摘 要

英国小说家威廉·杰拉尔德·戈尔丁是小说界研究人性问题的代表作家之一。本论文主要探讨了戈尔丁创作《蝇王》的动机，以及在《蝇王》中对人性的思考。同时以《蝇王》为例，探讨了人性潜在的邪恶的一面被激发出来的原因：环境的改变，人性的自私以及欲望。在《蝇王》中，戈尔丁通过对一群流落荒岛的小孩子的描写，向人们展示出人性邪恶的一面：在没有成人及文明制度的约束下同时，他们背叛朋友，不择手段追逐权力，以强凌弱等，这些也是当今社会存在的现象。《蝇王》通过描写大人的世界对孩子的影响暗示了大人对孩子们的道德教育可以抑制人性中潜在的邪恶。本本文希望通过总结《蝇王》中呈现出的邪恶人性可以引起人们深思并且重视道德教育在人们生活中的重要影响。

关键词：《蝇王》；人性恶； 恶产生的原因；恶的表现； 道德教育

Abstract

William Gerald Golding, an English writer, the author of Lord of the Flies is one representative of writers who studied on human nature. This paper mainly explains Golding’ s motivation to write the novel -- Lord of the Flies and the author’ s view of human nature expressed in it. At the same time, in the novel, this paper explores the reasons why the potentially dark sides of humanity are stimulated, including environmental change, selfishness and desire. Besides that, Golding through the gradual changes of behaviors happened in a group of innocent and naive children who castaways on a desert island show the dark sides of human beings to readers, such as betraying friends, sparing no effort to pursue power and the big bullying the small. These also are social phenomena existing now. And, in Lord of the Flies, there are several details showing the influence of adults on children, which suggests that moral education coming from adults can constrain and delay the appearance of darkness in human nature. This paper hopes people to think deeply about the darkness in human nature shown in Lord of the Flies and attract individuals’ attention to the important influence of moral education in our lives.

Key words: Lord of the Flies；origins of the darkness；the darkness in human nature; manifestation of the darkness；moral education

Contents

1 Introduction 1

1.1 Brief Introduction of Lord of the Flies 1

1.2 Golding’ s Motivation of Writing Lord of the Flies 2

1.3 Structure and Significance of the Research 2

1.4 Study on Darkness of Human Beings 3

2 Origins of the Darkness in Human Nature 5

2.1 Environmental change 5

2.2 Selfishness 6

2.3 Desire 6

3 The Manifestation of Darkness in Human Nature 8

3.1 Betraying Friends 8

3.2 Sparing no Effort to Pursue Power 8

3.3 The Big Bullying the Small 9

3.4 Regarding Other Creatures in Nature as Inferiority 10

4 Moral Education — the Therapy for Darkness of Human Nature 11

5 Conclusion 12

References 14

Acknowledgements 15

On the Darkness of Human Nature in Lord of the Flies

1 Introduction

1.1 Brief Introduction of Lord of the Flies

“Lord of the flies” origins from a word in Hebrew - “Baalzebub”, which means the worst of all sins in Bible and in English, flies are the lord of feculence as well as the synonyms for dark and evil things. William Gerald Golding’ s works, Lord of the Flies, published in 1954, describes something dark and evil in human nature, and enjoyed great popularity. E. M. Forster, an English novelist and critic called it as the best novel of the year. Meanwhile Lord of the Flies was included in the list of required readings for high school and college students in England and America.

The novel was set in a bleak and isolated island, located in the Pacific Ocean, where a group of children, in a nuclear war, was thrown because of aircraft accident in the process of evacuating from England. Living in the island, these kind, innocent and civilized children, without the management of adults, turned to be evil, ferocious and barbarous accounting for their desires and something else. And these children were divided into two groups and they were led by Ralph and Jack respectively. However, a majority of kids in Ralph’s group joined into Jack’s team, because of their desire of meat and so-called freedom they considered, in which they lived like primitive people who lived on hunting animals and picking wild fruits, sometimes killing their companions. In Lord of the Flies, there are twelve chapters totally, and they are “ The sound of the shell ”, “ Fire on the mountain ”, “ Huts on the beach ”, “ Pained faces and long hair ”, “ Beast from Water ”, “ Beast from air ”, “ Shadows and Tall Trees ”, “ Gift for the darkness ”, “ A view to a death ”, “ The shell and the glasses ”, “ Castle Rock” and “ Cry of the hunters”. From these topics, it is clear to see the change of children from civilized to barbarism. Through the novel Golding wanted to show that the darkness in human nature is the main cause triggering the conflicts between civilization and barbarism. Meanwhile, the novel exerts great impact on humankind and forces them to study the darkness of human nature continuously.

1.2 Golding’ s Motivation of Writing Lord of the Flies

William Gerald Golding, an English writer, graduated from Oxford University and once became a member of British Royal Navy in 1940. When he began writing after World War Two, almost all his works, focusing on the relation between human and society, expressed the idea that social ills were contributed to the darkness of human nature. But as a young man, Golding was innocent and believed that everyone was kind by nature. The thought, afterwards, was changed by his experience in World War Two, a war universally known as a calamity. The World War Two was triggered in that victorious nations in Word War One punished those defeated countries excessively in the mood of revenge. The punishment brought about racialism, which helped Nazi be in office in Germany and carry out a series of atrocities in World War Two. Golding, as a soldier, noticed and experienced the cruel and blooded things happened in the war, which didn’t match with author’s original cognition. Once Golding said “I do not say that everyone is evil by nature, but when I was young, I indeed had unrealistic picture of people before the war. Afterwards, I took part in the war, which changed the thought of me and my peers. The World War Two demonstrates that human beings are not what I thought before. ” So what he had saw and what he had experienced in World War Two triggered himself to consider human nature, and its relation with society. Therefore, his representative work - Lord of the Flies made its first appearance in 1954 and became renowned in the literary arena. Meanwhile, Golding won the Nobel Prize in Literature for it in 1983.

1.3 Structure and Significance of the Research

The thesis is divided into five parts totally, including the first part - introduction, the second part - the study on darkness of human beings, the third - darkness’ essence and manifestation in human nature, the forth - Moral Education-the therapy for darkness of human nature and the last one - conclusion. Among the first part, it mainly gives a brief introduction of the novel Lord of the Flies, and author’s motivation of writing it. Meanwhile, in the part, it introduces the structure and significance of the thesis. It, in the second part, describes the study on darkness of human beings from the east to the west throughout history. As for the third section, it points out that the essence of darkness in human nature is the irrational thought and the darkness described in the novel is common in daily life. The importance of moral education is stressed in the fourth part to constrain the irrational thoughts. And the last part is a conclusion.

Nowadays, bad news is reported frequently and more and more bad social phenomena appear in human beings’ life. The thesis aims to analyze the darkness in human nature depicted in Lord of the Flies to alert people to dark sides in their nature and appeal to individuals to pay attention to the moral education for a harmonious society.

1.4 Study on Darkness of Human Beings

What is the darkness in human beings? In a dictionary, it refers to something not good as well as the evil and brutal human behaviour. From the ancient time to now, various scholars in different fields devoted themselves to studying the origin of darkness of human beings. And there are several understandings of the question. In China, the research on human nature started from Spring and Autumn Period, in which Mencius considered that human was kind by nature and explained it by four origins. In his opinion, everyone in the world was respectful, discerning, sympathetic, and shamed on evil behaviour. As for the the appearance of darkness and evil behaviour in society, it accounted for the surroundings in which kindness of human nature could not be cultivated and developed well. Socrates, a renowned Greek philosopher, living in the same time with Mencius, came up with similar viewpoint to Mencius. He also thought that human beings are not evil at the moment when they were born. And he proposed the proposition that kindness was knowledge as well as that virtue was knowledge. Ignorance is the origin of darkness of human nature. Not only did Socrates think so, but his student Plato also agreed with him.