Lord of the Flies. 'What do you think Golding has to say about evil? How does he convey his ideas to the reader?'

by sambo200 (student)

'What do you think Golding has to say about evil? How does he convey his ideas to the reader?'

In my opinion, Golding uses all of the characters along with many metaphors to express his ideas for evil throughout the novel, but in short - he suggests that evil is in everyone and once civilization is removed, savagery takes it’s place as the ‘inner-evil’ is unleashed.

Evil is addressed in the novel by the description of images and acts of evil. One of the first and possibly the most revealing of Golding’s ideas of evil is one which is never actually seen by the characters. The ‘beast’ is the source of constant fear on the island and ultimately drives the boys to become obsessed with hunting and killing. This shows how a fear of the unknown can build up to such an extent that it becomes corrosive. In this text, the effect is to erode the moral code of the boys. The fear becomes more intense as the boys see the parachutist drop onto the top of the mountain. He sways back and forth because he is trapped in the chords, but the boys imagine that the swaying figure is the Beast. This new image of the beast is new to them and they are fearful, so Golding is linking fear with evil with this passage.

The boys imagine that if they leave something for the beast to feast on, then it will not feast on them.This leads to the boys leaving a pig’s head for the beast as a sort of sacrifice. The one character who does not believe in the physical reality of the beast represents a Christ-like figure. This character, Simon, is the most insightful and he realises that the beast is actually the evil inside all of them. Although he tries to tell the other boys of his discoveries it is too late for them as they have already descended too far ...

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Pathetic fallacy is used constantly throughout the novel - generally reflecting how far into evil the boys have ultimately fallen. In the first few chapters the boys establish order by electing a chief to control the group. To reflect this the weather is sunny and the wind is calm. Once the beast is highlighted by one of the younger boys and there is mild concern from the majority of the group the sun becomes more intense to the extent that it is possibly uncomfortable. When the order has broken down completely as the boys become more scared, the weather becomes a storm. This is most apparent when Jack leads the tribe in dance and the chant of ‘‘Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!’’ hyping the boys up to stab Simon many times as he screams.

A mother pig is killed by Jack and his hunters whilst it is nurturing many piglets. This causes extra suffering as the piglets will starve, but if they had let the mother live they could have had more meat as the piglets grew. The pig is brutally slaughtered by the group of hunters as it screams in pain - this is a much longer hunt than previously in the novel and the throat of the animal is not cut until much later. The suffering of the pig is maximized which I would consider to be evil. The head is then put on a spike as an offering to the ‘beast’. All of this happens in an area which was Simon’s special place where he could be alone with nature - but is now a place of blood stained grass. Simon later talks to the beast in a strange passage. The beast suggests Simon knows that the beast isn’t real and somewhat teases Simon as Satan might do.

All of these images and acts interlock with each other in the novel showing how under the right circumstances any human has the potential to kill another human without regret or hesitation such as during world war 1 when Golding experienced his own evil for the first time. The longer anyone stays in the circumstances the greater and more influential the evil inside of them becomes driving them to act in ways they previously would not.

So Golding uses images and acts to demonstrate how evil from within can grow to cause terrible consequences.