Good vs. Evil in William Golding´s Lord of the Flies Essay Sample

The novel Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, explores whether people are inherently good or evil, by inspecting the roots of their actions. This is done through studying a group of young boys, stranded alone on an island, who eventually turn into savages. With critical exploration of real-life situations, the articles “The Real Lesson of the Stanford Prison Experiment” by Maria Konnikova and “What Makes Good People Do Bad Things?” by Melissa Dittman, give insight into what drives their behaviors. Throughout the boys' time on the island, they transform from civilized school children to savages, due to situational factors creating a change in their understanding of their conditions. The novel’s central message, conveyed through the interactions between the characters and their settings, reveals clearly that one’s perception of good and evil can be twisted by circumstances, seducing them into doing bad things.

The children’s concepts of good and evil are established by them based upon their circumstances. Their understanding of their social situation is changed, causing their  It is said in the article exploring the ideas of the psychologist Philip Zimbardo, written by Maria Konnikova, that “‘You don’t need a motive’ Zimabardo said, ‘All you really need is a situation that facilitates moving across that line of good and evil’” (Dittman). External force, such as the right combination of social situations and environment, can cause ordinary people to change their perception of their actions, prompting them to then do evil things.  It is clear that the circumstances and situation on the island direct the boys to change their actions, and eventually turn savage.  Jack, the violent antagonist in Lord of the Flies, uses fear to create such a circumstance for the other boys, which seduces them into joining his group and changing their ideas to match his violent ones. This environment, with its offer of food and shelter that masked its initial motive, distorts the boy’s understanding of their actions, making it seem like they are doing the right thing by doing evil, though, in reality, their actions are malevolent. Through examining what the root causes of what people’s actions may be, Konnikova elaborates on this idea, stating that “the mere act of assigning people labels, calling some people prisoners and others guards, is enough to elicit pathological behavior” (Konnikova). In regards to the Stanford Prison experiment, this led to the prison guards severely abusing their victims, driven by no direct orders. Their motive, upon deeper understanding,  can be attributed to a difference in their perception of their situation, which in turn drove their irrational behaviors of harming innocent people. For the boys on the island, the concept of dehumanizing and labeling each other is prevalent within their circumstances. Towards the end of Lord of the Flies, it is seen that Jack and the other antagonists have begun to assign the label of the “Beast” onto their victims, claiming that it disguises itself within them, in an attempt to justify their horrible actions.  Their pathological behavior stems from their altered understanding of the harm they inflict upon others, as their labeling drives them to think that their actions are acceptable. 

An altered perception of a condition, due to a certain situation,  can cause an evil action to be seen as good in the eye of the doer. In the novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding, this idea is exemplified. Golding writes, “Simon was crying out something about a dead man on a hill…The beast was on its knees in the center, its arms folded over its face. It was crying out against the abominable noise, something about a body on the hill… At once the crowd surged after it, poured down the rock, leapt on to the beast, screamed, struck, bit, tore” (Golding 152). The boys, led by Jack, take part in a cult-like war dance, and this drives them into a violent frenzy, leading to them brutally killing someone because they think he is a threat. This condition, with their belief that Simon is the “beast” causes the murder of an innocent boy to take place, though the others believe they are killing a “beast”.  Jack and the other boys who participate in the murder of Simon believe that they are harming the beast, not Simon, leading them to be convinced that they are doing good, not evil. They dehumanize Simon by calling him a beast, thus their view of the situation is distorted by their circumstances which transforms them into evil people.  This idea is studied by Zimbardo, in the article by Dittman who writes, “They semantically change the perception of their victims, of the evil act, so ‘killing’ and ‘hurting’ becomes the same thing as ‘helping’” (Dittman). The labeling of Simon as a beast causes him to be seen as a threat, leading the boys who kill him to think that they are doing an honorable deed by eliminating it. Their social situation, characterized by the violent frenzy Jack and the other boys fall into, facilitates their bloodlust.

Through their own actions causing the loss of boundaries and base ideas, the children begin to follow a twisted perception of their own reality. This condition distorts their set premise between good and evil actions. The boys get caught up in a reenactment of a pig hunt, with one of them pretending to be the victim. Golding writes, “Roger squealed in mock terror, then in real pain… ‘Kill him!’. . . ‘Because you got to kill him!’” (Golding 115). The distinction between the game of hunting the pig and the reality of hurting is gone from the minds of the children. They do not distinguish between the role-playing and reality, leading them to hurt a boy. All the boys are too engrossed in their altered idea of what is actually happening around them, that they are unable to realize that what they are doing is actually evil, and that their perception of the situation is deeply changed by the ill-fated game. The Stanford Prison experiment exemplified this idea in a real-life situation, and as Zimbardo claims in the article by Konnikova, that the participants were “no longer able to distinguish role-playing and self. . .un[doing], although temporarily, a lifetime of learning, human values [are] suspended, self-concepts were challenged, and the ugliest, most base, pathological side of human nature surfac[es]” (Konnikova). The situation of the Stanford Prison experiment mirrors that of Lord of the Flies,  as both of them create circumstances that facilitate a deep change in human behavior, through an altered perception of the actions taking place within it.  The mock pig hunt in the novel creates a circumstance that prompts the children into being violent because of their belief that they were participating in a game, not brutally hurting someone. The change in their perception of their own action, due to their pretend game, leads them to disregard their pre-existing ideals and fall into the evil ones brought out by the situation.  

The boys' characters are changed completely within their time on the island. They grow more savage with each day, revealing how their situation has a large impact upon their behavior. It is made clear that the circumstances in the novel are just the right ones to effectively drive the children's profound change from good to evil.  The situation changes their perception of what they think is evil, making them justify those actions, and convincing them to think they are doing good,  though their actions, when put into a real perspective, are evil.