Lord of the flies Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words - 2

Lord of the flies - Essay Example The novel, with its structure, symbols, motifs and allegories, serves the purpose of showing the innate evil of man. In his lecture of 1962 given at the University of California at Los Angeles Golding explained that the breakdown of civilization in his novel resulted from nothing but the inborn evil of man: â€Å"So the boys try to construct a civilization on the island; but it breaks down in blood and terror because the boys are suffering from the terrible disease of being human† (In Burris 1999). Golding does not justify this evil by the structure of the society, but quite the contrary, explains the defects of the society by the traits of the humanity. The writer stated that the shape of the society created by the boys on the island is â€Å"conditioned by their diseased, their fallen nature†. Intentionally, he avoided any elements that could make us think that it was the society rather than the human nature responsible for the breakdown: â€Å"The boys were below the age of overt sex, for I did not want to complicate the issue with that relative triviality. They did not have to f ight for survival, for I did not want a Marxist exegesis. If disaster came, it was not to come through the exploitation of one class by another. It was to rise, simply and solely out of the nature of the brute† (Golding, In Burris 1999). Though it is possible to suggest that in circumstances different the events would develop differently, the author insisted that the tragedy occurred â€Å"simply and solely out of the nature of the brute† (in Burris 1999). As the result of his views, Golding builds his novel around the central conflict between two opposite impulses existing within human beings: the tendency to live according to rules and moral commands, in peace and for the good of the group against the desire to satisfy one’s immediate desires and impulses, act aggressively to achieve supremacy over other people, and impose one’s will. For Golding