Evil In Lord Of The Flies Essay

Humans are naturally evil and savage, however this goes by undetected in a controlled society. Civilization keeps humans stable, and without its presence, humans will revert to their intuitive evil ways. The boys in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies demonstrate their inherent evil through their enjoyment of violence, lack of compassion, and brutal acts of murder. Due to the boys’ predicament wherein they are stranded alone on an island, they take advantage of the absence of a higher power, and behave in ways that would be deemed unacceptable otherwise. Prior to the airplane crash that renders them stranded, these prepubescent boys were well mannered and civilized. However, the lack of a structured environment causes the boys to utterly …show more content…
Golding describes the scene: “This [statement] from Piggy, and the wails of agreement from some of the hunters drove Jack to violence. The bolting look came into his blue eyes. He took a step, and able to at last hit someone, stuck his fist into Piggy’s stomach” (Golding 75). This act of vengeance only occurs in the absence of civilization as Jack is acting out of his natural instincts and there is nothing to hinder his intentions; Jack is simply evil and savage. Moreover, the basic evil and savagery in the boys are evidenced by not only the physical action of harming one another, but the strong, overbearing desire to harm. The youngest members of the stranded boys, nicknamed the “littluns”, are the most vulnerable of the group. Roger, one of the “biguns”, exploits the vulnerability of his younger companions by targeting one of them for his game of throwing stones. Golding writes, “There was a space round Henry, perhaps six yards in diameter, into which [Roger] dare not throw. Here, invisible yet strong, was the taboo of the old life” (65). Although Roger does not aim the stones directly at Henry, he instead enjoys the thrill of being

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