Evil in “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding Essay

The Lord of the Flies is a fiction novel by William Golding which takes place during a chaotic war. A group of schoolboys crash land on a deserted island and develop a faulty hierarchy in the strive to survive. The characters, including leader Ralph, antagonist Jack, the kind Piggy, and innocent Simon go through varying journeys of the human spirit in which they contend with and ultimately fall prey to the effects of chaos and violence. The book shows us what an environment of savagery and survival instincts does to the character, and how we all have the ability to exceed the boundaries of both righteousness and destructiveness. Ultimately, we conclude that the latent human character is neutral and that a person’s behavior is a reaction to the environment she or he is surrounded by. Though William Golding does not profess the idea that man is born evil, the concept of man’s innate potential for evil is central to the novel.

From The Lord of the Flies, we can devise Golding’s belief that man is born neutral. The idea is that we are born with both the capacity of good and the capacity of evil and that the way we are raised, or the environment in which we live determines how we act. This shows the power of outside sources and the pliability of our own character. Literature constantly explores the potential in man to commit the greatest evils and the greatest good. Lord of the Flies puts this discourse in an even more riveting context by testing the characters of a group of proper English children who carry the stereotype and literary reputation

Through the devolving of his characters, Golding shows that the capacity for evil lies in all beings and appears when nurtured by the environment. Ralph, Jack, Simon, and all the boys on the island come from a proper English background. They were raised in a world of boundaries, customs, and propriety. As the story continues and the environment becomes more and more brutal, the change in the boys becomes evident. Golding uses antagonist Jack to symbolize this transition from structured human behavior to the more instinctual savagery that the majority of the boys end up exhibiting. At one point, Golding describes the frenzy of killing a sow through the perspective of Jack: “His mind was crowded with memories; memories of the knowledge that had come to them when they closed in on the struggling pig, the knowledge that they had outwitted a living thing, imposed their will upon it, taken away its life like a long satisfying drink” (Golding 92). In contrast to the other boys, Jack has become violent, enraged with bloodlust, and savage. The others in the group chide him for letting the rescue fire go out, ” ‘You and your blood, Jack Merridew! You and your hunting! We might have gone home…” (Golding 93). This shows the contrast between environments. Even though they are all living in the same conditions, Jack is the first and most severe to fall into chaos because he is put in charge of hunting and becomes immersed in the act. Simon, a symbol of purity and humanity despite the barbaric conditions, witnesses the vision of the “Lord of the Flies” when finding the sow’s head on a stake. Simon sees that “There was blackness within, a blackness that spread” (Golding 201). Simon, the purest of the group, is the only one to fully understand the hold that this evil had on the boys. This scene depicts Golding’s ultimate judgment of mankind: that the potential for evil lies within us all, just as does the potential for good and that the environment affects us and determines the development of our personality.

Lord of the Flies takes us on the often harrowing exploration of the nature of the human soul. Like much of literature, Golding’s work shows the true condition of man, that we can not avoid the capacity for evil, but that we can also all embrace our ability to do good. Lord of the Flies is integral to our literary understanding of the fight between good and evil. From this story, we can reflect on our own capacity and how our environment affects both the behaviors we act on now, and those we will act on in the future.

Works Cited

Golding, William. Lord of the Flies (1959). Faber and Faber Ltd: London.