Innocence In Lord Of The Flies By William Golding

People are never truly good, and people are never truly evil. In this world, nothing is fully black and white. Human nature has always been that little grey area that no one has ever seemed to understand. Do people have the capacity to help others? Or are they horrible people who cannot give others the light of day? The “naïve” choice is that we are good, but is this really a naïve way of thinking? In his novel, Lord of the Flies, William Golding illustrates that human nature has an evil embedded deeply inside; however, human nature is not entirely evil. People’s lives begin with innocence. This innocence can stay inside a person, pushing them to be kind. This push is represented by Golding himself with the few kind characters in Lord of the

People with morals who act genuine and kind. These characters are Simon and Piggy. Simon represents the gentle kindness of someone who did has yet to lose their innocence. His caring nature is mostly portrayed by how he helps the littluns, “…Simon found for them the fruit that they could not reach, pulled off the choicest from up in the foliage, passed them back down to the endless, outstretched hands” (Golding 56). This act of kindness highlights how he goes out of the way to help others, only out of the kindness in his heart. Simon is not exerting his power over the others he instead is using his power to help the others. He keeps his morals steady. Along with this, another truly kind person who Golding utilizes to show the kindness in human nature is Piggy. Piggy is a boy who faces the anger and destruction of those who have plagued human nature. However, he himself pushes through the negatives of their environment, and works to be a truthful person. He cares about how Jack’s actions affect people and how everyone is becoming. How it is truly terrifying that they are losing their sense of self, and becoming people who are horrible, ‘“What are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages? What’s grownups going to think?”’ (Golding 91). This example highlights the maturity in Piggy, he is one of the few people on the island who is beginning to realize how unorganized and unorthodox they are

Through those ten years, they protested, they fought, and they won. They fought for their rights and they were able to win them. They did not do this to only help themselves, they wanted to help all the other people across America who were being segregated against. They had true kindness and wanted to help people. One activist in particular wanted to help because she saw how people were affected by the racism and oppression in the south, her name was Fannie Lou Hamer, “I was going to try to get something for my mother and I was going to do something for the black man of the south if it would cost my life; I was determined to see that things were changed” (Miller 4). Hamer did not care solely for herself, she wanted to help people because of a true care for them. Hamer was not a woman who looked the other way. She and so many other civil rights activists faced this issue head on, all because they did not want all the young and impressionable people of color across the United States to be plagued by the same horrid behavior they had faced. Along with this, one of the most well-known speeches of all time was given by a man who fought for not only his rights, but also millions of people’s rights, this speech was, “I Have a Dream,” and the man was Martin Luther King Jr. This speech truly highlights how Martin Luther King Jr. cares for every single