Persuasive Essay On Lord Of The Flies
Exam Essay Yesterday your neighbourhood was a friendly downtown community, where you could run next door and ask for a cup of sugar. Tragedy strikes and now, you are caught in the middle of a chaotic outbreak. Looters and rioters surround you. You feel the desire to join them. You fear that if you do not, you will become a victim. Were you born with the want to break the law or are you influenced by your surroundings? There is an age old debate over conflicting impulses in our human nature to be good or bad, or if those impulses are caused by your environment. William Golding’s novel, The Lord of the Flies gave convincing evidence that the boys’ savage acts at the end were due to their environment and their situation. In the beginning of the novel, the entire group of
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boys on the island had no desire to do anything that would harm anyone else. At first, they tried to form a civilized society. It began with the idea that some sort of leader needed to be elected. “‘Shut up,’ said Ralph absently. He lifted the conch. ‘Seems to me we ought to have a chief to decide things.’” From there, the boys tried to determine who was fit to do certain tasks, just like in a developed society. One of the boys who was assigned to be a hunter was stuck in a conflict with himself due the fact that he would have to kill a pig but could not find the strength inside to do so. This showed an obvious moral side to all of the boys, which only began to dematerialize later in the novel as the situation intensified.
The boys killed one of their own one evening while they were caught in the moment and living in the shadow of fear. The boys wanted to deny they had done anything wrong. “You were outside. Outside the circle. You never really came in. Didn’t you see what we- what they did?” said Piggy as he was trying to reassure Ralph that he should not feel guilty. Later, when Piggy died, Golding wrote “Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.” Therefore showing that the things that happened were caused by the situation they were in and their hearts and morals pled for the madness to end. Similarly, there was an experiment done in 1971 conducted by psychologist Philip Zimbardo called the Stanford Prison Experiment. Graduate students from Stanford University were preassigned roles as guards or prisoners, then were sent to a mock prison in the basement of one the buildings on Stanford University’s campus. The guards were given a simple task: do not physically harm the prisoners. The standards within the mock prison declined rapidly with abuse and torture being a very problematic area. The author of an article from Explorable.com wrote “Like a real life ‘Lord of the Flies’, it showed a degeneration of and breakdown of the established rules and morals dictating exactly how people should behave towards each other.” The conclusions of the experiment stated, “The experiment appeared to show how subject reacted to the specific needs of the situation rather than referring to their own morals or beliefs.” Some people may argue that what happened in both the Lord of the Flies and the Stanford Prison Experiment was because of flawed morals or beliefs.
They argue that no matter the situation, evildoers have always had the capacity to do evil. John Lockem author of The Second Treatise of Civil Government suggests “The freedom then of man, and liberty of acting according to his own will, is grounded on his having reason, which is able to instruct him in that law he is to govern himself by, and make him know how far he is left to freedom of his own will.” This simply means that we all have the ability to do whatever we want, sometimes we just make the wrong choices. But, in The Lord of the Flies it was made obvious that the lack of authority and order in the novel is was caused their “society” to deteriorate. In conclusion, in the case of nature vs. nurture, nurture is what makes humans do evil things. From boys living alone, trying to survive on an island, to grown men thrown into a psychological experiment, their environment is what causes their sadistic/evil behavior. Although it is true that people make the wrong decisions in life, it does not mean that they were born with a desire to do
evil.
boys on the island had no desire to do anything that would harm anyone else. At first, they tried to form a civilized society. It began with the idea that some sort of leader needed to be elected. “‘Shut up,’ said Ralph absently. He lifted the conch. ‘Seems to me we ought to have a chief to decide things.’” From there, the boys tried to determine who was fit to do certain tasks, just like in a developed society. One of the boys who was assigned to be a hunter was stuck in a conflict with himself due the fact that he would have to kill a pig but could not find the strength inside to do so. This showed an obvious moral side to all of the boys, which only began to dematerialize later in the novel as the situation intensified.
The boys killed one of their own one evening while they were caught in the moment and living in the shadow of fear. The boys wanted to deny they had done anything wrong. “You were outside. Outside the circle. You never really came in. Didn’t you see what we- what they did?” said Piggy as he was trying to reassure Ralph that he should not feel guilty. Later, when Piggy died, Golding wrote “Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.” Therefore showing that the things that happened were caused by the situation they were in and their hearts and morals pled for the madness to end. Similarly, there was an experiment done in 1971 conducted by psychologist Philip Zimbardo called the Stanford Prison Experiment. Graduate students from Stanford University were preassigned roles as guards or prisoners, then were sent to a mock prison in the basement of one the buildings on Stanford University’s campus. The guards were given a simple task: do not physically harm the prisoners. The standards within the mock prison declined rapidly with abuse and torture being a very problematic area. The author of an article from Explorable.com wrote “Like a real life ‘Lord of the Flies’, it showed a degeneration of and breakdown of the established rules and morals dictating exactly how people should behave towards each other.” The conclusions of the experiment stated, “The experiment appeared to show how subject reacted to the specific needs of the situation rather than referring to their own morals or beliefs.” Some people may argue that what happened in both the Lord of the Flies and the Stanford Prison Experiment was because of flawed morals or beliefs.
They argue that no matter the situation, evildoers have always had the capacity to do evil. John Lockem author of The Second Treatise of Civil Government suggests “The freedom then of man, and liberty of acting according to his own will, is grounded on his having reason, which is able to instruct him in that law he is to govern himself by, and make him know how far he is left to freedom of his own will.” This simply means that we all have the ability to do whatever we want, sometimes we just make the wrong choices. But, in The Lord of the Flies it was made obvious that the lack of authority and order in the novel is was caused their “society” to deteriorate. In conclusion, in the case of nature vs. nurture, nurture is what makes humans do evil things. From boys living alone, trying to survive on an island, to grown men thrown into a psychological experiment, their environment is what causes their sadistic/evil behavior. Although it is true that people make the wrong decisions in life, it does not mean that they were born with a desire to do
evil.