Theme Of Human Nature In Lord Of The Flies

William Golding, the author of lord of the flies explores many themes which all are related to his past experience. Using his past life experiences, Golding tries to represent some of the main human traits such as intelligence, leadership, greed, knowledge, and logic. In his novel Golding represents evil in humanity through jack, goodness in humanity in the form of Simon, intellect through piggy and strong leadership through Ralph. The author shows the struggle between good vs evil, strong vs weak, logic vs ignorance, and most of all Civilization vs Savagery. Golding uses the theme of human nature to show how easily society can collapse, and how self-destructive human nature can be. As soon as the first chapter starts, Golding sets up the stage for the boys as they head for destruction.
One the aspects of humanity that led to the chaos on the island was evil. Golding tries to show the evil within man through Jack. He goes from a civilized English to a savage and selfish character who is willing kill anyone. The first time he finds a pig, Jack hesitates to kill the pig. “I was going to, said Jack.” (Golding pg.21) This showed how civilized jack was. "We've got to have rules and obey them. After all,
Simon is the only character that shows morality and goodness their pure form. Simon represent good in humanity. Simon is always seem to be helping around. He tries to help the littinus and piggy as much as he can. "Simon sitting between the twins and Piggy, wiped his mouth and shoved his piece of meat over the rocks to Piggy, who grabbed it." (Golding, pg.74) This Quote shows Simon’s kind heartiness towards piggy, also toward littinus when he helped them pick fruits of a tree. "Found for them the fruit they could not reach, pulled off the choicest from up in the foliage, passed them back down to the endless, outstretched hands (Golding pg.138) Essentially Golding tries to portray Simon as humanity at its zenith of