What is the source of evil?
The source of evil is unknown but in Christianity it is caused by Lucifer, once God’s favorite angel, then the rebel who tried to supplant God and ended reigning in hell. It was the devil who, in the form of a snake, tempted Eve with the same sin he himself had committed, the desire to be as a god. After Adam and Eve sinned and fell from grace they were cursed by God and expelled from the Garden of Eden, and ever since then fallen man has struggled with his sinful nature.
That is one theory. Arthur Miller (1957), says he believes in the existence of evil that know it is evil and loves it (p. 165). The Puritans of Salem, in Miller’s play The Crucible (1951), initiated the witch hunts because they believed all evil had an external source, the devil himself, who could take over the mind and soul of those who were not vigilant enough to defend themselves against corruption. Mary Shelley (1818), in Frankenstein, has a different view, saying that even the sweetest natures such as the monster’s can be corrupted by society, turning an angelic being into an evil one and making him commit the most violent crimes even though that individual hates the evil in himself.
William Golding (1954), in his novel Lord of the Flies offers yet another explanation, that we all carry the potential for evil within us, primarily in our instincts, but that the instincts do not necessarily predispose us to do evil. This essay will argue in favor of Golding’s theory in conjunction with Shelley’s: we all have the potential to do great good or evil but what we end up doing depends on the society in which we live.
In The Crucible, Miller (1953) presents a historically accurate, dramatized recreation of the events in 1692, what he calls “one of the strangest and most awful chapters in human history” (p. 2) that led to the prosecution of some 150 people in what is now known as the Salem Witch Hunts. Nineteen people were hanged, fifteen of them women, and one man was crushed to death during the attempt to make him confess.
Miller intentionally drew a parallel between those witch hunts and the ones which were being conducted by Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House UnAmerican Activities Committee (HUAC) at the time of writing. Both were the product of mass hysteria, the one caused by the threat of the devil, the other by the threat of godless Communism. In both cases, evil was done in the name of a greater good, in effect using evil in the fight against evil.
The town of Salem was founded by Puritans who had fled England in order to create a religious community without fear of persecution at the hands of the Church of England. They firmly believed in the existence of the Devil and in his ability to commune with human beings, because for them there was no other explanation possible for the existence of evil in a world created by a perfect God.
When there seems to be an outbreak of aberrant behavior, the town’s clergyman calls in the Reverend John Hale of Beverly who is an expert in the works and methods of the devil. He arrives in Salem armed with the expertise he has acquired over years of study of the wiliest creature of them all. At that time, his specialty is a highly respected one, but Miller (1953) notes that since 1692 “a great but superficial change has wiped out God’s beard and the Devil’s horns.” It is a superficial change because most people still believe in a divided universe and that only a few can accept a unity in which “good and evil are relative, ever-changing” (33). For Hale such a universe is unimaginable. He is confident that the devil can be tracked down and defeated; he will feel differently by the end of the play when it has become clear to him that there is no evil without people.
Life in Salem is conducive to evil
Miller’s play and commentary point to the worldly conditions under which the community operated: its isolation, the monotony of life in a Puritan community where hard work took up most of the day and where there was little to do at night, and the various enmities and rivalries that had sprung up among the small population. Moreover, the virgin forests surrounding the town and extending far into the dark and unexplored continent to the West, were considered “the Devil’s last preserve” (Miller, 1953, p. 5).
Temptation was ever-present and the habit of watchfulness, both over their own behavior and that of others, was strong within the Puritan community. Evil came from external sources, that is, from the devil and his “many-faced lieutenants” (Miller, 1953, p. 33), so that everyone assumed him- or herself to be blameless until accosted by an evil force.
This fear of an invasion of evil must have added to the already great strains imposed on a pioneer colony. Considerable skills were needed to keep the community working together and progressing. The theocracy governing the town was needed to keep the community together, says Miller (1953), “but all organization is and must be grounded on the idea of exclusion and prohibition …. and the time came in New England when the repressions of order were heavier than seemed warranted by the dangers against which the order was organized” (p. 7). When individual freedom started to increase, the witch hunts redressed the balance.
The fact that a group of girls from the town could take it into their heads to go into the forest with the black slave, Tituba and perform pagan rituals and even dance naked, shows that Salem had reached the point where drastic action was needed. There were other factors, such as John Proctor’s adultery and the Reverend Parris’s divided congregation that suggested the social order was weakening, but to the community the only possible explanation for any of its adversities was interference by the devil and could only be corrected by defeating the arch-fiend.
Therefore, when the Reverend Parris’s daughter, Betty, and another girl, Ruth Putnam, go into a death-like state, it is only natural to send for Hale, expert in “the demonic arts” (Miller, 1953, p. 14). Parris wants to make sure the devil is behind the forest ritual, especially since his own daughter was involved and because his enemies in the town may use his daughter’s involvement against him. Already the whole country is talking about witchcraft.
Abigail Williams, a girl to whom the Reverend has shown charity in the past, was the leader of the group, and may be hanged if witchcraft is discovered but she will definitely be whipped for dancing. The ritual was started at her request, not to worship the devil but to find out if John Proctor, a local farmer and married man, is in love with her. She orders Parris’s daughter, Betty, to keep quiet, then seeks out Proctor to have him tell her he loves her. He tells her he will never touch her again. This is the event that sets off Abigail’s revenge which, because Abigail is a highly intelligent and charismatic person, will spread far and wide.
While the community waits for the Reverend Hale to arrive, other motives behind the discord come to the surface. Mrs. Putnam is convinced that seven of her eight pregnancies ended in death because of the devil’s work, and that the devil was instigated by people in Salem. She half-accuses Goodwoman Rebecca Nurse, who had eleven children without any mishaps, of consorting with the devil. Other members are involves in legal cases over land ownership, and Parris is angry because of the lack of respect shown him in the town, his salary and the fact that he was promised firewood but has to pay for it. Evil, if it is in evidence at all, seems to be a composite of various ulterior motives.
Rebecca Nurse is the first to see the dangers of looking for evil in the spirit world and urges Parris to send Hale away: “There is prodigious danger in the seeking loose spirits,” she says. “I fear it. I fear it. let us rather blame ourselves ….” but Mrs. Putnam rejects her plea, saying that there are “wheels within wheel in this village, and fires within fires!” (Miller, 1953, p. 28), thereby keeping the focus of the inquiry on the demonic.
Hale immediately begins to examine the stricken girls, and to question Abigail about what happened in the forest. Abigail denied she had sold herself to the devil but accused Tituba of forcing her to drink blood. “Sometimes I wake,” says Abigail, “and find myself standing in the open doorway and not a stitch on my body,” and then hears Tituba singing her Barbados song” (Miller, 1953, p. 43). Tituba immediately counter-attacks, saying the devil has come to her, tempting her to do harm to Parris but she rejected him because she loves God. Abigail now takes the initiative, saying she saw three women from Salem with the devil.
Then Betty Parris accuses two people as well, and more names follow as the girls, following Abigail’s lead, become increasingly hysterical. Hale has legitimized their claims and given them a new and important standing in the community which encourages the group in its collective madness. None of these girls are evil but Abigail has the power and charisma to project her emotions on them all; and she, while not evil, is a woman scorned, burning with a passion for revenge that makes her capable of doing evil.
Proctor and his wife Elizabeth are told of the upcoming trial, and Elizabeth immediately understands that Abigail wants her dead. By now accusations are being thrown about wildly. Even Rebecca Nurse, one of the most respected women in the town, has been accused of “the marvelous and supernatural murder of Goody Putnam’s babies” (Miller, 1953, p. 71). Hale now realizes that hysteria has hit the town but puts his faith in the court.
The tension is heightened when a poppet, or voodoo doll, is discovered in the Proctor home, with a needle stuck in its stomach – precisely where Abigail Williams was injured by a needle. Proctor protests that it is not the devil walking the streets of Salem but vengeance and “now the little crazy children are dangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law” (Miller, 1953, p. 77). In other words, religion is being used to settle old scores and the rantings of frightened little girls are being taken as evidence.
In court the Deputy Governor Danforth and Judge Hathorne are more willing to believe in the devil than in the base motives that might be underlying many of the accusations. They, too, believe that evil is strictly an external force and yet regard their own judgment and goodness as somehow immune to such influences. They have accepted the testimony of the group of girls as evidence of the devil’s influence, and when informed that the girls are deceiving them, they become indignant.
Danforth reminds the informer, Francis Nurse, of the number of people he has put in jail and has hanged. Danforth’s self-importance is the source of evil here because it influences the way he runs his court and because it gives him far too much trust in his own judgment. When Mary Warren recants, Danforth is most concerned about his own reputation as the best judge of evidence. Instead of doing everything he can to discover the truth, therefore, he tries to prove his case by bringing Mary’s recantation into question. That is not evil in itself but does produce evil.
He is equally disturbed by Proctor’s attempt at getting his wife released from prison. To him this is yet another challenge to his authority. The Reverend Parris knows Proctor dislikes him and objected to his being engaged as the town’s clergyman, and seizes this chance to get even with one of his enemies. Parris therefore sets out to undermine Proctor’s credibility by testing his knowledge of the Gospel; and, when Proctor produces a list of ninety-one names of people supporting his wife and Francis Nurse’s, Parris tells Danforth that this is a direct attack on the court and that the signatories should be questioned. As far as Danforth is concerned, “a person is either with this court or he must be counted against it” (Miller, 1953, p. 94), and those against it, obviously, are of the devil’s party.
Convinced that there “Is a moving plot to topple Christ in the country!” (Miller, 1953, p. 98), Danforth sees the court as Christ’s only defense and himself as an indispensable part of that defense. Any challenge to the case is seen as a challenge to himself and thus to Christ. He constantly refers to his experience as a judge, to the cases he has tried, and in doing so suggests that his challengers are his moral inferiors.
To negate Mary Warren’s evidence he suggests she may have been “conquered by Satan” and asks Abigail Williams to confirm or deny her confession (Miller, 1953, p. 102). Even when Proctor charges Abigail with attempted murder, Danforth remains unconvinced because to grant that he was wrong in accepting the girls’ evidence in the first place would be to undermine his authority. Abigail is the only one cunning enough to get around Danforth by claiming moral superiority for having pointed out the Devil’s people, and then going cold as she half-accuses Danforth of having his wits turned by the power of Hell (Miller, 1953, p. 108) and describing a cold wind blowing through the court room.
It is clear to everyone now that accusations have become statements of fact because there is no way of refuting them. Powerful as Danforth is, Satan is more powerful; but it is at this moment that Proctor admits he had relations with Abigail and so the trial continues, interrupted only by the girls, led on by Abigail, having more visions.
Even after Abigail and a friend leave town with Parris’s money, Danforth does not question the validity of her testimony. He cannot because twelve people have already been hanged. He must now continue the hangings at their appointed time. “Postponements,” he says, “speak of a floundering on my part; reprieve or pardon must cast doubt upon the guilt of them that died till now” (Miller, 1953, p. 129). Again his self-importance makes his decisions for him.
He is not an evil man but one whose stature in society makes him feel everyone’s eyes are on him all the time, and he must therefore protect his image at all costs. He is also trapped by his own logic. After hanging twelve people he would be dishonoring them, the court, and even the clergy involved in the trial if he were not to hang the others. Evil is done here because the alternative to doing evil to others would be to do evil to oneself, and the institutions one represents.
The Reverend Hale begs him to show more mercy but Danforth cannot impede the execution of God’s law. By now Salem and many other towns are in a state of chaos. As Hale says, “there are orphans wandering from house to house; abandoned cattle bellow on the highroads, the stink of rotting crops hangs everywhere, and no man knows when the harlots’ cry will end his life” (Miller, 1953, p. 130).
The situation is out of control but Danforth cannot afford to change his ways. He is prepared to free those who confess to consorting with the Devil and sign a document to that effect. This is the choice offered John Proctor and at first he signs, then changes his mind and joins the other condemned people to be hanged, all in order to preserve his good name and, in the words of his wife, to “have his goodness” (Miller, 1953, p. 145).
Proctor’s choice was not made for the sake of his immortal soul but for the others who would rather hang than sign the confession. He and his wife have reconciled, both confessing their faults to each other and absolving one another.
Neither of them regards Danforth as evil, and neither curses Abigail because they recognize that she is an unstable girl whose emotional problems were made worse by her love for Proctor. As Miller (1957) says, there are cases where evil “represents but a perversion of … frustrated love” (p. 167). Hale and Parris are truly religious now, having put behind them their earthly concerns in the face of so much death and injustice. The devil did not walk the streets of Salem but greed, suspicion, rage and stupidity did. It is also clear that there are good people in the world, who remain good even when their situations are as desperate as Proctor’s – a point that is made even more emphatically in William Golding’s novel.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein examines the question of evil from a different perspective. As the novel’s subtitle, The Modern Prometheus, suggests evil is the direct result to acquiring too much knowledge or, to be more precise, encroaching on that which belongs to God. If evil has entered into Frankenstein’s creation it comes from the hubris that made Frankenstein aspire to be a god. He warns Captain Walton against doing the same, saying, “You seek for knowledge and wisdom, as I once did; and I ardently hope that the gratification of your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine has been” (Shelley, 1818, p. 15).
This is the Romantic view of knowledge, that for man to possess to much of it angers the gods, who will then destroy him. “How much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow,” says Frankenstein” (Shelley, 1818, p. 35). However, he is driven by the idea of creating someone who would bless him as its creator and that “many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me” (Shelley, 1818, p. 36), and therefore cannot stop himself from doing what he knows is wrong, even if it means exiling himself from the paradise of blissful ignorance.
The monster is created but he is so appalling that Frankenstein runs away and leaves it to its own devices. Yet he has created someone with a loving nature, one whose being overflowed with love of virtue and happiness (Shelley, 1818, p. 183) but whose horrible appearance turned everyone against him. Hurt and disappointed, the monster kills the people dearest to his Creator and finally seeks out Frankenstein to explain to him how a good monster turned evil. When he first saw the world it seemed to him beautiful, perfect even, but when his virtuous deeds were repaid with violence and hate he began to hate the world. Each time he murders a good person the monster hates himself and starts to long for death so he can escape his memories and conscience. In the end he does kill himself but not until he has killed Frankenstein.
Frankenstein’s monster has no name but it is said that Mary Shelley once referred to him as Adam. The parallels are all there. The monster, like Adam, asked his god for a female counterpart, someone equal to him in reason. Frankenstein began to create one but at the last moment destroyed it, for fear of unleashing another monster. “Adam” enters the world which to him is a paradise but is expelled by the fallen men and women he encounters in it.
Frankenstein is his “Eve” in that he is unable to resist the lure of god-like powers and the prospect of having a claim to someone’s unconditional love and loyalty. Yet the moment he sees what he has made, he flees. The evil in the monster, then, is imposed by Frankenstein’s neglect , his refusal to be a parent to him, to raise him and initiate him in the ways of the world, as Adam might have wanted from the God who created him.
The monster realizes he has been thrust into an unjust world and with that he experiences a fall from grace. Evil entered paradise through pride, and so it does in the creation of the monster. He, too, has tasted of the apple of the knowledge of good and evil, and he becomes both. That is not something he can control nor does it completely conquer him. Instead he remains divided against himself, a being who desires to be good but is forced to do evil, as most men are.
This theme is taken up in Golding’s Lord of the Flies which begins with a description of two of the boys marooned on the deserted island after a plane crash, one – later to be called Piggy — fat, mollycoddled and short-sighted, and therefore unfit for survival; the other, Ralph, well-built, athletic and intelligent, therefore ideally suited for life in the jungle. Piggy was raised by an aunt in a candy store and represents over-civilized man; Ralph takes to his new environment at once, evaluating the landscape at first like a schoolboy on holiday but already adapting.
His father is a Navy Commander who taught him how to swim at an early age. Using a conch he reunites the boys who had been on the plane together, including the choir led by a tall boy named Jack Merridew. Ralph instantly identifies Jack as one “who knew his own mind” (Golding, 1954, p. 27); and indeed, as soon as the subject of leadership comes up, Jack nominates himself, basing his claim on the fact that he can sing a high C. He is elected but clearly Ralph must have a position in this newly formed little tribe because both boys are natural leaders and their characters will shape the events to come.
In the first few pages of the novel, therefore, politics emerges as a natural extension of the desire to lead and the desire to be led. Ralph has a little of the poet in him but Jack is all business, as becomes clear while they explore the island. But they are also boys, delighted to be free from parents and teachers and out in the jungle. A piglet crosses their path and Jack, seizing the dagger that is part of his uniform, tries to kill the pig but cannot quite make himself do it.
This is the civilized side of Jack, which will soon disappear because without killing the boys cannot eat. In other words, necessity drives the boys back on their instinct for survival. However, the island seems a paradise, free of dangers, until one of the boys reports seeing “a beastie” (Golding, 1954, p. 40) which introduces a new necessity, that of making the community strong enough to defends itself against an outside threat. The politics of the tribe intensifies the moment they sense the presence of evil.
Ralph proposes building and maintaining a fire so that they may be rescued but it is Piggy who insists on giving priority to creature comforts: food, shelter and security. Jack is mostly interested in hunting but recognizes that the tribe is not functioning. There must be more rules and more meetings. Ralph insists that everyone has to help build shelters while Jack wants his group to concentrate on hunting, and it is clear that his instincts have connected with this ancient way of putting food on the table.
It is not just hunting, he tells Ralph, but while he is alone in the jungle he feels “as if you’re not hunting, but—being hunted, as if something’s behind you all the time in the jungle” (Golding, 1954, p. 73). That feeling is so powerful that Jack has momentarily forgotten about being rescued. Ralph sees that Jack is interested in nothing but hunting; and in that way the narrator shows how the boy is being stripped back, layer by layer, to his most primitive self, but it will take more to take Ralph back to that point.
In that way the novel suggests that different people have different tolerances and inclinations, and thus respond to critical situations either by becoming better or worse people, as was seen in Salem. In the microcosm that is forming on the island, the various institutions that make up a society are being created from scratch. Simon, for example, is a contemplative boy, a mystic who prefers the solitude too, senses a presence in the forest. He is drawn to the hermit’s life, and his religion is that of the pantheist, at least until he encounters the Lord of the Flies. Piggy is the intellectual, a politician in his own right but one who depends on a structured society for protection. Jack and his followers are soon drawn back into the tribal existence of the hunter, developing rituals of praise and propitiation as they go along.
Conflict between survivors and hunters begin to erupt
The first real conflict occurs between the two natural leaders. The choir, now hunters, have neglected the fire to chase and kill their first pig but a ship passed close enough to the island to have seen the smoke, had there been any. Ralph’s group is angry but then the choir marches out of the jungle carrying a dead pig and chanting “Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Spill her blood” (Golding, 1954, p. 96). By now the hunters have applied war paint and are almost naked.
They are not interested in Ralph’s accusations, still inebriated by memories of the hunt. After the meal the hunters reenact the killing by dancing around the camp fire, just as hunters have done for thousands of years. Whether their behavior is instinctive or simply an extension of the violent pleasure of the kill itself is unclear, but it is the behavior of a tribe that intends to stay on the island to hunt, kill and merge with the jungle, not a group of boys wanting to return to civilization.
It is at this point that Ralph realizes that leadership involves clear thinking, and that Piggy is better at that than he is. He has been elected chief and feels responsible for his community. In his speech he covers the practical matters most of the boys have ignored, either because they were too busy having fun, or hunting. Ralph is the one far-sighted enough to see how dangerous it is to neglect hygiene and other basic necessities, but to most boys this is boring.
The novel, therefore, depicts the genesis of democracy as well as tribalism, reasonable, cooperative government instead of Jack’s idea that might is right. Ralph offers a guarantee of security to people like Piggy — “If you give up,” said Piggy, in an appalled whisper, “what ’ud happen to me?” (Golding, 1954, p. 132) — whereas Jack favors the strong over the weak. The jungle, in other words, brings out both qualities in the boys but not in equal proportions.
Ralph sees how the group of boys is falling into dirty, careless ways and he himself looks just like them. He dreams of happy days in the past when grown-ups ran the world and life “was good-humored and friendly” (Golding, 1954, p. 162). The boys need meat but they must also find out what the nature of the beast is. When they narrowly miss killing a pig the boys’ frustration expresses itself in a violent ritual, still a game at this stage but they only barely manage to stop themselves from killing one of the boys. Jack, it seems, is jealous of Ralph’s protective attitude toward Piggy. After they see the beast, their political alliance ends as Jack invites the boys to replace Ralph as chief with himself.
The boys do not respond and Jack runs off, crying with humiliation. Piggy insists on relighting the fire but instead of going up on the mountain, where the beast hunts, they light a fire on the beach. Their morale is low. Not only are they now confined to a small part of the island but the group does not have the skills to construct the facilities needed if a rational form of government is to succeed. They are wholly dependent on being rescued, an unheroic situation that contrasts badly with Jack’s hunters. Desertions soon become more frequent, until Jack’s group is bigger than ever.
Jack’s hunting group grows in numbers and in savagery. Once they kill a pig they use it to lure Ralph’s supporters away, but Jack – now garlanded and painted – lets Ralph and Piggy eat, too. After the meal, during a violent thunderstorm, the ritual reenactment of killing the pig results in the first death on the island: Simon, killed by the frenzied dancers. Jack increasingly behaves as tribal chiefs have always behaved. He has absolute power but cannot be sure that there is not a higher power than himself; in this case, the beast.
Rather than take chances, Jack decides to keep on the right side of the beast, an idea which the narrator presents as a “theological speculation” on Jack’s part (Golding, 1954, p. 231). When Piggy appeals to the tribe to reconsider the choice they have made by asking them “which is better—to be a pack of painted Indians like you are, or to be sensible like Ralph is?” (Golding, 1954, p. 259) the tribe jeers at him, and A boy named Roger becomes the tribe’s executioner, Jack’s right hand man, killing Piggy with a rock and menacing the twins with a spear, bolstered by “a nameless authority” (Golding, 1954, p. 262). It is he who strikes terror in the hearts of the hunters, thereby guaranteeing the tribe’s solidarity. The evil in Robert surfaces naturally, just as Simon’s mysticism had, in this extreme environment, showing that evil has to be the dominant instinct if it is to overcome the instinct to do good.
The only obstacle to complete power on the island now is Ralph. Sam ‘n Eric tip him off that Jack has sentenced him to death. While he is being hunted, or rather while the tribe tries to flush him out of his hiding place by rolling rocks down the hill and setting the woods on fire, Ralph begins to regress. In desperation, and operating only on instinct, he runs into the sea, and it then that a naval officer appears before Ralph like a Savior. Prone in the water, Ralph looks at the officer, then turns around to see “a semicircle of little boys, their bodies streaked with colored clay, sharp sticks in their hands,… standing on the beach making no noise at all. ‘Fun and games,’ said the officer” (Golding, 1954, p. 288).
There are evil people in the world but, according to Miller and Shelley, they are predisposed to do evil and in the right environment they may even become devilish. There are many weak people who can be made to do evil, as Golding and Miller show, for many different reasons but there are also many who have the strength to resist evil and insist on doing good. There are no demons or angels except for the ones inside us but they are rarely strong enough to make us demonic or saintly unless our environment encourages it.
References
Golding, William (1954). Lord of the Flies. Global Village Contemporary Classics.
Miller, Arthur (1953). The Crucible. New York: The Viking Critical Library.
Miller, Arthur (1957). “Introduction to the collected plays.” New York: The Viking Critical Library.
Shelley, Mary (1818). Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus. Project Gutenberg. Release date, June 2008, E-book #84.