How Does Golding Present The Evil In Lord Of The Flies

Evil Within Us

Adrian Chau Humans are born to be evil, according to the story Lord of the Flies by William Golding. We were born to kill and hunt. Evil means to be morally wrong, wicked and actions that go against the common good. Lord of the Flies presents evil as an inherent nature suppressed by civilization, evil grows as power rises, and is represented by the “beast” within the story. Humans are made to be evil and those thoughts are hidden by our societal structures. The book takes this idea and separates children from all civilization, ridding the society they once knew. Everything started fine but eventually, all hell broke loose, leading to the death of their good friend Simon. All Piggy could say was “It was an accident” and “he

Jack is a prime example of this. The whole story shows Jack’s attempts at threatening Ralph’s leadership role but to no avail. The first sign of his desire is the shattered conch. Representing control and power, it was never in his hands but slowly lost its power and eventually the conch was completely ineffective. Breaking the conch shows his ambition for control and will do everything in his power to take every last drop of it. His craving for control eventually led to his blindness to morality. For example, once attaining his desired role as chief, he uses Piggy’s death as a threat toward Ralph to establish his power as chief by stating, “See? See? That’s what you’ll get!... There isn’t a tribe for you anymore! (201, Golding).” His desire for control led to him killing Piggy and threatening everyone else who did not follow him to make himself the one and only chief. His power-hungry nature led him to do unlawful things in the real world increasing in severity over time and representing the evil growing in him through his influx of

At first, the beast is thought to be a physical being, threatening the safety of the island. This created fear within the island for whenever or wherever the beast may be at the moment, so the children vowed to kill and remove it. As the story progresses the beast is revealed to be an imaginary being built upon the boy's fears and evil. Their fears of the beast were stacked and released as Simon landed on the beach. The audience immediately deemed him as the beast and stabbed him continuously with their pointed sticks. The beast represents the children’s descent into their primal instincts. As they descend further, the beast becomes more and more of a real entity and eventually becomes worshiped by all because of the god-like abilities it possesses in their minds. Each boy on the island sees the beast differently, Simon sees it as the hallucination of the Lord of the Flies, different from others, representing their differences in mentality and violence but essentially roots from the evil within