University of Sargodha

Name: Ali Ejaz Khan

Roll Number: BENF18E013

Department: English

Class: BS-V (SS)

Subject: Fiction-III

Assignment Topic: Evilness of Human’s

Nature in Lord of the Flies
Submitted to: Sir Faheem Arshad
 Evilness of Human’s Nature in Lord of the Flies

‘He found himself understanding the wearisomeness of this life… though it was part of a brighter
childhood’ -- (Ch. 5 Pg. 76)

Human nature is dynamic; it changes throughout the time according to circumstances, situations, needs
and requirements of time. Literature depicts such historical and social incidents that were inappropriate
but they were only justified because situations approved them. A huge number of philosophers have
given different theories of goodness and evilness about human nature. “Machiavellianism” according to
the Oxford English Dictionary (2005) “is the employment of cunning and duplicity in statecraft or in
general conduct”. Nicholo Machiavelli was an Italic, philosopher, diplomat and writer who is especially
known for his book ‘The Prince’. He gave the idea that being feared is better than being loved. Many
writers of English literature followed his thoughts such as Francis Bacon, Bolingbroke, Gibbon, and John
Adam etc.

Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher writes in his book, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone,
offers a secular theory about evil.

According to Kant, we have a morally good will only if we choose to perform morally right actions because
they are morally right (Kant 1785, 4: 393–4:397; Kant 1793, Bk I). On Kant’s view, anyone who does not
have a morally good will have an evil will. There are three grades of evil which can be seen as
increasingly more evil stages of corruption in the will. First there is frailty. A person with a frail will
attempts to perform morally right actions because these actions are morally right, but she is too weak to
follow through with her plans. Instead, she ends up doing wrong due to a weakness of will (Kant 1793, Bk
I, 24–25).

The next stage of corruption is impurity. A person with an impure will does not attempt to perform
morally right actions just because these actions are morally right. Instead, she performs morally right
actions partly because these actions are morally right and partly because of some other incentive, e.g.,
self-interest. Someone with an impure will performs morally right actions, but only partly for the right
reason. Kant believes that this form of defect in the will is worse than frailty even though the frail person
does wrong while the impure person does right. Impurity is worse than frailty because an impure person
has allowed an incentive other than the moral law to guide her actions while the frail person tries, but fails,
to do the right thing for the right reason (Kant 1793, Bk I, 25–26).

The final stage of corruption is perversity, or wickedness. Someone with a perverse will inverts
the proper order of the incentives. Instead of prioritizing the moral law over all other incentives, she
prioritizes self-love over the moral law. Thus, her actions conform to the moral law only if they are in her
self-interest. Someone with a perverse will need not do anything wrong because actions which best
promote her self-interest may conform to the moral law.

Lord of the Flies was written following two devastating world wars. The First World War was
supposed to be "the war to end all wars", and yet, just twenty years later, the world entered into another
war, even more destructive than the first. Many people came to regard human ways differently after this. It
seemed that we were innately partly warmongering and bloodthirsty. This negative view of man might be
what set the tone for the treatment of evil in Lord of the Flies, where it is presented as the inner qualities
that enable you to lose sight of what you originally considered good and virtuous.
The setting in William Golding's Lord of the Flies is an idyllic tropical island. Yet, during the course of
the novel, the fertile, green landscape is transformed into a blazing, destructive inferno by the arrival
of a group of British schoolboys.

In the first few pages of the book, the boys run on the beach and swim in the ocean. Near the
end, they are less like civilized people and more like savages, with more than one death to their
conscience. What brings about the idea of evil on the tropical island is the mention and the following fear
of "the Beast". In the minds of the boys, this "Beast" is an actual, concrete entity that threatens the group
from the outside. But as Simon deuces, "the Beast" actually lives within them. "The Beast" might then be
another term for the evil within the human mind and soul.

Jack uses a pig's head as an offering to the Beast. Simon hallucinates that the head is talking to
him. Golding calls it the Lord of the Flies - this is a translation of the Biblical name Beelzebub - another
name for the Devil. "Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill!" said the head...
"You knew, didn't you? I'm part of you? Close, close, close!" The voice of the Lord of The Flies makes
Simon realizes that the evil the boys have been looking for actually lives inside them - even in him.

The characters in Lord of the Flies can be interpreted as prototypes of human behavior, where Ralph
represents civilization and leadership, and Jack represents the savagery within the human soul. In a
broader sense, we may consider Ralph as representing "good" and Jack as representing "evil". That is
not the same as saying that Ralph is good, and that Jack is evil. Although Ralph is a sympathetic
character, our protagonist and one of the few who seem to take a meditative view of their own
actions, he also has evil in his heart, as we see in the case of Simon's death. Although Ralph is in
denial about his participation in the event, we see that he is not completely consumed by savagery.
Jack is in many ways Ralph's opposite. Where Ralph assumes his leadership because he wants them
all to get off the island, Jack wants it to satisfy his own need for being in command. If Ralph
represents the democratic ruler, Jack is the tyrant.

Because the characters are all children, an extra dimension is added to our understanding of the
term "evil". Children are usually represented as innocent creatures in literature. In Lord of the Flies
the seemingly innocent boys end up committing murder and wreaking havoc on the entire island. We
also commonly envision children as acting according to their natures to a larger extent than adults,
who are usually more doctrine by society's rules. If this interpretation is brought into Lord of the
Flies, does that mean that the boys' actions are "true" to their innate behavior? Is that also why
Ralph, Piggy and Simon, who seem the most mature, are the ones who resist this behavior?

Golding seems to imply that what we might call the boys' "evil actions" occur when they abandon
their civilized ways and start acting according to their primal instincts. To what extent are the
characters responsible for their actions if they all have evil within them from birth? We would find it
absurd to point to a pack of wolves, and call their behavior "evil". Perhaps we expect humans to
enter a position in which they critically consider their own actions and choices, rather than being
dominated by their own impulses. Ralph makes up new rules, like the rule about having to hold the
conch in order to speak in assemblies, and probably expects others to be kept from the society they
left, like the rule that you should not kill or steal. Ralph and most of the boys see the importance of
these rules, because they are enforced so naturally where they came from.

In society you must act according to certain rules and laws, and if you break the rules, you are
punished. But on the island, there are no consequences if you break the rules. In the case of the boys on
the island, they lose their sense of what is right and what is wrong when their own remodeling of society
crumbles. It seems that Golding considers evil to be part of what is to be human, and that an evil streak
can be found in us all. Perhaps he also implies that society functions as a constraint to keep our innate
savagery at bay, and that our true nature is similar to that of wolves. Then it might be even more
important that the characters are all children, because they have yet to understand the workings of
society to see why certain rules and norms are necessary.

Although the book can be said to end on a high note, we find an approach to evil in this that is
different from many other children's books; all the boys that are left on the island are saved in the
end, regardless of how they have behaved and what they have done. Two of the best of them are
even dead. Golding tells us that contrary to what many children's stories and fairytales let us
believe, good and evil are not objectively defined terms; that good will not always prevail and that
those who act on evil will not always suffer for it in the end. When Ralph weeps on the beach, he
weeps because he has learnt a hard lesson on what man is capable of doing.

Lord of the Flies is a literary expression of the manifestation of man within the context of order,
disorderliness and social exigencies.

The text was written by William Golding against the backdrop of the Second World War. Being a
professional naval officer, having experienced the sorrow, the horror and the pain of war, translated his
experience into readable form for serious didactic importance. In the text, some boys were marooned on
an uninhabited island when their plane crash landed. The boys realized that no adult seemed to have
survived the crash to provide leadership. No father, no mother, no guardian. Luckily, Ralph and Piggy,
two of the marooned boys, moved around the lagoon front while Piggy emphasized the need to look for
the other boys.

The chant rose a tone in agony

“Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!”
Now out of the terror rose another desire, thick, urgent, blind
“Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!”
Again the blue-white scar jagged above them and the sulphurous explosion beat down. The littluns
screamed and blundered about, fleeing from the edge of the forest, and one of them broke the ring of
begins in his terror, “Him! Him!”(Ch. 9 Pg. 208)

These lines were uttered by Piggy and Ralph and they show their innate thoughts about evil,
torture and savageness. Even they don’t know what the beast is and either it is harmful or not.

In the course of this exploration, Ralph came across an object which Piggy described as a conch.
Piggy taught Ralph how to blow the conch. Ralph blew it and the noise from this serve as a herald which
attracted the other marooned boys. With a view to establishing a semblance of then human society, there
was an election where Ralph emerged the overall leader of the boys. Meanwhile, Jack emerged as an
antagonist.

“Ralph’s right of course. There isn’t a snake-thing. But if there was a snake we’d hunt it and kill it.
We’re going to hunt pigs to get meat for everybody. And we’ll look for the snake too–” “But there isn’t a
snake!”(Ch. 2 Pg. 50)

In these lines Jack represents his innate tendency to kill the snake, and he is representing his
internal evilness for the outer world.

Throughout the novel, Jack hunted for an unidentified beast which he believed was a murderous
being. The ruler ship of the island eventually degenerated into a crazy pursuit of power and display of
animalistic disposition. In view of this, Simon died; Piggy was killed as well. His spectacle and head were
broken, marking the beginning of anarchy on the island. In sheer desperation for power, Jack tried to kill
Ralph. Jack and his boys set fire to force out Ralph out of his hiding place but the smoke attracted a
British Naval Ship to the island and the naval officer put an end to the bestial decline of morality.

“His sandy hair, considerably longer than it had been when they dropped in, was lighter now; and
his bare back was a mass of dark freckles and peeling sunburn. A sharpened stick about five feet long
trailed from his right hand, and except for a pair of tattered shorts held up by his knife-belt he was naked”(
Ch. 3 Pg. 66).

Golding uses different appearances of Jack to depict savage and evil nature of human beings.

Same savage and evil thought prevails throughout the novel through different characters’
dialogues. Following is another example from the text that shows Kantian theory of evilness:

“Roger stooped, picked up a stone, aimed, and threw it at Henry— threw it to miss. The stone
that token of preposterous time bounced five yards to Henry’s right and fell in the water. Roger gathered a
handful of stones and began to throw them. Yet there was a space round Henry, perhaps six yards in
diameter, into which he dare not throw. Here, invisible yet strong, was the taboo of the old life” (Ch. 4 Pg.
86).

Jack’s character developed in becoming that violent and blood-longing person and which tells us
that evil was in him. Jack loved the idea of hunting and killing. Jack and his fellow hunters even made a
bizarre song for chanting and murdering the swine that they’ve successfully hunted. “Kill the pig cut her
throat spill her blood!” (Ch. 4 Pg. 96) Jack valued and loved hunting the pigs and he always longs to
hunt.

Another important aspect of evil shown in the novel is that it does not exist outside; only Simon
can feel the truth of evil when he says that the beast might be within us. The other boys are afraid of the
beast. It is displayed to Simon alone that evil in the form of beast is just an illusion. Golding feels that evil
does not emerge out of some political or other systems; therefore, removal of a particular system does
not ensure removal of evil. He argues against those who think that it is the political or other systems that
create evil. Evil comes from the depths of man himself.

According to Wittgenstein; Hamlets are present everywhere, everyone in the world is facing the
circumstances like hamlet; if we apply the term Jacks to each individual it would be essentially right;
because every individual is facing same situational goodness and evilness.

“Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill!”(Ch. 8 Pg. 206)

In this quote, Simon realizes that the Beast the boys fear is, in fact, the boys themselves. They
are their own monsters. In this scene, Simon is hallucinating, so he believes that this statement is made
by the Lord of the Flies. However, it is actually Simon himself who has this revelation.

The climax of an individual’s thinking is to approach his own nature and self, following lines said
by Simon are best representatives of their self-realization.

“I’m frightened of us” (Ch. 10 Pg. 225).

“What are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages? What’s grownup going to think?” (Ch. 5 Pg. 129)

Piggy speaks these words to Ralph when he sees that Ralph is not calling the assembly and assert his
authority as the leader. It shows that Piggy is the sane voice among the children on the island. He knows
that the others are becoming wild and savages. Therefore, he reminds Ralph of his responsibility and
obligation to children. The question of grownups is posed to remind him of the rules and laws of society.

The mythical Beast takes on a variety of forms. First we see it as a dream then a snake or sea monster,
then the dead pilot's body. The real Beast is the evil that lives inside the boys - but only Simon fully
realizes this and, ironically, he is killed when the other boys mistakenly think he is the creature itself.

"We've seen the beast with our own eyes....... "It was furry. There was something moving behind its
head--wings. The beast moved too--" … "There were eyes--" "Teeth--" "Claws--" "We ran as fast as we
could--" "Bashed into things--" "The beast followed us--" "I saw it slinking behind the trees--" "Nearly
touched me--" (Ch. 06 Pg. 142)

Sam and Eric have run to tell the others that they have seen the Beast. Almost trying to outdo each other,
they begin to exaggerate ("eyes", "teeth", "claws") until they seem to convince themselves of their own
story ("The beast followed us" / "Nearly touched me").

The novel thus is about discovering the darkness in man’s heart. One is obliged to look within
oneself and see the lurking darkness (evil) there. Evil is in man’s heart, only it needs to be recognized to
weaken its grip. The devil is not present in any traditional or religious sense. Golding’s Beelzebub is the
modern equivalent of the anarchical, amoral driving force that Freudians call the ‘Id.’ The novel suggests
that institutions and order imposed from without are only temporary, but that man’s irrationality and his
urge to be primitive and to destroy is enduring. Civilization is only a mask. The boys make their tragic
journey from ignorance and irresponsibility to viciousness. (Paramvir Singh 485)

To sum up the whole discussion, we can observe human’s evil nature and social and
jurisprudential rules and regulations that make our nature and habits good and virtuous. Moral behavior is
something that must be propagated and forced by the society as those moral constraints are not a
fundamental part of human’s nature. Hence, a demand for a system of true morality as the basis of the
episteme of any epoch is emphasized in order to implant strong and unshakable civilized beliefs in man
so that alluring wrong situations and actions cannot beat superficial trainings as one witnesses in the
characters of the novel as soon as absolute freedom is given to them.

References:

1. Golding, William. Lord of the Flies. (Koma script and Latex)

2. Singh, Paramvir. THE PROBLEM OF EVIL IN LORD OF THE FLIES.(2015)
3. Alnajm, Alaa Lateef. The main themes in Lord of the Flies.(June 2015)
4. Marzieh, Keshavarz. The Manifestation of Man’s Evil Nature in the Lord of the Flies by
William Golding(2017)
5. Sommers, Jeffrey. 'Lord of the Flies' (2018)
6. https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zt9djxs/revision/2