Lord of the Flies

Theme: Human nature; good & evil

Are humans naturally predisposed to good or evil? Lord of the Flies seems to suggest the latter. Stranded on a deserted island without the restraints of civilization imposed on them, the boys in the novel quickly descend into savagery and cruelty. Only the ones who cling onto the hopes of getting rescued by the civilized world retain any semblance of human goodness, like Ralph and Piggy. Even then, they are not completely immune to the depravity that the other boys display. In chapter 9, they are excited by and join in the frenzied chanting and dancing of Jack’s tribe, who pounce on Simon and stab, beat and bite him to death. This suggests that even those who are civilized can easily succumb to corruption, which further drives home the idea that humans are inherently evil. A straighter example would be Roger, who is likely the cruellest of the children. Early in the novel, Roger holds back from throwing rocks directly at a younger boy because of a vague feeling that it is wrong – ‘Here, invisible yet strong, was the taboo of the old life.’ Yet by the end he no longer cares about getting rescued and willingly pushes a boulder off a cliff with every intention of crushing Piggy. Without civilization, it seems the innate evil in humans kick in and even young children are no exception. Perhaps it is exactly because they are children that they are no exception: their emotional immaturity and inexperience allow them to act callously without any real regard for the consequences, in this case the deaths of other human beings. 

An important symbol of the boys’ increasing corruption is the Beast. Of the whole cast, only Simon comes to realize that the Beast is only a figment of the boys’ imagination. It was the rotten carcass of an airman’s body and his parachute, mixed with the fear of the unknown that scared them. Yet as the boys continue to believe in the Beast, they become more and more savage, from fearing the Beast to revering it as a kind of god, even offering a tribute to it. This tribute is the eponymous Lord of the Flies, a sow’s head pierced on a spear. How it came to be there is a testament of the boys’ worsening state. It is viciously killed by Jack’s tribe, who show obvious enjoyment about having power over the creature. Their lust for the pig’s blood utterly consumes them and they display mirth and joy over its helpless state. Later it speaks to Simon and reveals that the Beast was never something that could be killed but part of the boys themselves. That is the final proof that what the boys should have feared from the start was not the Beast, but themselves. Unfettered by the moral constraints that society places on them, they revert back to a natural state of violence. There was no longer any hope for them when they killed Simon, the bearer of that knowledge. The evil had already taken root, leading them to murder the one person who knew the truth.