Lord of the Flies Critical Literary Essay Even apparently rational and civilized people will turn evil. This is true with some characters in the novel, Lord of the Flies, by William Golding. Jack and Ralph are two characters that demonstrate this theme in the novel. In the beginning, Jack appears to be rational and civilized. He is first introduced into the story as the leader of the choirboys. It seems as though he has a …showed first 75 words of 750 total…

…showed last 75 words of 750 total…symbolism, into a world of active, proliferating evil which is seen, one feels, as the natural condition of man and which is bound to remind the reader of the vilest manifestations of Nazi regression" (Walter Allen, in his The Modern Novel 288-92). Deep within every person, somewhere beyond the rational and civilized ways of man, there is a natural source of evil. This idea is strongly and successfully brought across in Lord of the Flies.