The Nature of Man in The Lord of the Flies by William Golding

The Nature of Man On the tail end of WWII, the world was in ruins, the allies had won, but so much and so many had still been lost. It was a glimpse into the true horror that men were capable of. Amidst bloodshed and suffering it is understandable that William Golding would have great difficulty viewing men as naturally good. He argues in his novel, â€Å"The Lord of the Flies† that men need rules and society to keep peace and that if they were to leave that they would fall into chaos, but his arguments are only proven through characters he has constructed. In this debate as old as time itself, there have been others who would disagree with Golding; others who have more faith in man’s nature and less partiality to the system created to keep man in check. It may be overly optimistic to view humans as creatures that are wholly good, but if we are purely evil inside and all that holds us back are the flimsy rules of a society we created, then it would be a near impossibility for us to have survived this long. In the novel, the collapse of order on the island is not immediate. The boys retain their English civility in the face of the truly horrific catastrophe that is the plane crash that strands them there, but slowly over the course of the narrative their moral conditioning wears away and they become what Golding believes to be the true darkness present in all men. But what went so horribly wrong? In the beginning they seem to be faring so well. 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