Is Man Inherently Evil?

Lessons from "Lord of the Flies"

William Golding’s Lord of the Flies is one of the best-selling novels of the 20th century. It depicts the rapid descent into savagery that occurs when a group of boys is stranded on a deserted island, and offers reflections on how humans act in the state of nature.

But Golding’s novel is arguably just as inaccurate as it is shocking. Having grown tired of Victorian stories celebrating young men travelling the world and building civilization from savagery, Golding set out to write a book about “children on an island, [but] children who behave in the way children really would behave.”

The only problem is, in the closest real-world example to Lord of the Flies — when six Tongan boys were shipwrecked and forced to survive for 15 months on a deserted island — the outcome couldn’t have been any more different:

“By the time we arrived, the boys had set up a small commune with a food garden, hollowed-out tree trunks to store rainwater, a gymnasium with curious weights, a badminton court, chicken pens and a permanent fire, all from handiwork, an old knife blade and much determination.”

-Captain Peter Warner, who rescued the boys

Granted, surely not all castaway experiences are like this, but it at least goes to show that Golding’s dystopia isn’t an inevitability. In light of this then, how is it that Lord of the Flies remains such a famous and widely-read novel? The answer lies in the fact that even if it’s wrong on certain details, its reflections on groupthink, scapegoats, paranoia, fear, and evil are still hauntingly accurate.

Today, we explore what it can teach you about man’s innate capacity for evil — and critically, how to overcome it…

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Playground Politics & Imaginary Beasts

Lord of the Flies begins with the threat of nuclear war and a group of boys being evacuated from Britain. The plane they are travelling in gets shot down, and they crash onto a deserted island.

At first, the thirty or so prepubescent boys organize among themselves and establish the framework of basic law and order. They elect a boy named Ralph to be their chief, and he lays out three main rules for them to follow: survive, have fun, and keep a smoke signal alive at all times. They then get to work building shelter, foraging for food, and hunting the island’s native fauna.

But the first cracks begin to appear as a hunting party returns one day from the woods, convinced they have seen a “beast”. Ralph assures them there’s nothing to worry about, but his upstart rival Jack sees an opportunity — he exclaims the beast is real, and he will kill it!

This is the first instance of politics making its way into the book, as the beast — whether real or imagined — is used as a tool to stir up fear and win political support. Jack exploits the boy’s fear of the beast to frame himself as the strong leader who will vanquish the threat, and his message succeeds as he gradually steals support away from Ralph’s camp.

It is no small coincidence that the first time the signal fire goes out, it’s because the boys who were supposed to be tending it had gone on a hunt with Jack into the woods. It’s an error that will haunt them, since just when the fire went out, a ship passed by the island and could have rescued them…

The Descent into Chaos

One night, two fighter planes engage in a dogfight over the island, causing one of the pilots to parachute towards the land. Whether he arrives dead on impact or dies after getting caught in the trees isn’t clear — what matters most is how his discovery accelerates the boys’ descent into savagery.

Twins Sam and Eric are the first to discover the corpse, glimpsing it for only a moment and mistaking it for the “beast”. They run back to camp to inform Jack and Ralph, who go to investigate it themselves. When the two leaders lay eyes on the corpse, they too flee in terror, now convinced the beast is real.

Chaos quickly ensues as Jack and the terrified boys make an offering to the beast of a dead pigs’ head impaled on a stake, then return to camp to engage in superstitious ritual around the fire. By the end of the night, a victim’s blood will have stained the white sand they stomp on…

Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!

-Lord of the Flies, Chapter 9

But before getting to that, Golding offers another valuable insight into the nature of evil — that it begins by failing (or refusing) to see the truth. And what’s more, that fear is often what keeps you from seeing it.

When Sam and Eric first came across the corpse, previous murmurings of a beast on the island had primed them to misinterpret what they saw. They only glimpsed a portion of the soldier, but their minds filled in the rest — fear then drove them back to camp before they could see it for what it really was.

Jack and Ralph are even more culpable, since they went back to the corpse to investigate it more closely. Yet even as they behold the corpse in full view, fear distorts their vision of reality — they don’t see the fallen soldier for what he is, but for what their fear projects onto him.

In short, fear so distorts reality that it causes them to mistake even what is clear as day before their eyes. This in turn leads to a sinister chain of events: sacrificial offerings, the breakdown of order, and even murder.

But in the midst of all this mayhem, one boy alone comes to see the truth. Venturing into the forest by himself, he will soon confront the beast on his own.

What he discovers will get him killed — but not before teaching him the truth about fear, paranoia, and man’s innate capacity for evil…