Lord Of The Flies: Human Nature Essay, Research Paper

Lord of The Flies: Human Nature

“We are all murderers and prostitutes – no matter to what culture,

society, class, nation one belongs, no matter how normal, moral, or mature, one

takes oneself to be.” R. D. Laing British psychiatrist. R.D. Laing obviously

backs up William Golding’s point of view that human nature is evil. Human

nature is directly affected by the environment; and is constantly changing due

to the experiences of the individual. Oscar Wilde once said “The only thing that

one really knows about human nature is that it changes. Change is the one

quality we can predicate from it. The systems that fail are those who rely on

the permanency of human nature, and not on its growth and development. The error

of Louis XIV was that he thought human nature would always be the same. The

result of his error was the French Revolution. It was an admirable result.”

Human nature depends upon the environment in which they are immersed. The idea

that children, not humans in general, are swayed by the ideas and actions of

their parental figures is also a central idea of the book, “The Lord of the

Flies” by William Golding.

Because of the war in England where the boys were from their human

experience was one of war. If there was no war going on in England at the time

they were evacuated from England, there would’ve been no deaths, no Lord of the

Flies, and certainly no beast. Because if they had came with a good human nature

then how would there have been a beast which Golding classified as the basic

evil inside all of us. Another thing that ties in with this that children try to

copy what they see adults do so if a child sees an adult smoke up or drink then

he may believe that it is okay or it is right because their parents do it. As

George Orwell once said “Part of the reason for the ugliness of adults, in a

child’s eyes, is that the child is usually looking upwards, and the adults are

rarely looking down. Yet no matter what they will always adore, look up to and

love their parents.” But as was just said sometimes that can be a bad thing. So

what must we do? Well for starters why not try to teach our children better and

try at all costs to set good examples for our children so that our society will

hopefully be salvaged from the god forsaken wrath of evil.

Children who’s parents smoke have a 40% higher chance of smoking than

children who’s parents don’t smoke.1 Chances are it is a mix of two things,

first the fact that they think that it is okay for them to do it since their

parents do it, the second is because of the nicotine addiction could be passed

on from adults to their offspring. Now of course there are exceptions to the

thesis like kids who smoke because their parents don’t, but that is usually a

small percentile of the population. Most children will not do it as a rebellious

act just because they see their parents doing it so therefor it is okay. Now as

was stated briefly previously kids will a lot of the time do what their parents

do because they look up to them so why wouldn’t they copy what the adults are

doing. So why can’t we just stop altogether because we have a lazy society who

rejects change so this may take a lot longer than would be hoped for.

“The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it

changes. Change is the one quality we can predicate from it. The systems that

fail are those who rely on the permanency of human nature, and not on its growth

and development. The error of Louis XIV was that he thought human nature would

always be the same. The result of his error was the French Revolution. It was an

admirable result.” So with this in mind why do people still rely on human

nature to remain the same when it has been proven that human nature is

constantly changing. That is why our country has not recently had a revolt

because our forefathers had enough insight to know that things would not be the

same 200 years from then. This idea was shown throughout the book by the kids

changing their minds and revolting. First all the children agreed that rules

were needed to keep order amongst themselves. Then when they felt the boring and

unpleasant side of work and rules they changed their human nature to that of a

slacker or a person who doesn’t follow society’s rules and doesn’t attempt to

strive for excellence. Also after voting Ralph the president, people still later

agreed and followed Jack. So basically al that can be gathered by this

information is that never rely on human nature to remain the same.

In conclusion, although it may no work due to the constant changing of

human nature, we must try not to set bad examples for younger ones who look up

to us, and also try to give our children the best life we can provide for them

and teach them right from wrong and teach them the right morals. Basically, we

should just try to do the best parenting job we can do and hope the information

and things you taught him or her will help them through life.