Humanity In Lord Of The Flies

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The Evil of Humanity Humans are all naturally evil. It sounds hard to believe since most people try their best to be good, but, it’s true. When someone is in an intense situation, they don’t need morals, they just need to survive. One novel that brilliantly shows this is Lord of the Flies by William Golding. Golding wrote about a group of young boys who are stranded on an island and lose their sense of civilization and humanity. Golding’s major argument throughout the novel is that evil is an inborn trait of mankind due to: the boys’ evil being brought into the island, the constant appearances of the ‘beast,’ and how the characters react to their loss of order. When the boys arrive on the island, their downfall into savagery starts to occur.…show more content…
The island is gorgeous, and it’s practically paradise. There’s animals, pigs, fruit, and it’s a very scenic area. It contains all of the necessary things for a human to survive. There was nothing wrong with the island before the boys arrived. Their arrival even caused a physical ‘scar’ in the island, because the plane crashed, creating a large area where land was destroyed. This scar could imply that the island was now imperfect, due to their arrival. After they arrive, things get worse and worse, since they are in an environment they weren’t familiar with at all. They were used to being able to have fun hobbies, but now they had to focus on what their next meal would be. This can be described with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. It’s a pyramid…show more content…
The only boy that really stayed true to his humanity was Simon, and Simon died. The boys that really lost it were Jack and Roger. Roger was pretty crazy to begin with. One of his first scenes was this, “Roger led the way straight through the [sand] castles, kicking them over, burying the flowers, scattering the chosen stones.” (Golding 60). He practically took candy from a baby. So, Roger didn’t have the most humanity in the beginning anyways, but he still went downhill, even though it did take him a while. Near the end of the novel, he kills Piggy by throwing a rock at him, and he falls off a cliff, and as far as the readers know, he didn’t even feel bad. Jack did have some more humanity than Roger. His humanity is shown in the very first chapter of the novel. “They knew very well why he hadn’t [killed the pig]; because of the enormity of the knife descending and cutting into living flesh; because of the unbearable blood.” (Golding 31). Despite his cowardice shown in this chapter, for the next few chapters, his only focus is to kill a pig, and after he succeeds in doing that, he gets savager than ever. They were fine to begin with, but what started the savagery within them? The answer to that question is how human’s brain’s work, described by Freud’s theory of personality. Everyone has three parts of their brains: the ego, superego, and id. The ego is how people satisfy their needs and urges in a
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