Nature Vs Nurture Lord Of The Flies

696 Words3 Pages
Living peacefully and following moral standards are two impulses William Golding believes every person has. I can argue that behavior could result from internal or external factors; however, I believe that most behavior should be blamed on internal factors. In William Golding’s novel, Lord of the Flies, young boys are trapped on an island in need of a civilization, but instead they got chaos. It all started off great, they even used a conch shell to call meetings and voted on a leader. Unfortunately, the boys defaulted to violence in the worst sense, death. Most likely due to the fact that their so-called moral standards and impulse to live peacefully discontinued. Their behavior definitely falls under the fault of internal, biological factors. Nature versus nurture is the oldest argument in the book. Nature, also known as biological or internal factors is what an individual is born with. Nurture, also known as environment or external factors is what has shaped someone after they are born. I personally believe many traits are a result of nature. For example, the characters of Samneric are identical because they…show more content…
Festinger explored the idea of cognitive dissonance, where one aligns their beliefs to fit their actions (Slater 117). However, I believe both ideas of belief and action were in play. Some of the boys started out with violent beliefs, and unsurprisingly, there were violent actions. The more surprising part, after reading Festinger’s experiment, was that some of the boys, take Ralph for example, did not line up their beliefs to kill after they participated in the murder, because that is not what they truly believed in. The boys who believed in violence were violent. The boys who believed in an equally beneficial system, continued their ideas through the book. And unfortunately, those boys who were internally wicked, remained
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