Lord of the Flies

Buddha once said; “It is a man's own mind, it is not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways.” In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, this quote is proven true. When the plane of english boys crash lands on a deserted island and forces the group of boys to fend for themselves, it shows the true evil and society. It shows that evil is everywhere, inhabits everybody, and everything. There is no escaping evil no matter where you go or what path you take. In the novel, the boys convince themselves that they are not evil; That all the evil on the island is taken by “the beast.” Which is a creature created within their own minds used as a scapegoat for all the evil that they each do. The novel shows us that Buddha was correct in his quote, and that evil inhabits each and every one of us and living with out it is not possible.
The idea of evil is much more simple than most people believe. It is doing something morally wrong. Evil doesn’t need to be murder, evil can be as simple as lying about where you were last night. If you know its wrong, and you do it anyway, that evil. The boys in the book don’t understand this idea so well. As near the end, they begin to leave sacrifice for the beast. What they don't understand is that, you can’t cure evil. It's not a disease. It's a part of life. The boys think that evil doesn't exist on the island. That they are all perfectly clean. Yet, they don't recognize what they do as evil. Therefore they believe it's not there. But what they don't realize is that the beast is the evil that none of them will admit too.
Simon, the only one of the boys who reaches the realization that beast is the evil within each one of them, figures it out. He figures out the secret of the beast and he understands it on a level that no one else on the island does. This directly relates to Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Simon is the only one of the boys who successfully makes it to stage five, Self Actualization. He comes to realize that the