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Savagery In Lord Of The Flies Research Paper

853 Words4 Pages

Are children naturally born good or evil? This question had been asked for centuries and never answered. Some have said that children are born good but corrupted by society. Others have said that children are born evil, since they tend to worry about themselves instead of others. In the novel, Lord of the Flies, William Golding portrays the boys’ changing morals to symbolize the evil within humanity.
Golding uses the boys’ excitement to express their savagery after killing a pig. According to Psychology Today, the act of killing gives some people a rush of adrenaline. This gives them a sense of enjoy since they overpower their victim. “All the boys were talking at once, relieved and excited. “We closed in—” The first blow had paralyzed its …show more content…

According to South University, the person apart of a mob begins to lose self awareness and deindividuation as they follow the group. Even if a group commits a crime, he/she would find it to be okay. Jack takes on the role of as the instigator to the boys. ““You didn’t hunt.” Simon, sitting between the twins and Piggy, wiped his mouth and shoved his piece of meat over the rocks to Piggy, who grabbed it. The twins giggled and Simon lowered his face in shame. Then Jack leapt to his feet, slashed off a great hunk of meat, and flung it down at Simon’s feet” (Golding 74). Without almost anyone strong enough to stand up against Jack (besides Ralph), he took on a dictatorship role. He demonstrated this by embarrassing Piggy to warn everyone the consequences of not working for him. Instead of people helping him out, they all laugh at him and taunt him with the nickname ‘Fatty’. Piggy attempted to stand up for himself against everyone, but nobody gave him any respect. The aggressive act only encouraged Jack and his followers to continue their harsh treatment for their own pleasure. Jack reinforced Golding’s idea of the vileness in people. The boys with stronger morals (Ralph and Piggy) managed to protect their beliefs by intervening against the decisions Jack made. Evilness can corrupt people’s minds quickly when the right beliefs are not instilled. The level of compassion that the boys once gave

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