William Golding

William Golding

I agree that William Golding paints a very bleak picture of human nature. Golding’s view on human nature is that “man produces evil like bees produce honey” (p. 252), he feels that evil in man is a natural phenomenon. Throughout the entire book, he has been reiterating that fact and as the story proceeds, one can truly see the darker side of man. Moreover, Golding rarely brings out the better traits of humanity and even if he does, those traits are often quickly clouded by bad ones.

Golding feels that man, above many things, lusts for power; this trait is clearly portrayed by Jack. In the book, Ralph was elected leader, however Jack wanted to be the leader, thus he tried to take over Ralph’s position through despicable means. Jack exploited the littluns fear of the beast to usurp leadership from Ralph, Jack often accentuated the fact that the beast exists to ensure the littlun’s loyalty to him. However, Jack himself believed that “there weren’t any beasts to be afraid of on the island” (p.103). “I put for the general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and restless desire of power after power that ceaseth only in death.” (Thomas Hobbes) Man’s power struggle starts the moment that he steps into the world and would finally end when he dies. William Golding portrays man as power hungry, and selfish, that man would do anything if it is beneficial to him even through despicable means.

In the book, Golding had emphasised the point that humans are of little difference from animals. Golding had animalised human beings and had given them animal traits, he described the way that Ralph ate as “gnawed it like a wolf” (p.92) and described them “as a pack of British boys” (p.248) Piggy had questioned the nature of humanity, “What are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages?” (p. 113), Golding was once again trying to recapitulate his point that the differences between a human and animals are minimal and that humans often had the tendency to behave like animals. A...

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