To What Extent Are Kids Capable Of Murder Essay

Gloria-Gabrielle Gonzalez

Mrs.Francis

Honors ELA 11

6 January 2023

Kids capable of Murder Kids are seen as angels and can do no wrong; but when they do, something bad like murder occurs and shocks everyone. People think to themselves why or how could an innocent child do something so horrible. Children who commit murder do not understand or feel remorse about what they have done until after committing murder.

Many kids have a hard time differentiating between what is real and fake and what’s right or wrong. Many times kids create imaginary figures and believe they are real and do not understand when someone tells them it is not real. “Killing to appease some imaginary figure is absurd to most people, but youngsters sometimes have difficulty

“ ‘Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!’…The beast was on its knees in the center, its arms folded over its face. It was crying out against the abominable noise, something about a body on the hill” (Golding 152). The boys kill Simon because they believe it is the beast trying to attack them. They are blinded by their imagination of this “beast” that they can not see; it is just Simon. Kids get so caught up in the moment that they do not understand what they are doing and when the realization hits and they understand what they did, they think it was not them and they had nothing to do with it. “Insensitive to risk, they think almost exclusively about the short term and have limited empathy for others” (Fox). In Lord of the Flies Piggy tries to convince Ralph that they had nothing to do with Simon's death and what happened was an accident. “ He jumped to his feet and stood over Ralph. ‘ It was dark. There was that- bloody dance. There was lightning and thunder and rain. We was scared!’ ‘I wasn’t scared,’ said Ralph slowly, ‘I was- I don’t know what I was.’ ‘We was scared!’ said Piggy excitedly. ‘ Anything might have happened. It wasn’t what you said.’ He was gesticulating, searching for a formula”(Golding 156). Ralph realizes what they did to Simon but Piggy tries to deny what they

“The suspects are painted as children without a conscience, which is rarely the reality. The real reasons are often difficult to pinpoint and sometimes just not possible to decipher”(Robertson). In Lord of the Flies the boys put up “masks” to conceal their real identity and are behaving differently because they have disconnected with who they really are so they do not have to take ownership for what they have done. But when the officer finds them that changes. “His voice rose under the black smoke before the burning wreckage of the island; and infected by that emotion, the other little boys began to shake and sob too”(Golding 202). When Ralph looks back on the island after finding the naval officer, all the violence that he and the boys witnessed or took part in that they had once hidden behind a “mask” was removed and their emotions took over. Most of the time kids do things and no one really knows why or what made them do it. "Kids' crimes tend not to be premeditated or well thought out"(Goodwin). In Lord of the Flies the boys do not purposely kill Piggy or Simon but their savageness took over. “High overhead, Roger, with a sense of delirious abandonment, leaned all his weight on the lever… The rock struck Piggy a glancing blow from chin to knee; the conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist… Piggy fell forty feet and landed on his back across the square red