In a world where people are taught right from wrong and correct morals it would only make sense to think everyone is born innately good. However, if all discipline was taken out and nobody was taught the right thing, would humans be innately evil? In the Lord of the Flies by William Golding a group of boys get stranded on an island and have to survive. After finding out that there are no adults on the island, they vote Ralph as the leader of the group. Ralph and another boy Jack do not see eye to eye and after some time, Jack separates into another group and they all turn into savages after losing a sense of civilization and morals. Kids from Jack's group now work selfishly into pleasing their needs, hunting, hurting, and killing. In the novel …show more content…
While chanting“Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood! Do him in!”(152). Simon come crawling out of the woods trying to warm the boys that the beast they thought was on top of the mountain was just a dead parachute. The boys do not listen, they start to attack Simon, killing him. “The beast struggled forward, broke the ring and fell over the steep edge of the rock to the sand by the water. At once the crowd surged after it, poured down the rock, leapt on to the beast, screamed, struck, bit, tore. There were no words, and no movements but the tearing of teeth and claws” (153). Jack lead the tribe to killing Simon. Jack and his tribe senselessly beat and tore Simon apart. If jack was a good person, he would listen to when Simon had to say and help him, but since he brutally killed Simon this shows that he is evil. Simon shows that he uses his Id personality, just doing what he thinks is selfish and what benefits him. Since he his blood-thirsty, he did what he thought would make him feel good and killed Simon. Since he had done this, it shows that people are innately evil because if all humans were innately good, Jack would feel bad and have sympathy for Simon instead of killing him. Jack’s actions are just one of the reasons that humans are innately
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. The beast struggled forward, broke the ring and fell over the steep edge of the rock to the sand by the water. At once the crowd surged after it, poured down the rock, leapt on to the beast, screamed, struck, bit, tore. There were no words, and no movements but the tearing of teeth and claws” (152) demonstrates that the fear of the beast controlled the boys, and influenced them to kill Simon.
He whipped the boys into a frenzy, which resulted in Simon’s death: “Jack leapt on to the sand. ‘Do our dance! Come on! Dance!... kill the beast! Cut his throat!
After a pig run with the hunters and Ralph, things seemed to fall apart quickly. Jack and Ralph have an argument which makes the kids choose between Ralph being leader and Jack being leader. This is where the strict bold lines of civility and savagery appear. The kids in Jack’s tribe were chanting and making a dance around the fire, they accidentally kill Simon thinking he was the beast. Ironically, Simon was going over to them to tell them there is no beast, since he just finished having a hallucination of the pig head speaking to him naming himself ‘The Lord Of The Flies’.
maybe it's only us.’ " {Golding, 107} In this scene they are debating whether the beast is real or not and Simon says that it's not. Simon believes that there is no monster, but the fear that these boys are feeling is real. The beast continues to grow within their mind, but now they are taking action on what they believe to be the beast. In the text it states, “At once the crowd surged after it, poured down the rock, leapt on to the beast, screamed, struck, bit, tore.”
This action causes the boys to go into a savage frenzy , screaming, yelling, and mass chaos, all because Jack told them to do their dance. Their dance turned into ritual killing where all the boys, including Jack, ruthlessly stabbed and beat Simon repeatedly to death. Jack had caused the mass chaos and if he had never done that, Simon would still be alive and not a corpse at the bottom of the ocean. Jack and his tribe committed murder and only Ralph recognized it for what it was: “that was murder…. I wasn’t
Envision this: you’re a young schoolboy on an island with other boys your age, no parents, and a beast. What could this beast possibly be though? In Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, young schoolboys have run away from their homes to fend-off rules and wind up coming in contact with a beast. This beast evolves throughout the story and appears to symbolize a multitude of things.
However, these boys have been taught right and wrong, and they still do horrible acts because of the evil within them. Although Simon may seem like an outlier because he represents goodness and is a Christ-like figure, he is not born good, he just becomes good out of the knowledge that it is right. When Simon is killed, it is out of pure evil and love of death by Jack and his followers. Besides this, there is no other reason for the boys to kill him. Even seemingly good figures like Ralph and Piggy “Found themselves eager to take a place in this demented but partly secure society” (Golding 152).
All of the boys start dancing around the fire and chanting’ “Kill the beast, slit her throat, spill her blood.” and everyone goes into a frenzy. Simon comes out of the forest to tell the boys crucial news, but they are all ready in a delirium. They circle around Simon as if he was something they were hunting, as if he was the beast. They begin to stab him and poor Simon ends up dying.
But although humans do contain this goodness, it is usually not strong enough to overpower the evil. Forty years after writing “Lord of the Flies” the author explains this exact concept. He states, “We are born with evil in us and cruelty is part of this. Though there is also a capacity for selflessness and love: otherwise we are denying part of our human nature” (Golding, “Why”).
The boys interaction with the sow demonstrates their loss of morality through Jack's actions. “Jack held up the head and jammed the soft throat down on the pointed end of the stick … a little blood dribbling down the stick” (Golding 136-137). There was a major use of imagery, which helped to set an ominous mood, in Golding's description of the sow's head being mounted for the beast. Jack uses this act to to his advantage, scaring the boys even further into the places of his devoted savage-servants. Simon's death was one of the boys ultimate losses of morality.
Jack’s manipulation even is used to justify the death of Simon later. Simon is brutally murdered but Jack claims that the beast is just taking a different form rather than acknowledging the group’s wrong. The book suggests that Jack knows of the murder of Simon“This head is for the beast. It's a gift. ”(146)
The want for power strengthens and his hunger increases, but what he was unaware of was the fact that he was destroying his own mind. He was brainwashed by his surroundings to think that in that situation, it was acceptable. Jack’s evilness has officially broken everyone's norms on the island. These young boys have been exposed to the wild and this has destroyed the minds’ of these kids and has turned the kids into
The collective fear of the unknown leads to the untimely and accidental death of Simon. The distress present in the boys causes their impulsive action, of Simon’s horrific murder. Fear of “the beast” an imaginary creature causes the boys to act irrational, and provokes survival instincts as a result of life threatening terror. The fear of the boys in this moment is epitomized when they chant, “Kill the beast!, Cut his throat, Spill his blood!” (168).
Throughout the novel of Lord of the Flies, William Golding provides a profound insight into human nature. Golding builds on a message that all human beings have natural evil inside them. To emphasize, the innate evil is revealed when there’s lack of civilization. The boys are constantly faced with numerous fears and eventually break up into two different groups. Although the boys believe the beast lives in the jungle, Golding makes it clear that it lurks in their hearts.
Before the boys mistakenly killed Simon, Simon was running back to the tribe to tell everyone that the beast everyone thinks of is just a dead body of a paratrooper whose shadow would form a beast shape because of wind throughout the day. Shockingly, Jack felt that it was a need for him to eliminate Simon so that in the end, evilness could take possession over everyone, including the island without any interference from