Why Is Macbeth Naturally Evil

538 Words3 Pages

Ryan Moran
Mr. Ferguson
English Honors 10
6/14/2023
Humans are natural born killers. The stories Lord of the Flies and Macbeth have characters that set a perfect example of this. They started out good, heroic even. But spiraled into evilness as the story went on. Although some might claim human nature is good, examples from Lord of the Flies and Macbeth support scientists’ claims that human beings are naturally evil.
Some believe that humans are good in nature, but the truth is we are natural born killers. In Lord of the Flies, when Jack crashed on the island along with the other boys, he quickly descended into his evil human nature. It wasn’t what made him evil though, it was the civilization he lived in and its societal norms that prevented …show more content…

In Lord of the Flies, Jack was the first to snap and resort to his naturally evil ways. The choir then followed him and then as a result of herd behavior most of the boys eventually joined Jack’s group on the other side of the island. In Macbeth, Macbeth also experienced some sort of herd behavior. Macbeth was pressured by Lady Macbeth, to kill King Duncan. Lady Macbeth was the original character in Macbeth to snap and become evil and she was the one that pressured Macbeth into it. Part of Herd Behavior is called peer pressure. It is when one person does one thing and manipulates another to do the same or to do something for them. This is exactly what happened in Macbeth when Lady Macbeth wanted to kill King Duncan. She was going to but he reassembled too much of her father, so she manipulated Macbeth into doing it. Herd behavior “often has a connotation of irrationality, as people’s actions are driven by emotion rather than by thinking through a situation” (Herd Behavior). This is exactly what happened in both Lord of the Flies and Macbeth. Once one person descended into their naturally evil ways, instead of thinking through the situation at hand, others followed because of their emotions and the heat of the