William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies” was published in 1954. After witnessing the horrors caused by these World Wars, Golding presented the human psyche which is attracted more towards savagery and evilness. All the characters in the novel except Simon tended towards savagery at one time or another but certain characters like Jack and Rogers were a true representative of this savage instinct and innate capacity of evilness in man. From the start of the novel, Jack’s tendency for savagery was presented by the writer that how he from the start was fascinated by blood:
“You should have seen the blood”.
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Jack and Roger were presented as symbols of savagery, chaos, dictatorship, anarchy, totalitarianism, and in short man’s innate capacity for evilness. Jack and the children of his tribe i.e. the hunters in the novel were later described numerous times as “Painted savages” instead of humans. These painted savages not only hunted down pigs but also their fellow boys like Simon and Piggy. Their chanting “Kill the pig. Cut her throat! Spill her blood” echoed in the island. Even Piggy and Ralph who were a symbol of intellectuality and democracy participated in the mass killing of Simon. Ralph at one point was also fascinated by the hunt he felt that “hunting was good after all”. The beast and the Lord of the Flies were symbols used to present the innate safe nature of man. This inherent evilness is presented by the writer through the sow’s head called the Lord of the Flies who confronts Simon with reality:
“Fancy thinking that the beast was something you could hunt and kill. You knew didn’t you. I am a part of you”.
Ralph after seeing Simon being ruthlessly and brutally torn into pieces realizes the true nature of human beings. He realizes after seeing Piggy being killed by Rogers and him being hunted down by Jack’s people that darkness and savagery are a part of human nature. He realizes that in a natural environment, where the chains of civilization are not there, humans return to their primal nature i.e. savagery. He after realizing this fact weeps for mankind:
“He wept for the loss of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart”.
Similarly, this element of savagery and darkness was laid explored by Conrad in the “Heart of Darkness” where he thought the colonizers represent the true darkness that lies in the human heart. He presents how the real darkness was not in Congo or the Africans who were called “brutes” and “savages”, but in the colonizers themselves. The journey of Marlow to the heart of Congo was the journey from oblivion to reality. His penetration through the jungle presented his penetration into the savage nature of the colonizers who thought that it was their duty to civilize the natives. The colonizers thought that it was their “Whiteman’s Burden” (a term coined by Rudyard Kipling) to civilized the savages.
Marlow through his journey “penetrated deeper and deeper” into the savage nature of his fellow colonizers who were a representation of the “Whited Sepulcher” (a term used in the Bible to present the inner darkness of heart and hypocrisy). Conrad exposed this evilness in the heart of these people who were using civilization as an excuse to gather ivory from Africa. The cruelty of Kurtz and his savage nature is presented when the writer points out how the skulls of the native Africans were lying outside Kurtz’s hOuse to terrorize the natives.
In conclusion, one may say that the novel’s “Heart of Darkness” and “Lord of Flies” both highlight the evil and savage instincts of humans. They point out how human nature is “not black and white but black and grey” as pointed out by Graham Greene. These Novel’s highlight the innate evilness which is more primal than civilization:
“We all have a monster within; the difference is in degree not in kind”.
The theme is extracted by Syeda Areeba Fatima, a permanent staff writer at the SOL Community.
