In the novel Lord of the Flies, William Golding perpetuates the ideology of mankind being inherently evil. He successfully displays the boys descent into savagery and incorporates a balanced amount of external and internal dangers within the boys. The savagery on the island, also referred to as the “beastie”, only represents the boys internal battle with the savagery that resides in all of mankind. Golding ultimately uses prepubescent boys between the ages of 6-12 to display the corrupt intentions of all humans. Lord of the Flies displays loss of innocence by including murder, arson, and through constant rivalry and differences in mentalities between both Jack and Ralph.
In Chapter One,The Sound of the shell,two of the most influential characters
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The irony of this situation stems from Golding’s characterization of the officer, Although the naval officer rescues the boys, the concluding pages of Lord of the Flies show that the officer is dissatisfied by the boys inability to remain civilised while stranded on the island. Ironically, this same officer who contributes to this mystical “world of grownups” relates to the boys in some ways. The naval officer partakes in war and murder, which are strangely the things the boys partake in while stranded on the island. The idea of inherent evil is originally stemmed through a quote by Golding himself,“Before the Second World War I believed in the perfectibility of social man; that a correct structure of society would produce goodwill; and that therefore you could remove all social ills by a reorganisation of society... but after the war I did not because I was unable to. I had discovered what one man could do to another... I must say that anyone who moved through those years without understanding that man produces evil as a bee produces honey must have been blind or wrong in the head.”- William Golding. This quote expands upon Golding’s views on mankind being predisposed to evil. Golding perpetuates the perception that all of mankind, even the most innocent “produce evil as a bee produces honey”. By incorporating murder, arson, and constant struggles for power between Jack and Ralph, Golding ultimately displays the innate evil that corrupts all of