Are Men Inherently Good or Evil

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English 9F 12/12/12 Does William Golding’s Lord of The Flies Suggest That Man is Inherently Good or Evil? A Greek Philosopher, Socrates, once said, “Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil.” As we see in the Lord of The Flies by William Golding, Jack and many others boys had revealed their true, inner evil as the story takes place. An example is when all of the boys were on the island and had assigned specific roles for everyone, Jack’s and his “hunters” main priorities were to hunt, when they were supposed to look after the fire. They couldn’t give even a bit of thought about keeping the fire going which was their job, therefore showing their ignorance and love for killing. I think that William’s Golding’s Lord of The Flies suggests that man are inherently evil such as Jack because of factors such as ignorance, but also there are people who are inherently good because of their natural love for people, and calm inner-beings, for example Simon. The ignorance in people is a great source of revealing one’s inherent evil because when someone shows ignorance, he is often associated with an evil characteristic. We see this firstly, during the event when the fire goes out and Ralph gets mad at Jack for letting the fire go out, which serves a purpose of a signal fire for ships passing by. At that time Jack is hunting and looking to spill some animal’s blood when he is supposed to be doing his assigned duty. As see on Page 82: “You didn’t ought to have let that fire out. You said you keep the smoke going” “This from Piggy and wails of agreement from some of the hunters, drove Jack to violence.” Golding uses these words to show how for Jack’s ignorant mistakes, he becomes violent which corresponds to his evil and connects to the theme: ignorance is the root and stem of all evil. More ignorance is revealed from the characters in the Lord of the Flies when Simon is
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