Human Nature Essay: Examining Evil in Lord of the Flies and History

This essay argues that humans are inherently bad, using William Golding's 'Lord of the Flies' as a primary example. The essay begins with an introduction that presents the thesis statement and provides a brief overview of the novel. It then analyzes two specific instances from the novel: the breakdown of order among the boys and the symbolic destruction of Piggy's glasses, which represents the decline of reason and civilization. Furthermore, the essay strengthens its argument by referencing historical examples of terrorism, such as the 9/11 attacks and the Charlie Hebdo attacks, as evidence of humanity's capacity for evil. The conclusion summarizes the main points and reiterates the thesis, emphasizing the novel's relevance to understanding human nature. The essay is well-structured and supported by references.

Running head: HUMAN NATURE
Human Nature
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1HUMAN NATURE
The purpose of this following essay is about the fact depicted in William Golding’s novel
Lord of the Flies. It has been predicted in the novel that human nature is essentially bad.
Therefore, the elements and ideas of this novel will be used in this essay to establish the fact that
human beings are essentially bad in nature. This book was published in the year 1954.
Thesis statement: Essentially human beings are bad in nature.
In this novel, it has been discussed that something terrible might happen if there was no
one in this society to enforce all rules and laws (Alnaj: 98). It might be taken as a very good
thing for some people in the society since they believe they would be able to do anything and
everything they wanted. The novel Lord of the Flies is set in the tropical island where nobody
was present. The landscape was full of greenery and it was very fertile as well. Through the
course of the story, this place eventually turned out to be a destructive region like hell. There are
two central characters in the novel as Ralph and Jack. Ralph is the representative of leadership
and civilization. On the contrary, Jack is savage and presents bad things of human soul. Jack is
representative of tyranny since he wants to be on command to fulfill his own wishes and ignoring
everyone (Alnaj: 98). Children present the notion of innocence in most cases but all characters of
this novel are children and they are savage in nature i.e. only understood by their activities. The
boys go on to do everything they like (Carey: 78). Eventually this becomes very much
problematic for them since boys make their own rules and they are unable to maintain their new
rules for the well being of the society (Golding: 39). The symbol of the beast goes with Jack.
Through the novel, the beast begins its proceedings through the ‘snake thing’ but later it turns to
‘lord of the flies’ at the end. It must be mentioned in this context that both snake and fly
represent evils in nature and society.

2HUMAN NATURE
The conflicts between savagery and civilization have gone further at a time when Piggy’s
glasses are completely broken and shattered. The description has been given by Golding as
“Piggy cried out in terror ‘my specs!”. This signifies that savagery went on to get more
importance than civilized views in the society (Perry: 29). Those British schoolboys had nothing
else to do in this situation. Therefore, Jack went for Piggy who hated Jack completely. In this
scenario, it is evident that nature of human beings was very bad indeed (Alnaj: 98). This scene
describes the fact Piggy was really very scared as Golding uses words like ‘cried’ and ‘terror’ to
describe this scenario. He got scared at the prospect that Jack was really going to do some harm
to him if he went out of his sight (Golding: 39). There was absolutely nothing that could stop
Jack from doing bad things. Golding has used the glasses of Piggy to depict good nature and
intelligence on that idyllic island. As those glasses got broken, possibilities of good things also
blurred out (Carey: 78).
The historical event that can conform to this context that human nature is essentially bad
is that of terrorist activities all around the world. Many terror incidents have taken place over the
last few decades in this world. Therefore, it has been regarded very highly the incidents that
depict human nature is essentially bad (LaFree, Dugan, and Miller: 50). When almost all
countries are preaching for non-violence and establishing peace in this world, many terrorist
groups have unleashed lethal attacks at different places in the world. The events like London
terror attacks, Charlie Hebdo terror attacks in Paris, infamous 9/11 attacks at New York prove
human nature is very bad and they promote violence in the society. These incidents can be
counted as evidence for establishing the thesis statement of this essay that human beings are
essentially bad.

3HUMAN NATURE
While concluding it can be mentioned that William Golding has established all these
issues of human nature in his novel ‘Lord of the Flies’ properly. The incidents from the novel
prove that Jack’s behaviors are ominous and he has presented savagery and bad things in this
novel. Apart from incidents of the novel, the real historical facts of terrorism prove that human
beings are full of evil. These evil issues can turn human beings into pure beasts.

4HUMAN NATURE
Reference List
Alnajm, Alaa Lateef. "The main themes in Lord of the Flies." International Journal of English
and Literature 6.6 (2015): 98-102.
Al-Saidi, Afaf Ahmed Hasan. "Savagery and the Heart of Darkness in William Golding's Lord of
the Flies." Studies in Literature and Language 4.1 (2012): 129.
Carey, John. William Golding: The Man Who Wrote Lord of the Flies. Faber & Faber, 2012.
Golding, William. Lord of the Flies: Text, Criticism, Giossary and Notes. Al Manhal, 2013.
LaFree, Gary, Laura Dugan, and Erin Miller. Putting terrorism in context: Lessons from the
Global Terrorism Database. Routledge, 2014..
Perry, Gina. "Real-life lord of the flies." New Scientist 237.3165 (2018): 41-43.