Humanity In Early Memory

The nature of humanity is to assert dominance or power with evil over another human being in order to either feel the rush of the dominance, or to rid themselves of inferiority felt earlier, or a combination of both. In the poem, Early Memory by January Gill O’neil, she recalls an experience when she was a child, where she remembers, “picking up a fistful of sand”, and “throwing it into the eyes of a boy”. The author says that earlier that day she “saw a man pull a gold chain off the neck” and “walked on, unable to help.” The person from whom the poem is being told, January O’neil, copies evil events she witnesses from others, and transfers it into her own doings. Along with the action that she is repeating, she is also trying rid herself

In January O’neil’s story, she feels bad for not being able to help a woman who was getting robbed, so she throws sand in the eye’s of a boy to try to regain her feeling of control, but Maurice had no apparent loss of dominance. He was not abused or bullied in the previously, but instead committed his heinous action in more of an imitation manner. He did not regain dominance or power, but rather was greedy for power that he saw was achieved by the other boys, so he kicked over the younger boy’s play area to try to have the same level of power felt from the other boys. Another factor in Maurice’s action was that the boy who kicked the play area of the younger boy, were older and bigger than Maurice, so that could have easily persuaded him to copy their actions since younger boys have the nature to imitate the older ones. Throughout these two texts, January O’neil’s poem titles Early Memory and William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, it is evident that the nature of humanity is to assert dominance with evil to feel the rush of dominance or power, or to rid themselves of inferiority felt prior. In order to stop evil in the world, one must not copy another’s evil crimes, or else acts of evil will become a chain-reaction until evil crimes are committed in every