Are Humans Good Or Evil Analysis

Through the progression of William Golding's Lord of the Flies and the article, “Are Humans Good or Evil” by Clancy Martin and Alan Strudler, a multitude of undeniable evidence is provided to prove that humans are in fact inherently wicked. In Lord of the Flies, a human being’s savage nature and primal instincts are effectively portrayed through the development of Jack, the lead hunter in a group that gets meat for the boys. Little Jack Merridew, who seems to be nothing but a naive and obnoxious chorister, becomes one of the most malicious and violent boys on the island. Jack's wilder side shows itself the most when he goes hunting. Making one his first kills brought such exhilaration, satisfaction, and pure bloodlust, that it drove him to insane limits,

obvious when they march down the mountain chanting “Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Spill her blood” (Golding 69). Through the usage of individual emphasis on each action, “kill” and “cut” Golding shows the dark bliss they felt in going through with each stage of killing the pig. The term “spill” has a celebratory feel to it further adding to the satisfaction the boys get from making this gruesome kill. Golden highlights the boys’ thirst for evil through this situation, showing how much of an addiction their dark side, and true colors are.

Moreover, the symbolism of the face paint they wore while killing the pig exemplifies the gradual acceptance of each boy’s malevolent nature. The chant as a whole proves Golding's idea that humans are inherently evil through the simple joy the boys got in grotesquely taking another life with no second thought. While Lord of the Flies looks at savagery on a higher scale as that of murder, the nonfiction article “Are Humans Good or Evil from “Harper's Magazine” looks at the debate between philosophers Alan Strudler and Clancy Martin. Strudler believes that humans are evil in nature, while Martin opposes him. To support Golding’s idea in Lord of the Flies, Strudler mentions a famous psychology experiment, in which subjects coming out of a phone booth had the choice to help pick up papers scattered across the ground for a woman who had just dropped them. Inevitably there was some that helped her and others who preferred not to. However, whether the subjects helped this woman or not strongly depended on whether they had found a coin that was planted in the phonebooth

beforehand. After analysis and review of similar experiments, as well as the one just mentioned, Strudler concludes that “Most people will knowingly and voluntarily expose others to death for no good reason” (Strudler). The usage of the terms “knowingly” and “voluntarily” shows that people are, in some way, accepting the evil within them and even going as far as acting on it. Additionally, the word “expose” refers to how helpless the hypothetical victim in the situation could be. Thus, the idea that humans are inherently evil is further proved through this experiment, not necessarily with mass levels of murder, but rather from the mere fact that humans don’t naturally help those in need, and often must have some sort of motivation to do so.