In William Goldings Lord of the Flies, and in John Knowles A Separate Peace, the fact that man will let his inner malevolence dominate if given the chance is demonstrated.

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Alice Elbakian

Lord of the Flies & A Separate Peace Essay

In the real world, man is tempted by his inner evil and acts only as he would like, as opposed to what is right. He will sin instead of being virtuous when set alone to do as he wishes. In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, and in John Knowles’ A Separate Peace, the fact that man will let his inner malevolence dominate if given the chance is demonstrated. In Lord of the Flies, school boys find themselves stranded on an island with no adult supervision or guidance. In A Separate Peace, surprisingly enough the situations and actions the boys take are not as different as one would expect. In Lord of the Flies the open area and lack of strict supervision leads to disunion, carelessness, and mankind’s inner demon taking over. On the other hand, the laid back atmosphere of A Separate Peace during the summer program makes the boys forget what is morally correct. At Devon High School, Gene finds himself distraught by jealousy and paranoia because of his best friend, Finny. He tempts himself to let out his own inner evil for illusory reasons. In the meantime, Jack and many others show off every possible spiteful side of mankind’s natural behavior and greed, through acting on their id.

In the Lord of the Flies, Simon is portrayed as the natural good, or savior of the lot of boys who end up on the island. However, no matter how much good can be in one person, there will always be natural evil that will balance man. “Sitting before the Lord of the Flies, a stinking, fly-ridden pig's head on a stick, Simon is made to recognize the human nature of the real beast: that he himself has the capacity for evil as well as for good” (Tiger).  Here Simon starts to understand that even though man has natural good in him, he must also have natural badness. He, as much as anyone else in the lot of children, is capable of committing evil and doing wrong. Nonetheless, it is not completely natural for man to always want to act on the impulse Freud called the id. Depending on the given conditions or circumstances, man will act differently. Based on the novel by Golding, Simon never acts on this desire from where evil arises. Golding makes it clear that Simon acts as he does from his superego, meaning he is logical and thinks about his actions. However, it is not always the case that man acts morally good. In many cases in this novel, Jack represents the actions taken by indication from the id, where he acts just as he wants and without a care in the world. Jack is the embodiment of the psychic apparatus known as id.

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        As previously mentioned, in Golding’s novel a group of young British school children are stranded alone on an island, where in the background of the novel there is a war going on. On the island there are absolutely no adults, and no real means of communication. The boys’ only hope to get off the island is by being rescued. The boys elect a chief, Ralph, who starts to establish rules. He orders a fire be made and kept so that they can use the smoke to be seen and thus rescued. The island has a very free and casual essence ...

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