Lord Of The Flies Psychological Analysis

Every child is born with a Mother Teresa inside of them. Although one is born with this inherent goodness, an infant, a toddler, or even an adolescent are incredibly impressionable by their parents and environments. One “evil” mutated gene may exist in one in a billion children, but this rotten apple does not represent the rest of the world’s population. More often, a disillusioned childhood, lacking the necessities for a person’s well-being and healthy growth, is at fault for the Adolf Hitlers, Jeffery Dahmers, and Charles Mansons of the world. Every child is a blank slate, and what they are exposed to shapes their personalities for the rest of their lives. Almost every behavioral experiment in psychology proved that behaviors are learned

Lord of the Flies, for example, shows how even boys as young as six years old can revert back to primal instincts (Golding). There is very little truth behind this regression theory. The need for resources is just basic survival, as described in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (Kleinman 120-122). While physiological needs seem cruel and selfish, they are natural in all organisms and do not mean that humans are evil. Some say that humans berate and hurt others because of this inheritance. On the contrary, a “bully” usually bullies because they have been teased or abused before, not because they were born with a trait that made them mean or just became that way naturally. One third of abused children become abusers in the tragic cycle, according to the New York Times (Goleman). This shows that people are not born with hatred and sadness in them; it grows based off of their experiences. While some argue that humans are evil because they fight for resources, this is just survival. And while others say that people are born with an incentive to hurt others, this drive is shaped throughout childhood based off of what one was exposed