takes the boys and uses them to assist in killing the pig, but, coincidentally, a ship passes the island while Jack has the boys that were responsible for keeping the fire going (Golding 68). This once again shows evidence of Jack’s insistence on the need to hold power. He feels that orders from Ralph don 't apply to him. He thinks he knows what 's best.

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Without any adult supervision or guidance, the boys are forced to systematically establish a firm set of rules and duties, in order to coexist on the island. At first everyone, is glad to be assigned their tasks and fulfill the needed requirements to survive. However, things soon turn for the worst, when one by one the boys begin to succumb to the evil within them. With the quick deterioration of societal rules, the boys turn on one another and participate in

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Everyone can be evil, it just takes the right situation. The novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding we follow a group of boys as they are shot down in a plane and end up on a island stranded by themselves, the boys conflicting thoughts with each other cause the group to split into two, we watch as the cast of boys turn savage against each other. I believe in the novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding everybody is naturally evil. We find one of the main characters, Ralph, a very sensible person at the beginning of the novel is slowly turned into a more primal person as he is seen acting animalistic near the end of the book.

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Throughout the novel of Lord of the Flies, William Golding provides a profound insight into human nature. Golding builds on a message that all human beings have natural evil inside them. To emphasize, the innate evil is revealed when there’s lack of civilization. The boys are constantly faced with numerous fears and eventually break up into two different groups. Although the boys believe the beast lives in the jungle, Golding makes it clear that it lurks in their hearts.

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These impulses, often sexual, seek to provide pleasure without regard to the cost” (Henningfeld). Jack continuously exhibits such impulses in addition to openly violent ones throughout the novel. At the conclusion of the very first chapter of the novel, he foreshadows his sadistic tendencies when he very nearly kills a pig. Later, he is shown acclimating to his environment (i.e. the forest) and refining his hunting abilities. All of these events lead up to Jack’s eventual split from Ralph’s rule and his complete succumbing to his negative impulses.

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Evil has always been evident, throughout the history of man examples of evil are apparent, so why would our literature be any different? Written in 1959 William Golding's novel Lord of the Flies is no different, as its theme explores the natural evils of man through the plot. The book tells of the events that occur after a group of young boys are marooned on an island, the main characters Ralph, Jack, Piggy, and Simon, grapple with finding food and water while they struggle with the return of more animalistic instincts without the guiding hand of civilization. The intrinsic evil and unavoidable sins of man are are exposed through William Golding’s characterization and overlying themes in Lord of the Flies. Man as an individual carries evil

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