Evil

Evil causes harm to everyone surrounding us, including ourselves. Jealousy lies and crimes are all led by evil domination of the human spirit. In Lord of the Flies by William Golding, the plot consists of young boys stranded on an island. The boys deal with temptations, such as; hunger, thirst, hunting and killing. The group is quickly split in two when Jack decides he wants his own tribe (the Savages). The boys loose all their civilized knowledge. They follow only their personal needs and their common sense. This novel resembles the classical play by Shakespeare, Macbeth. Macbeth visits three witches who tell him his future; becoming king of Scotland. He puts his faith in the words and the prophecies of the witches, after their first prophecy comes true. With the help of his wife, Lady Macbeth, he plots many murders to assure that the prophecies will come true and to keep everything secret. Both stories deal with the progression of evil. Both children and adults are drawn to the evil side. They will do anything to get what they want, even if it means becoming murderers. Evil can escalade in transforming humans into savages.

Every human being is drawn to the evil side, young or old. Evil is a common theme expressed in both Lord of the Flies and Macbeth. A person can be influenced due to his exposure to a type of environment. In the first novel by William Golding, Ralph is driven to stay in control of himself. The antagonist, Jack, is opposed to Ralph’s self control. From the beginning, Jack has a feeling of disobedience among the group. He believes they should all live like animals; always acting upon their instinct. Unfortunately, the majority of the boys agree with him. He uses manipulation to speculate that they will have fun and be safe from an imaginary beast. ”Who’ll join my tribe and have fun?”. ”I gave you food”, said Jack, ”and my hunters will protect you from the beast, who will join my tribe?” (166) Jack is able to convince the others to join his tribe. Children are so innocent that they can be considered naive. By joining the tribe, they are entering the evil side. In Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth is revealed as a very consuming character. His wife, Lady Macbeth draws him to believing that he must become King. He murders King Duncan, thus entering himself in a world of evil.

During the play, Macbeth feels the need for an assistant. He tries to convince his friend Banquo, ”Yet, when we can entreat an hour to serve/ We would spend it in some words upon that business/ If you would grant the time.”(Macbeth, 2.1.) Contrary to Jack, Macbeth was not able to convince Banquo to help him. Banquo agrees to serve him only if: ”So I lose none/ In seeking to augment it, but still keep/ My bosom franchised and allegiance clear/ I shall be counseled.” Pursuing this further, both children and adults have differences and similarities. Children are young and they have not been alive long enough to clearly know the difference between good and evil. Adults, on the other hand, can relate their judgment to their past experiences. They are still drawn to the evil side this can progress to forgetting what is their true identity, in result to achieve their goal.

Humans with evil ambitions can forget their own common sense. Murdering is a sin, as written in the Bible. The evil amongst us causes humans to do heinous acts. For example, Jack is a hunter and he believes the boys needs meat to survive. His hunts quickly involve into murders. The pigs they hunt are killed more gruesomely. Consequently, they end up killing some of the boys on the island, not realizing their own evil ambitions. In one incident, Jack is proven to have lost all his common sense. ”The beast struggled forward, broke the ring and fell over the steep edge of the rock to the sand by the water. At once the crowd surged after it, cowered down the rock, leapt on the beast, screamed, struck, bit, tore.

There were no words, and no movements but the tearing of teeth and claws.” (168) Jack simply replies that the beast had taken over Simon’s body. He craves to be leader and to have all the boys following him. He stops at nothing to kill anyone that gets in his way: Simon and Piggy. Driven by his ambitions, Macbeth uses the same mentality as Jack. His first murder’s objective was to become King of Scotland. Following King Duncan’s murder, he must continue killing to deceive all his doubtful citizens. In one of his famous monologue he expresses: ”I am in blood/ Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more/ Returning were as tedious as go o’er.” (Macbeth, 3.4.) This monologue proves Macbeth has gone to far the reach his ambitions. He has gotten so used to murdering, that he cannot stop. In Lord of the Flies, the boys killed to prove their strength and their control. In Macbeth, he kills to gain royalty. Evil consumes humans and it can change our identity.

Evil can progress by creating animalism in humans. Every person is born with a unique personality. The majority of the boys in Lord of the Flies would rather act upon the need to prove themselves better and stronger than the rest of the boys on Ralph’s side. Depending on a person’s being, he or she is more susceptible to react in a certain way to different kinds of environments. For instance, in comparison with Ralph and Jack, Ralph reacts in a very grownup way to their situation. On the other hand, Jack’s animal side quickly takes over. He loses all his common sense, only reacting to his animal side. With a familiar rhythm; ”Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!” (205), this song was sung as a hymn to their tribe. Contrary to Jack, Macbeth’s murders were done more humanly, than savagely. Furthermore, Macbeth feels the need to hide his heinous crimes, he states: ”Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under’t.” (Macbeth, 1. 5.) By murdering, Macbeth and Jack proved their capability to act as animals. Depending on a person’s personality, many humans have the need to set his animal side free.

The progression of evil can impact a human being’s life in many ways. Both children and adults are attracted to the evil side. Humans feel the need to continue evil deeds to achieve their goals. This can cause an uncontrollable savageness in a person’s mind and behavior. The mind has been studied throughout history. It is an extremely complex organ and it is impossible to explain it completely. Most of the existing explanations are based on theories. One theory heard of is a human’s ”criminal mind”, or an expression also used an ”evil mind”. Do only criminals have an ”evil mind” or do all human beings have the hidden capacity to kill?

In literature, evil often triumphs but never conquers. I think that this statement is saying that in works of literature evil might win the battle, as some may say, but it never wins the war. It could also mean that in all literature, there is always two sides. One being good and one being evil. The characters on the evil or bad side usually overpower the ones that are on the good side. I think that this is true because the evil characters are generally portrayed as being very smart and more ahead of the game.

I agree with this statement because I’ve witnessed many things that could relate to this. No matter how far evil might seem to be ahead, at the end of the day there is always fairness. In the literary work The Crucible by Arthur Miller, Rebecca Nurse and John Proctor were accused of being witches. They were then summoned into court even though John Proctor confessed of being an adulterer. He seemed frustrated; he didn’t want to be hung because he was being accused. This example shows that . Dan forth said that his confession has to post on the church door.

John immediately changed his confession and followed strongly with the rest of the innocent people to be hung. The evil side cannot conquer the good side. Another example of evil triumphing but not conquering is Abigail. Abigail serves as the spark of hate in the play. She tempts John Proctor into adultery and commits acts against the Puritan Religion. To escape her punishment when found in the unlawful act of dancing she deflects her actions and blames them on others. She has no regard for those whom may be hurt by her accusations of witchcraft on others.

It even seems that she takes pleasure in her deception. All those she accuses are innocent, yet she manipulates many into believing her actions are good. Another character that plays, perhaps, the largest role in the play is the Puritan religion itself. It may not have lines itself or have its own body, but the Puritan code was set up in a manner that allowed the greatest evil of all, the judgment and taking of human lives. The religion is served as a holy red herring for the unholy acts of judgment, punishment, and vindictive actions. Puritan religion consistently works against all good in the play.

Most of us, politically, mentally, morally, socially, live somewhere between the negative pole of Robert Bolt’s “terrifying cosmos [where] …no laws, no sanctions, no mores obtain” (xvi), the nadir of the human spirit and self, and the positive pole he finds in Thomas More, who makes, not only in oaths but in all his dealings, “an identity between the truth … and his own virtue,” and “offers himself as a guarantee” (xiii-xiv) – a self which proves incorruptible by either promise or punishment.

Near to More’s level of righteousness are his wife and daughter, though he feels the need to protect them from perjuring themselves, a corruption stemming from one of the hardest temptations, protecting their family from harm. Rich and Cromwell are nearer to the lower pole in the play, the former making the complete arc from innocence to its opposite, and the latter starting from a place of moral bankruptcy and guiding Rich there with him. In between is the political corruption of King Henry who won’t let “all the Popes back to St. Peter [get] between me and my duty” (54), and of Woolsey’s appeal to More along patriotic and anti-war lines. With the exception of More, and those who anchor themselves to him like his family and Will Roper, they are all, like the Boatman’s wife, “losing [their] shape, sir. Losing it fast” (28). Richard Rich is the play’s most developed exemplar of the gradual, and gradually accelerating, course that leads, through corrupt action, to corruption’s end-point: a shell without a self.

As the Common Man, in the guise of Matthew, correctly predicts, Rich “come[s] to nothing” (17), despite his final worldly status, symbolized by his rich robes which, as that same Man says elsewhere of all clothing, say nothing about the man inside them, “barely cover[ing] one man’s nakedness” (3). Oliver Cromwell, a disciple of Machiavelli, and unashamedly corrupt, is Rich’s teacher and exhorter along that road. Rich is bullied into telling Cromwell information that might harm Thomas More, a betrayal.

Cromwell uses this sin as a teaching opportunity – the more you give in to corruption (and therefore the less of you there is left to struggle against it), the easier it becomes: CROMWELL There, that wasn’t too painful, was it? RICH (laughing a little and a little rueful) No! CROMWELL That’s all there is, and you’ll find it easier next time. (76) Richard Rich sums up the teachings of Machiavelli, embodied in Cromwell, as quintessentially empty (though Rich is too fearful for his worldly status to be afraid of the legitimately fearful consequence of following those teachings): “properly apprehended, [Macchiavelli] has no doctrine.

Master Cromwell has the sense of it…” (13). In following Cromwell into philosophical corruption, Rich will reap the rewards of such pragmatism. More, at the apex of Rich’s ascent to influence and wealth (he’s been named Attorney General for Wales as a reward for perjury), reminds Rich that “it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world” (158). That word, “nothing,” both represents that he doesn’t gain anything worth having, and that he will, in consequence, add to the absence of his being – what he will gain is nothingness.

The reasons Rich and Cromwell are tempted are simple in that they (the reasons) are particular to self-profit (More, and perhaps Bolt through More, would find that an ironic term): personal wealth, influence and power, and escape from suffering. Cardinal Woolsey tempts More with a form of corruption less black-and-white: not merely Cromwell’s short-sited “administrative convenience” (73), but a seemingly moral and patriotic act: possibly preventing a war of succession like the War of the Roses had been. “Oh your conscience is your own affair,” the Cardinal tells More, “but you’re a statesman! Do you remember the Yorkist wars? All right [my solution to this problem is, in that it isn’t perfectly moral,] regrettable, but necessary…” (22). It is a dilemma: whether the good of a country (or the prevention of an evil to a country) somehow outweighs the evil of achieving that end by corrupt means. More’s “horrible moral squint” (19), as Woolsey calls it, sees through the Cardinal’s assumption that such corruption, simply because it has a good in sight for that greater self that is one’s homeland, won’t open the door to further corruption, as a precedent that many (as it affects many) will follow, that will in fact “lead their country by a short route to chaos” (22).

The form of corruption with which Thomas More will have to grapple most desperately, and from which he will protect his family most carefully, is the temptation to act against conscience, not for personal gain, or for the sake of an abstract like ‘the common good,’ but for loved ones. More knows that temptation, in this case to perjure themselves for his own sake, might topple even the upright Alice and Margaret. For that eason, despite the anger and suffering his wife and daughter evidence at being kept in the dark, he never once opens his mind to them about those issues (the real reason behind his resignation, which lands them in poverty, and imprisonment over taking an oath, which deprives them of father and husband, and puts them in danger) – a relief he must have craved were they the picture of understanding. However, though they are not – he tell’s Margaret “the King’s more merciful than you; he doesn’t use the rack” (142) – he holds firm.

This he also does for himself, never taking the oath and perjuring himself to God (as, he says, “what is an oath then, but words we say to God” (140)), though he knows his family will suffer his ultimate loss. For that reason, though, he can go to his death with a special tranquility, telling the headsman “you send me to God … He will not refuse one who is so blithe to go to him” (160). We are left, then, with so many who died long ago, and the tale that history, and this play, tells of them.

Richard Rich loses himself to corruption for purely personal gain, and while he lives with outward wealth, he is inwardly rotten, and ends in obscurity. Cardinal Woolsey, who ruthlessly pursues personal power and uses the same tactics in pursuit of patriotic goals, is remembered as an influencer of the policies of Europe, but, in the play, paves the way for greater evil, though he tries to stave it off by electing More Lord Chancellor.

That evil is personified in Cromwell, a man with no morals, patriotic or otherwise. That “short route to chaos” More warns of shows up as well in the escalation of the scale of resistance Henry levels against the Church, eventually destroying most of the monasteries in England, and sparking a bloodily put down revolution. More, meanwhile, is an inspiration not only for his family, but has inspired conscience and nobility of spirit for almost five hundred years since his death, which is its own kind of immortality.