Novel Lord Of The Flies

As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it." If everyone believes in what Martin Luther preached, then everyone has done something evil in their life. There is evil within everyone, yet some people are better at suppressing it then others.

Given the right time and the right situation, everyone can be evil, as in the novel Lord of the Flies. The novel takes place during the late 1940s, and is about a group of young British boys who become stranded on a tropical island out in the middle of the ocean. Through the course of the novel the boys slowly become uncultivated. They begin to hunt wild animals, paint their faces like savages, and then split off into two "tribes." In the novel Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, the author shows through characterization that man is inherently evil.

The author shows that there is evil within everyone. In some it is more prominent then others, but it always there and the person usually has the ability to control whether or not to let it out. The author shows this through the use of Jack and the boys in his "tribe." When Jack first finds a pig on the island, while on an exploration with Simon and Ralph, he still has the ability to hold his evil within himself. "He raised his arm in the air. There came a pause, a hiatus, the pig continued to scream and the creepers to jerk, and the blade continued to flash at the end of a bony arm [...] then the piglet tore loose from the creepers and scurried into the undergrowth".

Jack is able to keep himself from attacking the piglet even though he wanted to kill it. His first reaction when he saw the pig, tangled and helpless, wasn't that he was hungry and needed food, but to kill it. The other two boys who were with him didn't even try to put a stop to it. According to Martin Luther King, to stand passively by is just as evil as committing the act. Without any rules, people are more prone to doing evil deeds because there are no restrictions on them. Roger and Maurice go walking among the littluns playing on the beach. "Roger led the way straight through the castles, kicking them over, burying the flowers, scattering the chosen stones. Maurice followed, laughing, and adding to the destruction". There was no reason for them to walk straight through the littluns sand castles. They can just as easily walk around them, but since there is no supervision it makes it easier for evil to rise to the surface. Once at the surface, it becomes much harder to suppress and keep the evil form coming out.

So, even though the act didn't physically cause any permanent damage or harm to ...