How Decisions Are Made In Lord Of The Flies

Have you ever been in a situation where you have to make a tough decision? You have 2 options you can either make the good decision, or you can make the bad decision. A lot of times we make these decisions without even thinking about the outcome. Most of the time you will naturally make the right decision because that’s the way humans are. However, there are a plethora of factors that run through our minds when we make decisions. A lot of times people think we make decisions based on the fact that they think we are born a certain way. Instead, I think that you can’t say that people are born inherently good or inherently bad, but that we make decisions based on who we are with and the situation we are in. In the book Lord Of The Flies the author,

In the book, we see two examples of how characters are shaped by the environment in two different ways. Some characters were drawn to the bad side, whereas others were drawn to the good side. In our first example, we see how a group of boys were drawn to the bad side, “Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood! Do him in!”(152). In this example, I saw how the author wanted us to see this specific group of boys shown as shaped toward a darker path because of the situation they were in. When they were on the island they could either choose to work together toward a better outcome, or they could let the situation make them into worse people. In this case, we see the group of boys that let the situation make them worse and they became controlled by the evil in the situation. This group of boys killed animals and humans as teenagers. These kids weren’t born this way, but the situation that they went through made them inherently bad. In another case, a different group of boys on the same island and in the same situation let the situation

The human nature of us generally defaults to making the good decision, but where do the bad things come from? We all are naturally good people, but we always make our decisions based on what others would think of us. We wear clothes based on if they are “cool” or not. Whether people admit it or not, everyone does this whether they know it or not. Additionally, according to a BBC article, written by Tom Stafford, “basic instinct to prefer friendly intentions over malicious ones”(Stafford). When children are young that is the greatest time to teach them right from wrong, because their minds and brains are developing, so they are more likely to take in the good information. If kids are nurtured in the right way then they will be more susceptible to make bad decisions. You have to teach them right from wrong straight from the jump. In an article published for Scientific American, writer Adrian Ward poses the question, “In other words, do we cooperate when we overcome our intuitive selfishness with rational self-control, or do we act selfishly when we override our intuitive cooperative impulses with rational self-interest”(Ward)? When I first read this quote I didn’t even understand it, because it has you thinking about many different things. I think it sums up this argument perfectly. As people, we generally make the decision that helps the group, but there is